style="font-size:15px;"> * * * * *
“And it’s going on all along your line?” Hendricks said.
“Yes.”
“How about our lines?” Without thinking, he touched the tab on his arm. “Can they—”
“They’re not bothered by your radiation tabs. It makes no difference to them, Russian, American, Pole, German. It’s all the same. They’re doing what they were designed to do. Carrying out the original idea. They track down life, wherever they find it.”
“They go by warmth,” Klaus said. “That was the way you constructed them from the very start. Of course, those you designed were kept back by the radiation tabs you wear. Now they’ve got around that. These new varieties are lead-lined.”
“What’s the other variety?” Hendricks asked. “The David type, the Wounded Soldier—what’s the other?”
“We don’t know.” Klaus pointed up at the wall. On the wall were two metal plates, ragged at the edges. Hendricks got up and studied them. They were bent and dented.
“The one on the left came off a Wounded Soldier,” Rudi said. “We got one of them. It was going along toward our old bunker. We got it from the ridge, the same way we got the David tagging you.”
The plate was stamped: I-V. Hendricks touched the other plate. “And this came from the David type?”
“Yes.” The plate was stamped: III-V.
Klaus took a look at them, leaning over Hendricks’ broad shoulder. “You can see what we’re up against. There’s another type. Maybe it was abandoned. Maybe it didn’t work. But there must be a Second Variety. There’s One and Three.”
“You were lucky,” Rudi said. “The David tagged you all the way here and never touched you. Probably thought you’d get it into a bunker, somewhere.”
“One gets in and it’s all over,” Klaus said. “They move fast. One lets all the rest inside. They’re inflexible. Machines with one purpose. They were built for only one thing.” He rubbed sweat from his lip. “We saw.”
They were silent.
“Let me have another cigarette, Yank,” Tasso said. “They are good. I almost forgot how they were.”
* * * * *
It was night. The sky was black. No stars were visible through the rolling clouds of ash. Klaus lifted the lid cautiously so that Hendricks could look out.
Rudi pointed into the darkness. “Over that way are the bunkers. Where we used to be. Not over half a mile from us. It was just chance Klaus and I were not there when it happened. Weakness. Saved by our lusts.”
“All the rest must be dead,” Klaus said in a low voice. “It came quickly. This morning the Politburo reached their decision. They notified us—forward command. Our runner was sent out at once. We saw him start toward the direction of your lines. We covered him until he was out of sight.”
“Alex Radrivsky. We both knew him. He disappeared about six o’clock. The sun had just come up. About noon Klaus and I had an hour relief. We crept off, away from the bunkers. No one was watching. We came here. There used to be a town here, a few houses, a street. This cellar was part of a big farmhouse. We knew Tasso would be here, hiding down in her little place. We had come here before. Others from the bunkers came here. Today happened to be our turn.”
“So we were saved,” Klaus said. “Chance. It might have been others. We—we finished, and then we came up to the surface and started back along the ridge. That was when we saw them, the Davids. We understood right away. We had seen the photos of the First Variety, the Wounded Soldier. Our Commissar distributed them to us with an explanation. If we had gone another step they would have seen us. As it was we had to blast two Davids before we got back. There were hundreds of them, all around. Like ants. We took pictures and slipped back here, bolting the lid tight.”
“They’re not so much when you catch them alone. We moved faster than they did. But they’re inexorable. Not like living things. They came right at us. And we blasted them.”
Major Hendricks rested against the edge of the lid, adjusting his eyes to the darkness. “Is it safe to have the lid up at all?”
“If we’re careful. How else can you operate your transmitter?”
Hendricks lifted the small belt transmitter slowly. He pressed it against his ear. The metal was cold and damp. He blew against the mike, raising up the short antenna. A faint hum sounded in his ear. “That’s true, I suppose.”
But he still hesitated.
“We’ll pull you under if anything happens,” Klaus said.
“Thanks.” Hendricks waited a moment, resting the transmitter against his shoulder. “Interesting, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“This, the new types. The new varieties of claws. We’re completely at their mercy, aren’t we? By now they’ve probably gotten into the UN lines, too. It makes me wonder if we’re not seeing the beginning of a new species. The new species. Evolution. The race to come after man.”
* * * * *
Rudi grunted. “There is no race after man.”
“No? Why not? Maybe we’re seeing it now, the end of human beings, the beginning of the new society.”
“They’re not a race. They’re mechanical killers. You made them to destroy. That’s all they can do. They’re machines with a job.”
“So it seems now. But how about later on? After the war is over. Maybe, when there aren’t any humans to destroy, their real potentialities will begin to show.”
“You talk as if they were alive!”
“Aren’t they?”
There was silence. “They’re machines,” Rudi said. “They look like people, but they’re machines.”
“Use your transmitter, Major,” Klaus said. “We can’t stay up here forever.”
Holding the transmitter tightly Hendricks called the code of the command bunker. He waited, listening. No response. Only silence. He checked the leads carefully. Everything was in place.
“Scott!” he said into the mike. “Can you hear me?”
Silence. He raised the gain up full and tried again. Only static.
“I don’t get anything. They may hear me but they may not want to answer.”
“Tell them it’s an emergency.”
“They’ll think I’m being forced to call. Under your direction.” He tried again, outlining briefly what he had learned. But still the phone was silent, except for the faint static.
“Radiation pools kill most transmission,” Klaus said, after awhile.
