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  "The Solitude Intelligences have an unusual ability: to separate their psyches, or you might say their intellects, from their bodies. So while the prisoner is lying physically helpless in its cave, it can send out its mentality or intellect, which enables it to perceive what is happening in the near and far vicinity of its prison.

  "It was this ability that the Druufs proposed to make use of. They used the Solitude Intelligences as a sort of inexpensive detection and locating system. The Druufs seem to know that Solitude lies at the border of their time-plane and they attach great importance to knowing who may be arriving from the other side. A Solitude entity would be cognizant immediately of any unknown intruder and its recognizing mentality would cause a reaction of surprise in the physical portion. Such reactions can be detected and registered by comparatively simple equipment, whereupon they can be transferred over a hypercom transmitter and communicated to the Druufs. So from that time on, the Druufs only had to keep an eye on their receiver recorders. If they noticed a strong reaction coming through, they knew that something was wrong on Solitude.

  "That's the rough picture of the situation. We have to presume that the Druufs are able to differentiate various types of reactions on the part of their prisoners here. I'm sure they're able to tell the difference between a reaction to a cyclone and a reaction to alien beings—us, for instance—but that's a matter of Druuf technology. Our friend down below here knows nothing about it."

  "Let's see... what else is there? Oh yes! The Solitude body naturally has to he kept alive. But since it no longer has any mechanical activity its physical exertions are nil. So its consumption of food and air is very small. The apparatuses down there in the cave serve the purpose of keeping the prisoner alive. Synthetic food in the form of a sort of broth or mush is brought into the six boxes along with air, by means of the conduits we saw.

  "And one more thing: in spite of all the tricky devices used on them, the prisoners' bodies tend to atrophy after a certain length of time. And the Druufs figured out that problem too. They knew there was only one way to hinder this tendency of dying off and that was to free the prisoners from their dungeons and let them out to move around naturally. They seem to be able to unite their separated parts and become whole, once they are freed. This happens, as far as I understand it, once every three years by our reckoning, for a period of a few hours or days. Of course this is done with supervision, since the prisoners are not by any means designed for their present way of life.

  "But this explains the unusual tunnel entrance and exit. The Solitude beings use it—once every three years—for leaving and entering the cave."

  He fell silent and his listeners remained silent also.

  "By the way," he said suddenly, as though he had just remembered now to tell them something, "Atlan and I, of course, have opened the six boxes down there. We didn't have any reason to leave our friend in its imprisonment any longer. It needs awhile to join its separate parts together and then it'll come up here."

  "I've already told you that it is not humanoid. Tompetch, this is directed to you as the least experienced among us: don't be frightened by its appearance and don't think of anything that might offend it. Along with its ability to separate its intellect from its body, there's a certain amount of telepathic awareness involved also."

  Tompetch nodded to show that he understood.

  • • •

  The first thing they became aware of was a hissing sound that emerged from the shaft. Rhodan explained it to them. "It's a very ingenious arrangement. "The Solitude Intelligence sucks in the air at the head end and releases it under high pressure at the tail end. By this means it gradually builds up pressure inside the cave. Since our friend fills the shaft hermetically with its body, the back pressure will shove him out, bit by bit. Presumably the whole operation is surprisingly fast."

  Everyone stared fixedly at the shaft hole. At its edge appeared a circular mass of greyish material whose composition no one would have ventured to guess. For awhile the grey substance only managed to move a few inches or so out of the hole. Then there was a new hissing sound and the alien body appeared to jerk upward like a thick pillar, extending more than a yard above the hole rim.

  The hissing and sliding sounds were repeated several times while the pillar of flesh rose to a height of almost 10 feet—whereupon it suddenly toppled over and fell with a dull thud on the ground that Tompetch had swept clear with the disintegrator. Meanwhile the high-pressure air blasted forth from the cave in a flurry of dust and quickly subsided.

  Tompetch's eyes fairly popped when he saw the grey cylindrically shaped thing lying on the ground. He watched in amazement as it began to move in a half-rolling, half-gliding motion toward Rhodan. It finally came to rest as one end of it practically touched his feet. Tompetch stood there aghast when he saw Rhodan bring himself to fondle and stroke the greyish Thing as though it were a pet dog. Rhodan's words came to him as though from a distance:

  "Naturally our collaboration can only now begin. We have to try to get over the idea to our friend that we'd be very grateful if it could keep a lookout for the Druufs. As we know, its psyche or intellect—or whatever we want to call it—is not subject to any particular time-frame and can move practically as fast as it wants to.

  "If we succeed in having it do that for us, then there's no better confederate we could wish for."

  To Tompetch it was all very strange. He was witness to an hours-long session of so-called communication with the grey, tube-like thing while Rhodan sat there with the wire-ring from the telepathic amplifier on his head without once receiving an audible answer. Nevertheless he could see by Rhodan's expression that he was making progress and now and then he would hear him speak:

  "Keep going, my friend. We're getting along better all the time."

  Tompetch also saw the sun come up and observed that suddenly it was no longer green but white, as it was back home. And the sky was no longer turquoise but a blazing blue.

  Tompetch experienced all this as though it were a fantasy in which he was somehow not actually there.

  In the final hours of the night and during the early part of the day he had not paid particular attention to the tracking scanner. Occasional glances at the empty screen seemed to be enough indication that there was no sign of danger from any quarter nor did it seem likely that anything threatened in the immediate future.

  But now when he suddenly observed that the formerly empty dark green scanner field was strewn with a myriad of tiny blips along the baseline, he felt like a sentinel who has been asleep at his post. Shaking in his boots, it took him awhile to stammer out an alarm.

  Altogether there were 40 light-points and their grouping on the screen indicated that they had already completely encircled the small camp by the cave entrance. In Rhodan's opinion there wasn't any doubt that the ground blips the scanner had detected involved metallic figures, which had to be robots, obviously sent out to capture his crew or kill them.

  And small wonder. The Druufs must be as anxious to know their toughest opponent as the opponent was to meet a Druuf face to face.

  Rhodan's apprehension was not too great as far as the impending engagement was concerned. In a series of battles which had been fought before, partly in connection with Marcel Rous' mission on the Crystal Planet, it had been found that the weapons of the Druuf robots were inferior to those of the Terranians.

  What was of real concern to Rhodan was another matter entirely. It was something he had not discussed with anyone so far: the complete disappearance of the K-238 and the inferences that he was forced to draw from it. Even if it had left its takeoff location at its highest velocity, such a metal colossus as the K-238 would have left a clearly visible trace on Tompetch's scanner screen. But that had not been the case, so therefore...

  Rhodan had made an agreement in the meantime with the Solitude Intelligence. Now that there was no question as to the enemy's intent, and since he made his presence known openly, the Solitude entity would look
about for the Druuf ship, which undoubtedly had brought the robots here. It must be in the vicinity—no more than 50 or 60 miles away, Rhodan had figured.

  Although the company of enemy robots continued to push closer to their position, Rhodan took the time to observe the Solitude creature as its tremendous body suddenly became slack and lifeless. This meant that its spirit or intellect had separated from it and it was this wandering entity that they had first seen in the form of a little man. But it wasn't visible now as it had been before when first spotted from the control room of the K-238. At that time it had been relatively easy to see it because it subjected the surrounding air to a change in the refraction index. Since it was not subject to any particular time reference, it moved as swiftly as Rhodan and his men had moved prior to the assimilation into Druuf-time. But in their present time-frame they were not able to perceive such a swift movement.

  Rhodan stood up and beckoned to Tompetch. "Bring along a heavy disintegrator," he ordered. "We'll have a look at the enemy line from above."

  Tompetch was enthusiastic. He had an opportunity to prove himself. He hurried to the weapons that had been laid out on the edge of the clearing. Selecting a heavy D-automatic disintegrator, he swung on board the flier. Equipped with a similar weapon, Rhodan had already taken over the controls. The other men appeared to know what they had to do. Reginald Bell directed the Arkonide and Gorlat to places between the bushes and admonished them not to stick their heads out even an inch.

  They had also dragged the inert body of the Solitude Entity under the coverage of the bushes.

  • • •

  Outside the temperature had risen to 138° Fahrenheit. By comparison the 125° maintained by the flier's air-conditioning system was a veritable tonic.

  There were two choices at Rhodan's disposal—either to hug the ground in his flight or to reach for altitude. He chose the latter since it offered more visibility. Owing to the shuttlecraft's powerful antigrav propulsion it was not difficult to make it soar like an airplane to an altitude of about 6000 feet above the plain.

  From this elevation the mighty Druuf robots appeared again as tiny glittering points of reflected light but it could also be seen that they had encircled the camp to within 600 yards. They seemed to be unaware of the flier above them or else they weren't concerned about it. And either conclusion seemed equally amazing to Tompetch. He knew that their weapons were similar to Terranian thermoguns and that they could no doubt be effective even at this distance. And certainly they must know that they were within effective range of their own Terranian weapons here on board the flier.

  "What do you think of it, Tompetch?" Rhodan suddenly asked as though he had guessed what was on his mind.

  "It's strange, sir," answered Tompetch. "Those are robots down there and since robots are programmed not to miss anything they must have spotted us right away. So if they're not firing at us by now, then all I can say is—"

  Suddenly as though in scornful answer to Tompetch there was a brilliant flash from below. A glowing white beam of energy shot past the flier within a 20 yard distance, causing it to sway in the thunder of superheated air.

  Rhodan went into a dodging manoeuvre and escaped the following shot by at least 200 yards.

  "You were saying...?" he asked as though nothing had happened.

  "Well, I was going to say that in that case maybe they weren't intending to do us any harm—or maybe this might be a diversionary attack of some kind. But of course that theory just went all to blazes because now they're firing at us."

  A third shot flashed upward at them. It passed close to the cockpit canopy and caused the inside temperature to jump to 130°. Thunder faded away through the heated air channel of the course taken by the shot.

  Rhodan had dodged again but now he became serious. "That was a mite too close for comfort," he said. "You'd better pay them our respects down there, Lieutenant!"

  Tompetch thrust the heavy automatic weapon through the firing slot that was just below the cockpit window. While Rhodan manoeuvred evasively and a series of ray-gun shots hissed by the ship without effect, Tompetch activated his automatic target tracer, aimed it at a closely packed group of robots and held his finger on the release button. Each time the target light blinked red he fired, knowing that his target was perfectly centered.

  Eight times the light blinked. Eight glittering points disappeared below and eight puffs of atomized metallic gas rose from the ground.

  "Now there are only 32 of them," reported Tompetch.

  Apparently recognizing their dangerous position, the robots scurried for cover in the bushes. However they were not prepared for the perfectionism of Earthly technology. The position scanner revealed the trace blips on the screen just as clearly as before, since the device was not hindered by the coverage of foliage. Tompetch tied in his weapon to the scanner itself and brought his automatic target circle to a halt on the screen where a group of five blips was indicated.

  After a moment he announced: "Only 27 of them left, sir."

  The firing from below was becoming desultory and infrequent now. The robots appeared to be fully occupied with the task of escaping the cross-hair accuracy of Tompetch's disintegrator fire. In spite of their frantic efforts, however, it took Tompetch only another quarter of an hour to convert more than half the enemy into metallic gas clouds, while the rest of them took off in an automated sort of panic—for even robots have a self-preservation drive built into them as a means of reducing endless costs of replacement. Meanwhile, guided by Rhodan's target data from above, Reginald Bell's ground forces also moved into the battle.

  Curiously, the robots ran haphazardly in all directions, in spite of the fact that robots generally have an exceptional sense of coordination and know better than any organic intelligence where they're supposed to go. Rhodan deduced from this that the enemy was not particularly interested in revealing the location of his spaceship. Apparently he also had little concern for the possibility that the shuttlecraft might discover it. This could be due to either one of two conditions: either the Druuf ship was very well hidden—or the robots knew the natural reluctance of the opposition to separate one or two men so far from the main group, which would be necessary to search for the ship.

  While brooding over such considerations, Rhodan perceived that the battle had been won. He put the ship into a dive and headed for the clearing in the brush that Tompetch had burned away for him. He was greeted by the triumphant, dirty-faced, dust-covered figure of Reginald Bell.

  With his weapon hung over a shoulder by its straps, Bell threw his arms up and shouted: "We've chased them to the devil! They're running their gaskets loose!"

  Rhodan stepped to the ground and was about to answer him but he was struck by a sudden thought. It came full-blown into his mind with an abrupt clarity, as though it had been lurking in his subconsciousness waiting to be noticed.

  The bomb!

  Why hadn't he thought of it sooner? why hadn't he figured out before this that the Druuf robots could take advantage of their absence from camp during the battle?

  He stared at the dark mouth of the shaft for only a brief moment. Then he turned around swiftly and practically shouted into Bell's beaming face: "Load the sea cow onto the ship—on the double!"

  Bell didn't know what it was all about but he was conditioned to respond quickly to commands. Gorlat and Tompetch jumped in to help him. Atlan moved a bit more slowly, but Rhodan's quick glance alerted him to the fact that haste was of vital importance.

  Even for the five of them the body of the Solitude Being could hardly be moved from its position. They rolled it to the flier but could not hoist it onto the cargo loading deck until Rhodan turned on the antigrav. The wide-sweeping field canceled out the weight of objects within its effective range so that now even one man could lift the creature. But it required three men to hold onto the flier, which seemed determined in its weightlessness to reject being loaded.

  "Tie it down!" ordered Rhodan when the cylindrical bo
dy was in place.

  Tompetch fetched the rope that was still hanging down in the cave shaft. He tied it around the sea cow and through the deck cleats in such a fashion that the inanimate body could not fall off even during violent movements of the ship.

  "Climb on board, Tompetch!" shouted Rhodan. "Take it to a distance of about 500 yards in the direction of the spot where the K-238 was standing—then find a landing place somewhere in that area."

  Tompetch complied. He raised the ship expertly, even though the multi-ton weight of the sea cow gave it a heavy list to the stern. Then he flew away, drifting close above the bushes, and headed for the indicated location.

  "The rest of us will travel on foot," Rhodan ordered. They loaded the equipment onto themselves and get under way. They made fair headway until they reached the place where the flier had been parked previously but beyond this spot began the undisturbed brush, which presented an almost impenetrable wall of thorns.

  Carrying the heavy barrier-field generator over his shoulder, Rhodan burned out a path ahead with the disintegrator, making a wide enough passage so that they would not be impaled by the thorns.

  Under their loads and a temperature which had risen to 145° they struggled onward amidst grumblings and groanings. The murderous heat distorted their concept of the distance covered. If a man had the impression of having been on the march for several hours and that with his very next step he would fall on his face, it could well be that he had only put 100 yards or so behind him.

  But Rhodan didn't stop until they were 200 yards away from the cave. He carefully lowered the generator to the ground and threw himself flat on his stomach in the shade of a bush. He panted. His mouth was dry. He wanted to say something but couldn't even move his tongue.

  But he found it wasn't necessary to speak. He had hardly hit the ground when a tremendous jolt of the earth almost lifted him into the air again. Seconds later the under of a powerful explosion, came rolling across the hot plain. For a moment a towering brown pillar of earth rose up from the area where they had been and then it slowly collapsed with a sound of falling rocks.