"I'll be watching you, Bob, so I can help you the moment you make the try."
The Tharnarian guards stopped outside the door, their blasters in their hands. One of them unlocked the door and two robots entered, guards locking the big door behind the robots the moment they were inside. The robots carried no blasters, nothing but three lengths of chain.
The Tharnarian leader outside the door rasped a command:
"You will both turn to face the window, with your hands behind you."
Bob did not obey at once, but appraised the situation. The robots were massive things—more than six hundred pounds in weight, their metal bodies invulnerable to any attack he could make with his bare hands. But there was one chance in ten thousand: if he could catch the first robot by surprise and send it toppling into the cell door, its weight might be enough to break the lock of the door.
He struck it with his shoulder, all his weight and strength behind the attack, and Virginia's small body struck it a moment later.
But it was like shoving against a stone wall. The robot rocked for the briefest instant, then it threw out a foot to regain its balance. The other robot snapped a chain around his wrists while Virginia fought it.
"Don't, Ginny," he said, ceasing his own struggles. "It's no use, honey."
She stopped, then, and the robot jerked her arms around behind her back, to lock the second chain around her wrists.
She smiled up into his dark and sombre face. "We tried, Bob. They were just too big for us."