"Norden!" The general had grabbed his arm, and was following him. "Norden, if you go out there, I'm going with you. Whatever happens will happen to me, too. You've got to listen!"
He tried to force his way ahead, shaking his arm to free it. The other arm was also carrying a dead weight, and he could see Pat's face close to his own.
She was screaming at him. "Bill! Bill, you must listen! We knew it all along! We knew you were a robot! It doesn't matter. If you explode, you'll take us with you!"
He hit the lock in savage desperation and the words froze meaninglessly in his ears as he held back the driving urge until he could escape from them.
Miles clung grimly. "It's the Aliens, Bill! They want you to explode. The damned Aliens who want to kill you! Do you love them so much you'll kill us all? Or do you hate them?"
Slowly it penetrated the red haze of torment in his mind. The Aliens wanted to kill him. They'd played with him, had turned him into a monster to do their malicious bidding. They'd given him nothing in return. And now they wanted everything. His own life, worthless though it might be—and the life of his friends.
The hate washed through him—the cold, hard hate that had a greater strength for its very lack of endocrine instability.
"I'm all right," he said slowly. "You're safe. You can go back to the base."
Miles stared at him with a warm and friendly understanding. "We really did know about you, Bill," he said. "That business about your being the only undetected human on the asteroid looked suspicious, and the psychologists weren't fooled. We were gambling on a chance to get some information on the Aliens' detector out of you before you could do anything dangerous.
"Hardwick was the only man who could have known enough to have any chance. With him dead, we had to hope they'd give you information enough to act in his place. Pat volunteered to watch you. And we had ultra-violet cameras in every room where you ever were, watching you every second."