Ironsmith ignored that savage interjection.
"I never really understood you, Forester - especially the way you've always neglected Ruth.
Perhaps the humanoids are right. Perhaps there would be danger to the Prime Directive in trusting you with what I know."
"Wait!" Anger swept Forester - terror and bleak suspicion.
"I'll never ask for euphoride."
His sobbing voice turned wildly threatening. "And you've got to help me-"
Ironsmith twisted away from his frantic hands with the effortless deftness of another humanoid, his calm and honest eyes looking back across the court again, past the bitter-odored fungi in the tall yellow jars.
"Here they come," he murmured casually.
"And I hope you remember my message." His voice fell to a whisper.
"Tell Mark White to come and talk to me, before he starts any childish attack on Wing IV."
Forester nodded bleakly, watching the two tiny black machines come running silently back across the soundless pavement to resume their suffocating supervision.
He'd accept them, he thought savagely, with a shot from Project Thunderbolt.
Still he couldn't understand Ironsmith's motives in this curious attempt to bribe him, blindfolded, to join in the treason against mankind.
But still the humanoids had to be stopped-
"Service, sirs," said the nearer mechanical.
"Your dinner is served."
Chapter FIFTEEN
THE VAULTED hall where they dined had a spacious splendor which only film producers had imagined in the vanished past before the humanoids.
Six mechanicals served the too-elaborate meal.
There were wines for Ironsmith, but none for Forester. "Your digestion has been impaired by worry and fatigue," a machine reminded him melodiously.
"You must take no alcohol until your health is better."
It was serenely right and monstrously intolerable.
Ironsmith announced that he was staying for the night, when the meal was done, and Forester went back to Starmont alone.
Soaring above the atmosphere, he looked up once at the crystal beauty of the stars that men had lost, and then sat hunched on the edge of the luxurious seat, sunk deep in failure.
"Service, sir," murmured the mechanical beside him.
"You appear uncomfortable."
"Huh!" Trying to cover his nervous start, he stretched himself elaborately and settled carefully back in the seat, grinning stiffly up at the two dark identical faces above.
Nothing else was left to do.
Utterly benevolent, more dreadful than anything evil, these perfect and eternal keepers of mankind prohibited even the freedom of despair.
At the end of the flight, he found the hope and courage to risk one more glance toward the old search building.
The flat concrete dome was still intact - and as far from his reach as Wing IV itself.
The excavating machine was nearer to its secret now, a slow metal saurian devouring the mountain in the dark.
He woke suddenly, that night, from a troubled dream.
"Dr. Forester!
Please - can you hear me?"
A clear childish treble voice was calling to him, urgent and afraid.
Only a part of the dream, he thought at first; yet it had brought him off his pillow, taut and shivering, wide awake.
The dream had all dissolved, less vivid than this waking nightmare of men smothered beneath absolute benevolence, but the stark terror of it had left him cold with sweat, and gasping.
Comfort surrounded him, quiet, and utter peace, here in his own new bedroom at Starmont.
In the softly glowing murals, village swains and maids danced silently at their unceasing festival.
The vast east window, transparent now, opened upon the empty desert and the far folds of hills, washed now with the chill blue of dawn.
But that luxurious room seemed more dreadful to him than any nightmare could have been, because a solicitous humanoid stood watching beside the great bed.
Shuddering convulsively, he desperately strove to smile and hide his fear - until he saw that the humanoid had stopped.
It was falling, the blind tranquillity unchanged on its narrow face, and it made no move to recover its balance.
Rigid as some statue of ideal grace in black- lacquered metal, it toppled deliberately to strike the soft floor with a muffled crash.
And still it lay there, dark face up, incredibly dead.
Forester coughed to a sudden stinging reek of hot metal and burned plastic.
"Dr. Forester!" Startled, he realized that the child's voice was not a dream.
"Won't you please come with me now?"
He saw her then.