And the images of the females in the screens were suddenly still, as if all of them had gone to sleep at once. Pat yanked the cover off and instantly the females were dashing at the gates of their cages again.
Pat let out a yell and reached for the phone. Norden tried to echo her enthusiasm, but there was no resiliency left in him. He stared at the answer to their problems, while part of his mind estimated that the pilots could stand the radioactivity from suits of such cloth long enough to accomplish their purpose, if an undersuit of lead-cloth could be worn also.
But the rest of his mind was in his own private hell. Robot, it shouted at him—robot and spy! It was plain enough now that his periods of "relaxation" and review of the day's events had been a mechanism for leaking information to the Aliens. His unexpected and rebellious attempt to end it had been the signal to send Armsworth against the male lizards. Hands-behind-the-head-Norden, he thought—the robot too dumb to recognize the working of an automatic transmitter switch.
He fondled the cloth cover slowly, tasting the anticipation of revenge. The Aliens had taken a man named William Jon Norden from a lonely asteroid, and had drained him of his life history and knowledge. They'd built a poor dupe of a robot, and had sent it out to spy for them, and to believe for a while that it was human and alive. Now let them feel the defeat they'd earned when they built their robot too close to the original.
Then he considered the thin thread on which his hopes rested. He had something that stopped some form of energy from being detected by the lizards—an unknown band-width of an unknown spectrum which might not even be the right one.
He swung around to check Pat's call, but it was too late. The word had already spread, judging by the whoops or rejoicing coming from beyond the laboratory.
V
Norden broke away from the men who refused to listen to his warnings as quickly as possible. Pat had already gone to her bunk, worn out completely by the brief burst of hope, and he headed for his own cubicle. There was no physical fatigue—how could there be in a robot? But his mind was dulled with too many shocks. He dropped to the bunk, and his arms came up automatically.
He forced them down, and this time he was ready when his brain tried to black out on him. The compulsions that acted on him to make him pass on his information to the Aliens were partly under his control.