The Rod of Light (Soul of the Robot)

Then, with shocking promptness, Borgor warplanes came from out of the sun spitting missiles with practised skill. The impact on the collection of aircraft bombing the camp was devastating. Jasperodus’ carrier came crashing down immediately. The warplanes wheeled over the heads of the robot army, loosed more missiles and a brief burst of cannon fire, and went whirling back the way they had come.

In less than a minute of action they had annihilated the robot shanty town’s improvised air force. Only one plane remained and tried to flee. A camp-launched missile sent it spinning to the ground.

And the approaching column, which had fanned out as it came in sight of the enemy, slowed to a halt, altogether losing momentum.

It became frighteningly clear that the air strike had not achieved its aim, but might instead merely have served to alert the Borgors. Amid a furore of burning tents and mangled machinery the camp bustled. It was arming itself.

Three thousand robots were now able to see what they faced. The encampment was large and well-equipped. The tents that were pitched in rows were dwarfed by the huge half-tracked land-crawlers that were the Borgors’ main means of moving their forces across the continent. From those tents, and from the land-crawlers themselves, the opposition to the robot army was now emerging.

Hulking, armoured figures eight to ten feet in height were forming up into a front rank. Most likely these barbaric, intimidating fighting machines were Borgor warriors in combat suits, or they might have been robot warriors of the simplistic, nearly unsentient kind the Borgors allowed themselves to use—it was impossible to tell which at a glance. Probably, Jasperodus thought, they were a mixture of both. They raised their arms, gesticulating threateningly.

Suddenly a peremptory loudspeaker voice broke into the stupefied silence that had fallen over the robot army. ‘CONSTRUCTS! THIS IS ONE OF THE HUMAN MASTERS SPEAKING. YOUR ORDERS ARE TO LAY DOWN YOUR ARMS AND STAND WHERE YOU ARE WITHOUT MOVING. THE MASTERS WILL COME AMONG YOU TO DIRECT YOU. NOW—DISARM!’

With dismay Jasperodus realized that the Borgors’ first tactic was to prey on a robot’s basic weakness. A restless, alarmed motion rustled through the throng. Weapons clattered to the ground. ‘It is useless!’ wailed a robot. ‘Best to flee!’

His voice would have been heeded, had not the threatened route been prevented by the prompt action of the Bellum marshals. Crackling blue rays zipped aslant the scene from the beamers mounted atop their flat heads, striking down those who panicked and tried to run. A mood of utter terror took hold of the army, terror of the marshals as much as of the Borgors. At the same time the artillery was ordered into action. With a woosh the twenty missiles carried by the truck Jasperodus rode on went soaring in a drove towards the camp. They were joined by catapult-hurled ball-bombs, glowing heat beams whose shafts hummed overhead, and a dozen droves of similar rockets.

‘ADVANCE!’ the Bellums bellowed, drowning out the loudspeaker voice. ‘CHARGE!’

The explosions that tore into the Borgors were a once-only volley. With a deafening barrage of stentorious exhortations the marshals herded their now unwilling troops before them, sending them running headlong into the attack, pushing, stumbling, falling, sometimes dropping and losing their weapons.

And then Jasperodus spotted something that instantly told him the day was lost. Four land-crawlers drew up, facing the charging army broadside. Their sides fell away. Big drum-shaped projectors stood revealed, swivel-mounted like searchlights, and from them there shot out crackling blue beams that cut wide swathes through the pell-mell robots.

Flinging himself from the rocket truck, Jasperodus huddled behind a broad tyre. It was the weapon he had feared the Borgors might have developed, but had refrained from saying so to his colleagues on the defence committee.

Beam weapons were of two types: those that emitted intense microwave, infra-red or visible light—essentially blasters or burners of coherent energy—and those emitting an electric beam that obliterated nervous activity, both artificial and biologic. In robots the latter produced instant brain death. It was slightly less effective against humans, needing to be on target for as much as half a second. This was the type Bellums carried on their craniums, as much to maintain morale in their subordinates as for offence.