Phil shrugged. "To find what I came for," he said hazily.
"Well, keep away from the cats," Carstairs called after him softly, but Phil was already hugging the wall.
"How we know those sing'lar missiles won't heat up and go for us like they went for Otie?" he heard Buck demand fretfully.
"The others got through, didn't they?" Carstairs said irritably.
"What others?" Phil heard Buck ask.
"The ones who burnt the lock on the door, the ones who threw the cats ahead of them to draw the missiles," Carstairs told him impatiently. "Incidentally, if any of the missiles start spinning their tails, you might by throwing your coat over them."
Beyond the dead cats, Phil came to a silvery mesh barricade with several jagged cuts in it, three of them making a crude doorway. The mesh looked fine and strong enough to have kept the wasps on this side. He stepped over the fallen section of mesh. The cut ends of silvery wire were rounded and fused, as if by great heat.
Just beyond the mesh lay a chunky man in a gray, company guard uniform. He had a gun in his hand. He was intact except that the top of his head had rolled about a foot away. It had been sliced off tidily just above the nose by something hot. Phil remembered how neatly the blue needle had sliced the steel beam. He hurried past toward an open arch just ahead, and jerked back from a large gray snake coiled there. Then he saw that the snake was a robot doorman like Old Rubberarm, and looking higher he saw that it had been sliced off close to the wall.
Mitzie and the rest came through the mesh. Carstairs kneeled eagerly by the dead man and examined the gun he was clasping, but a moment later got up with a shrug.
"Not an ortho, eh?" Buck inquired. "Usin' those sing'lar missiles, you'd think they'd be up to date in other things."