Free Asimov's Future History Volume 1 by Isaac Asimov Page B

magnanimity of the offer. “Is it safe?”
    “A baby could handle it.”
    “Oh!” Payne grinned weakly and got behind the thickest tree in the vicinity. “Go ahead,” he said, “I have the utmost confidence in you.”
    AL-76 pointed to the nightmarish junk pile and said, “Watch!” His hands set to work –
     
    The embattled farmers of Hannaford County, Virginia, weaved up upon Payne’s shack in a slowly tightening circle. With the blood of their heroic colonial forebears pounding their veins – and goose flesh trickling up and down their spines – they crept from tree to tree.
    Sheriff Saunders spread the word. “Fire when I give the signal – and aim at the eyes.”
    Jacob Linker – Lank Jake to his friends, and Sheriff’s Deputy to himself – edged close. “You think maybe this machine man has skedaddled?” He did not quite manage to suppress the tone of wistful hopefulness in his voice.
    “Dunno,” grunted the sheriff. “Guess not, though. We woulda come across him in the woods if he had, and we haven’t.”
    “But it’s awful quiet, and it appears to me as if we’re getting close to Payne’s place.”
    The reminder wasn’t necessary. Sheriff Saunders had a lump in his throat so big it had to be swallowed in three installments. “Get back,” he ordered, “and keep your finger on the trigger.”
    They were at the rim of the clearing now, and Sheriff Saunders closed his eyes and stuck the corner of one out from behind the tree. Seeing nothing, he paused, then tried again, eyes open this time.
    Results were, naturally, better.
    To be exact, he saw one huge machine man, back toward him, bending over one soul-curdling, hiccupy Contraption of uncertain origin and less certain purpose. The only item he missed was the quivering figure of Randolph Payne, embracing the tree next but three to the nor’-nor’west.
    Sheriff Saunders stepped out into the open and raised his machine gun. The robot, still presenting a broad metal back, said in a loud voice-to person or persons unknown –” Watchl” and as the sheriff opened his mouth to signal a general order to fire, metal fingers compressed a switch.
    There exists no adequate description of what occurred afterward, in spite of the presence of seventy eyewitnesses. In the days, months, and years to come not one of those seventy ever had a word to say about the few seconds after the sheriff had opened his mouth to give the firing order. When questioned about it, they merely turned apple-green and staggered away.
    It is plain from circumstantial evidence, however, that, in a general way, what did occur was this.
    Sheriff Saunders opened his mouth; AL-76 pulled a switch. The Disinto worked, and seventy-five trees, two barns, three cows and the top three quarters of Duckbill Mountain whiffed into rarefied atmosphere. They became, so to speak, one with the snows of yesteryear.
    Sheriff Saunders’ mouth remained open for an indefinite interval thereafter, but nothing – neither firing orders nor anything else – issued therefrom. And then –
    And then, there was a stirring in the air, a multiple ro-o-o-oshing sound, a series of purple streaks through the atmosphere radiating away from Randolph Payne’s shack as the center, and of the members of the posse, not a sign.
    There were various guns scattered about the vicinity, including the sheriff’s patented nickel-plated, extra-rapid-fire, guaranteed-no-clog, portable machine gun. There were about fifty hats, a few half-chomped cigars, and some odds and ends that had come loose in the excitement – but of actual human beings there was none.
    Except for Lank Jake, not one of those human beings came within human ken for three days, and the exception in his favor came about because he was interrupted in his comet-flight by the half-dozen men from the Petersboro factory, who were charging into the wood at a pretty fair speed of their own.
    It was Sam Tobe who stopped him, catching Lank Jake’s