Kimball Trent shook his head. He had heard nothing of the robots, had never seen them when first he fought the Gharrians. Evidently they had been created after the world had been conquered. Now they walked in deadly silence, a menace against which an unarmed man would have no chance at all.
A man died, even as Trent watched. He cried his hate and raced toward the fence, leaping high so as to clamber over it with catlike speed and agility. Trent felt the unheard warning coming from his chest, stifled it, even as electricity crackled and writhed along the figure of the man and dropped him in a smouldering blackened heap onto the ground.
No sound came from the prisoners; they stared in dull hate, as the nearest robot ignored the crackling electricity and pulled the body below the lowest strand of wire. Dragging the corpse by the legs, the robot soullessly pulled it toward a shallow ditch, dumped it in, then again began its endless patrol.
"The inhuman beasts!" Lura cried softly, tears in her eyes.
A Gharrian came from the base of the tower, walking with its ponderous smoothness, the single eye glittering in the sunlight. There was something obscene and deadly about its deliberate stalking of the prisoners huddled within the enclosure.
Its long multi-fingered arms were like writhing tentacles, as it singled out a man and woman, capturing them before they could move. Three men hurled themselves at its broad back, beating insanely with their fists. A robot came rushing in, battered them free, then beat them into unconsciousness with mailed feet. The Gharrian turned, stalked toward the tower, dragging the man and woman with an unconscious incredible ease. It was like a blue monster from hell dragging two victims to some hideous sacrifice.
"Where?" Kimball Trent breathed.
Korm shrugged. "We're not certain," he said. "One escaped prisoner said that, in the tower, tests are made of their mentality and fertility." His great hands knotted about the heavy spear shaft. "Some day I shall enter that tower, and all hell shall not stop my destroying every Master therein!"
Then the passion was gone from his voice, and he was their leader again. "Matt, Nels, Parb," he ordered. "Go around to the other side and create a diversion. We shall tear down the fence from this side."
The three men nodded and were gone like drifting shadows. Korm opened the small bundle Frong, the red-haired giant, handed him, disclosing several plastic ropes, gang-hooks attached to one end of each. He distributed the ropes to Valur, Frong and himself. Trent watched intently, as they fitted the spears to the hooked end of the ropes.