"At least one of our robots seems to have overcome its inhibition against analyzing pure metal," Randall observed, prodding it.
"Or maybe something else has been around here," McAllister said.
The director looked up sharply.
"Something else? Like what?" Carol laughed at the pilot's unreasonable concern.
McAllister only hunched his bony shoulders.
It was not difficult for Stewart to see that McAllister was afraid. Neither the pilot nor Mortimer was generally known in the Bureau for his courage. That their apprehension had grown to visible proportions out there on this Godforsaken edge of infinity was merely an expected extension of their characters.
Rather, it was Randall's fear—Randall's and his own—that concerned Stewart. Both seemed incommunicable. Stewart's reticence was involuntary, stemming as it did from his inability to find words for his incomprehensible dread. And he wondered whether the director's fear, too, was that inexpressible.
He picked up a clod of soil and crumbled it in his gloved hand, as though symbolizing his anxious desire to come to grips with whatever it was that hid behind a veil in his mind.
Randall lowered himself on his haunches. "Don't we have any emergency means of bringing that machine under control?"
"Oh, there are a couple of tricks. Manhandling it is one."