The sun struck its sleek blackness into molten bronze and frosty blue.
Its opaque steel eyes seemed curiously alert, but it didn't answer at once, and he shivered inwardly.
For Ironsmith had been with him at Dragonrock, and heard White's plans.
Had that knowledge been the price of the mathematician's freedom?
"There is no such individual," the machine said at last, "among the individuals we serve on this planet."
And he thought there was a new watchfulness beyond the mild, benign surprise on that narrow plastic face.
"On other planets, however, we have several times encountered a very large man, who always wore a thick red beard and often called himself a philosopher and sometimes even used that name.
His present whereabouts are unknown, because he took part in a foolish attack against Wing IV, and escaped when it failed."
Forester felt that veiled alertness tighten.
"Where did you know this man?" inquired the machine.
"And when?"
"I never knew him well." Forester kicked carefully at the pebble again, attempting to undo his blunder. "I met him several times at scientific gatherings on the West Coast, where he was reading papers on his philosophy.
The last time was several years ago."
"Then the man we seek is a different Mark White." That searching intentness seemed to relax.
"Because he did not escape to this planet until a few months ago, when we almost captured him on a world four light-years from here.
We are hunting him," the machine added smoothly, "because he is an extremely unhappy man, gravely in need of euphoride."
Forester strolled on, as deliberately as possible, regretting the blunder of his question.
Mark White loomed tremendous now, the last tragic champion of mankind and his only possible ally, yet Forester dared not try to reach him again, or even to mention the old Dragonrock Light, because one more such ill-judged query might he fatal to them both.
Back at the villa, he let the machines display all the mechanical wonders of that commodious prison.
Vast crystal windows turned opaque or luminous at need, and roofless gardens were tropical with radiant heat.
The kitchen was an antiseptic laboratory.
And every device, he bitterly observed, was worked by relays that a man couldn't reach.
Restless as any trapped animal, he wandered on.
He didn't like the swaying, nightmarish things growing in the sunken garden beyond the villa, but he walked on around them, with a determined show of curiosity, just to reach a point from which he might see the old search building.
Even when he had reached the spot, he scarcely dared to look, because his keepers were too near and too alert, their black handsome faces too remotely serene.
His knees felt weak again, as he paused uncertainly on a little rocky point, near the lip of the prismed basalt precipice which dropped straight to the talus-slope and the brown flats far below.
"Service, sir." One of the machines moved to block his path, lustrous in the sunlight and implacably kind.
"We can't allow you any nearer the edge."
He nodded, not protesting.
Assuming an idle interest in the heat-rippled horizon, he let his gaze slide northward.
Carefully casual, he swept a jutting buttress of the mountain, and the end of the mesa above.
He found the flat dome of the old concrete building - intact!
He made his eyes move on instantly, yet he had time to see that the tall steel fence and the guard towers around the installation had been torn down.
There was nothing to keep him from the building. Nothing except the humanoids.
Looking out across the desert, with its white slashes of dry washes and its sharp wrinkles of far brown mountains, he stood discarding hopeless schemes to escape his keepers, until a rumbling vibration drew his glance again.
Careful that his eyes didn't pause, he looked past the low gray building and found the excavating machine.
That monstrous thing held his gaze and slowed his heart.
The clean, functional lines of its armored case gave it a kind of ominous beauty, but the mountain trembled to its motion.
Red enamel and white metal glittered painfully under the hot sun.
On immense slow tracks, it was creeping through the flattened ruin of the old guard barracks, its huge shining blades slicing the grassy mountain crown into a long red dike of raw soil and broken stone.
The search building, he saw, would presently stand in its path.
"Unfortunately, sir, the landscaping of Starmont is not quite complete." The intent mechanical beside him must have followed his eyes and sensed his displeasure.
"The dense basaltic formation has delayed the work, but it should all be finished in a few days.
We are going to remove all the old military buildings, and excavate the entire area for a pool."
"That's wonderful." He was afraid to say that he didn't want a pool, although he could see that this huge slow mechanism would uproot the search building and uncover the vault beneath. He must strike soon, or surrender hope.
Contriving a thin smile, he managed to say:
"We used to swim - every summer, Ruth and I."
"Swimming," the machine said, "is forbidden now."
He couldn't help inquiring bitterly,
"For Ironsmith, too?"