The gaunt woman remained silent, her pallor so pronounced now that it resembled the pallor of a corpse.
"The truth will come out," the Chief Monitor said, and sighed and turned from the glass. At the door he paused to deliver a few parting words of advice.
"Personal animosity in a Monitor is an unforgivable offense," he said. "Without a full and honest confession it could, in special circumstances, justify the death penalty."
When the door glided shut the gaunt woman stood for a moment as if turned to stone. Then some of the animation returned to her eyes and she returned to the glass and watched a towering ground-warfare robot joined by a second robot beside an oak tree of massive dimensions. She saw the two machines turn and start walking away from the oak tree, their conical heads turned toward a more distant part of the forest, the revolving disks of their eyes flashing with electro-magnetic, spectroscopic rays.
She watched them move forward through the forest, saw the forest vista changing. The canopy of foliage overhead changed shape and color. Now it became less dense, now more luxuriant. They skirted areas of quagmire, where the forest floor was strewn with wet leaves, carefully seeking firm footage, guided by their spectroscopic vision which could pierce beneath the surface layers of earth with rays of invisible spectrum wave-length.
Suddenly one of the metal giants halted and a flash of blinding light darted from one of the three atomic blast tubes projecting from its globular body-box. The roar of the limited atomic blast was not audible in the scanner-glass, but its violence shook the forest, sending five gigantic trees toppling and tearing a yawning gap in the canopy of foliage overhead, through which the sunlight streamed in wavering banners.
The first robot had gone on ahead, the scanner-glass which projected vertically from its conical head vibrating as it transmitted to the scanner-glass a continuous sequence of images. Suddenly it halted, as the other robot had done, in obedience to a transmitted message from a flying machine hovering directly overhead and waited until its companion came abreast of it again. Then both robots resumed their ponderous and slow advance, carefully testing each foot of ground before they rested their weight upon it.
The gaunt woman drew in her breath sharply. "In a moment now—only a moment more!" she whispered aloud to herself. "They must be very close to them by this time. They have traveled a considerable distance. The moment I have waited for so long is here at last. If I am brought to judgment, even if I am condemned to death, this moment of triumph will be worth all the humiliation, all the harsh injustice I may be forced to endure. I will go to my death with my head held high, knowing that I alone had the strength of will to root out and destroy an evil that the others attacked half-heartedly or found excuses for. These two are the worst offenders, the most brazen in their defiance of the law. If I succeed in destroying them—and I will—I will set an example that the others will have to follow. They will have no choice, for a martyr in a stern and just cause has many followers when the noose is drawn tight."
The two towering robots had halted again. They were standing very still, their conical heads turning slowly from right to left. Their spectroscopic eyes cast dull circles of radiance on the ground in front of them and their aspect was somehow vaguely disturbing, hard to explain. They seemed bewildered and confused, if human emotions can have any counterpart in a robot of metal and glass and whirring internal gadgetry.
Suddenly one of the metal giants turned and retraced his steps for a few yards, his conical head still turning slowly back and forth, in a manner that would have seemed comical to a less tense onlooker. The gaunt woman's throat felt constricted and she strained fearfully forward, her eyes glued to the glass.