But he stiffened his worn shoulders instantly.
Those graceful missiles waiting in the vault were the last defense of man, and he dared not put his burden down.
Chapter ELEVEN
THE TELEPRINTER recalled Forester to the capital, next morning, to attend the final sessions of the Defense Authority.
The human government was already preparing to conclude its business on the day of the coming ratification election, but disturbing political tensions were mounting as a few fanatical opponents of the humanoids began campaigning vehemently against them.
A few labor leaders were afraid the mechanicals would bring technological unemployment, although they promised shorter hours and greater benefits than strikes had ever won.
The heads of a few religious organizations suspected that the knowledge and power of the humanoids would leave insufficient scope for any superior omnipotence, and many bureaucrats were apprehensive of an unregimented society.
The humanoids, however, had learned the art of politics.
They opened offices in every ward and village, glittering with displays of machine-made marvels.
Their swarming units rang doorbells, calling each voter by name and promising paradise - admission free.
When the election came, only a stubbornly skeptical few voted to halt the mechanized march of progress.
The victorious humanoids, with malice toward none, offered the same efficient service to supporters and opponents.
They directed the dissolution of the human government, and immediately began dismantling military installations.
Forester was delayed at the capital a few days longer, until a brisk machine had put a pen in the trembling fingers of the world president and dictated the phrases of his resignation.
"I'm through," the old statesman whispered to Forester, afterward, when the members of the liquidated Defense Authority were filing by to shake his withered hand.
"Now," he breathed, "it's up to you."
Meeting his dim, uneasy eyes, Forester nodded silently.
He understood that the whole burden of the project now rested on his own tired shoulders.
Yet, hastening out of the executive mansion, he felt a buoyant relief. For the efficient machines were also taking over the warcraft of the Triplanet Powers, and digging up the planted detonators.
He was free at last to go back to Starmont, to Ruth and the pure science he loved.
Under the stress of the election, he had all but forgotten his visit to that ruined tower by the sea.
Mark White, with his disreputable disciples and his dubious science and his disturbing story, seemed to have no place in the bright new future.
The mechanicals had disposed of Forester's official aircraft, informing him that all such primitive contraptions were too dangerous for human use.
Waiting for him, when a trim humanoid driver took him from the hotel to the airport, he found a wonderful new vehicle: a long, mirror-bright teardrop, unmarred by any projecting airfoil or landing gear.
Two quick machines helped him up through an oval door, and he found the smooth hull darkly transparent from within.
The flat deck covered all the mechanism, and there were no controls that he could see.
The door closed behind him, untouched.
"How does it work?" he wanted to know.
"The door is operated by a concealed rhodomagnetic relay," purred the dark machine beside him.
Another glided to the end of the deck and stood rigid there, staring blindly ahead.
It touched no visible control, but the craft lifted silently.
The unit beside Forester unfolded a low couch out of the deck, asking respectfully if he wished to sit, but he didn't feel like relaxing.
A vague disquiet was already spurring him to ask increasingly uneasy questions.
"The cruiser is powered by energy from converted matter," the calm machine informed him.
"The converters are on Wing IV, and the power is carried to the point of use by a tight rhodomagnetic beam.
The thrust which propels the ship is created by a rhodomagnetic field."
"So?
And what is the field equation?"
"It is not our policy to supply such information," droned the humanoid.
"Because men who enjoy our service have little need of knowledge, and science has often been used for purposes contrary to the Prime Directive."
He looked away uncomfortably, watching through the hull as the cruiser lifted swiftly through a milky veil of high cirrostratus, and on into the ionosphere. The sky turned purple- black.
He could see the planet's lazy curve, and flattened mountains crawling beneath, and the red-winged sun dropping back eastward.
And suddenly they were landing on a strange landing stage.
"Is this - Starmont?"
The familiar shape of the dark butte and the known brown face of the desert around it answered his voiceless question, but everything else was changed.
New walls and towers rose everywhere, luminous in the sunlight with vivid pastels.
Broad new gardens were fantastic with plants which must have come from other worlds.
The door of the cruiser had no handle that a man could work, but it was opened for him silently.
The solicitous machines helped him down, too carefully.
Starting breathlessly across the new red pavement of the landing stage to look for his wife and his friends, he was halted by an abrupt, sharp sense of disaster.