An hour went by and Johnny became amazed at the speed of his recovery. He almost wanted to return to Hamilton Village and shout, "See? I survived. I'm back." But he was a Shining One, a carrier, forever an exile from the people and the life he knew. And his own parents were dead, mute testimony of the havoc he might wreak among his people if he returned to them.
They walked from the stream and shook the water from themselves and looked at each other, wet like that, and smiled. "I don't even know your name," said Johnny.
"It's Diane."
"I'm Johnny Hope. I want to—"
"Johnny! Get down!"
He stood there, surprised, staring foolishly. They were on a small rise of ground above the stream. The girl, who had fallen flat even as she hissed the command at him, was tugging at his legs. He dropped prone beside her, although he still failed to see the reason for her sudden alarm. She parted the undergrowth in front of them with her hands and said the one word, "Look."
Johnny had never seen the Robots this close before. For all their ungainly bulk they trod the ground softly, walking as he had always seen them at greater distances, in a long, single file column. They were huge antenna-topped creatures, their great cylindrical head sections bigger than a man and gleaming a polished silver-blue, their eyes, four of them evenly spaced around the cylinder a foot or so below the antenna, white and bulging, with neither pupil nor lid, their limbs many-jointed and metallic, various tool-ends fastened securely instead of hands. The legs were attached to the small body, but one fifth the size of the head; the arms came from the head itself, just below the unblinking eyes.
"They must be twelve feet tall," Johnny whispered.
"Shh! Softly. We're close to our encampment and I don't want them to find us. They average twelve feet, Johnny."