"Damn you, Bayley!" Harwich growled, but the fat printer ignored the curse.
He only grimaced crookedly. "Let's make a couple more wishes," he taunted. "A couple of really good ones! How about a whole fleet of space ships, for instance? The biggest, most powerful fleet in the solar system! All automatic craft, capable of flying and maneuvering unmanned! Then, let's see, the other wish? It's not so difficult either. Both you and Arnold are my deadly enemies, Harwich. I think it would be fun to make my enemies squirm a little. I'd like to see you crack up, Harwich! You've always been so tough! So how about some kind of a discomfort device? Something really special? In short, a torture instrument! Come on, pretty machines! Do your stuff!"
Paul Arnold's face turned pale, but he bit his lip courageously. Evan Harwich studied the strange, wild light in the fat printer's squinted eyes, and waited for whatever would happen.
There was a crescendoing whir within that huge pyramidal coordinator. The man who had usurped the rule of the ancient Ionians over their mechanical servitors, had given his telepathic orders. Already there were signs of obedience. Thinking and planning was going on in that pyramid; thinking and planning more intricate than that of the greatest human wizard that had ever lived, more soulless and swift than that of an adding machine.
Presently, from far away, came a thin, shrill sound. Looking back through the darkened glass walls of the Tower room, Harwich and Arnold, both of them clutched, now, by the tentacles of the flat robot, saw a horde of black specks collecting against the sky in the pale sunlight outside. A flock of those flat, tentacled, flying things.
They seemed to emerge from an opening in the ground; from a vault where perhaps they'd been stored for ages. In a gigantic swarm they hovered over the glass cages and their pathetic animal inhabitants. Then, drifting like gulls away from this weird city of the Forbidden Moon, they moved off toward the surrounding hills.
There, like swarming bees, they settled in their tremendous numbers, on the open, arid valley. Flame tools in their tendrils were brought into play. Dust, reddened with heat, began to rise.
"They're leveling the ground!" Paul Arnold whispered hoarsely. "They must be preparing a shipyard!"
"Sure, kid," George Bayley laughed, trying to conceal the half-scared wonder in his own voice. "Maybe it'll take weeks for them to build the fleet I asked for! But they'll do it! You'll see, if I happen to let you live that long!"