The stockade light swung, halted.
And a concerted gasp went up from the wall; then curses of terror.
There it stood. A shining colossus. Huge. And serene beyond imagining. It was facing the stockade.
It had traveled far: from the deep, sheltered cave in the far north—where it had rested in silence until, upon its vastly complex and sensitive electronic brain it had received the commands of its owners. After many, many years, as the little child master had thought, they had need of it.
It moved again.
Stockade weapons swiveled; all the hellish energy that they were capable of spewed in its direction.
In its way, it smiled.
Then, very methodically, it began to take the stockade apart, cracking the conje trunks like toothpicks.
