It was Steffens' turn to struggle, and the robot waited patiently while Ball and the second robot looked on in silence. The Makers, obviously, were whoever or whatever had built the robots, and the "doctors," Steffens decided, were probably just that—doctor-robots, designed specifically to care for the apparently flesh-bodies of the Makers.
The efficiency of the things continued to amaze him, but the question he had been waiting to ask came out now with a rush:
"Can you tell us where the Makers are?"
Both robots stood motionless. It occurred to Steffens that he couldn't really be sure which was speaking. The voice that came to him spoke with difficulty.
"The Makers—are not here."
Steffens stared in puzzlement. The robot detected his confusion and went on:
"The Makers have gone away. They have been gone for a very long time."
Could that be pain in its voice, Steffens wondered, and then the spectre of the ruined cities rose harsh in his mind.
War. The Makers had all been killed in that war. And these had not been killed.
He tried to grasp it, but he couldn't. There were robots here in the midst of a radiation so lethal that nothing, nothing could live; robots on a dead planet, living in an atmosphere of carbon dioxide.