And it was alien. A thousand differences stood out in line and structure and material. The size alone would have been enough to mark it as having come from outside this solar system. Yet without bulkheads, without bracing, the mass of it loomed as one incredibly vast and far-spreading room—an engineering feat to stagger man's imagination.
And here, too, were the primitives, heirs to Womar's scorched, windswept deserts. A thousand strong—ten thousand—they packed the huge hold in a screaming, seething mass, metal masks hideously aglint in the streaming sunlight.
But for Jarl Corvett, ship and primitives alike were mere incidentals. Swaying, staring, he could find eyes only for one thing: the robots.
The robots—! He rocked—incredulous, unbelieving.
But here they were—metal monsters that towered rank on rank in this great hold, like monstrous originals of the figures in Ktar Wassreck's workshop. Like a forest they rose ... a forest of utter, malign menace.
Their feet alone stood higher than a tall man's head; and the glinting orientation-slots of the great head-units towered so far above the crowd as to have been beacon lights on distant mountains.
Chill, unmoving, they stood here in the hull of this shattered ship as they had stood for ages. But where ship and fittings were decaying, these mighty warriors still shone resplendent, fabricated of some different, finer metal. Strength gleamed in every line of their orange-gold figures. The screaming primitives were only ants that crawled and danced and raged upon them.