Free Spider by Norvell Page Page A

there was worry in her violet eyes. "That's the thanks I get for coming to you," she said. "I'm just beginning to enjoy myself!"

    Wentworth smiled down on her. "You're fired," he told her grimly. His heart swelled at recognition of her bravery, for he knew that she was torn with terror for him; for the battle that lay ahead. As always, she thought not of herself, but of cheering him. Her hand clung to his now.

    "Dick, surely now you can rest," she said. "Just for tonight—"

    Wentworth jerked his head in negation. He said, "In this battle, every passing hour means more deaths! I'll take you to a taxi, and then—"

    "And then?" Nita's question was no more than a breath.

    "Why then," Wentworth said softly, "I shall hunt for robots! I have a theory about those monsters, and if I'm right it will be possible to stop them. I hope so, and—"

    He broke off then as they stopped beside the coupe, for a man had suddenly darted around the nearby corner. Wentworth's hand flicked toward his automatic, but the man did not come toward them, did not even seem to see them. His breath rasped in his throat and he ran heavily, as a man would run at the extreme end of exhaustion. His shoulder struck a light post, and he reeled aside, but did not check his pace at all. He rounded another corner and was gone.

    Nita said, "He looked . . . frightened!"

     

    Wentworth whipped open the door of the coupe and thrust Nita inside and there was grim tension on his face. As he ducked in behind the wheel, he heard a woman's cry soar up desolately into the night. It was a hoarse cry, more animal than human in its intensity. Nita shuddered.

    "In heaven's name, Dick" she whispered. "What can be happening?"

    Wentworth said, "I hope I'm wrong. I hope to heaven I'm wrong!"

    He sent the car surging forward, careened around the corner from which the man had spurted. Immediately ahead, the street was empty, but even as they sped forward, some people burst into sight from a side way. They were running desperately. The night swallowed them. The sound of their pounding feet was drowned out in a rumbling crash that spread its thunder like a tangible weight upon the air. The windshield of the coupe jarred with concussion, and afterward there were mounting, ghastly screams! The roar of mingled voices became a vast murmur of fear and horror.

    Wentworth said, with difficulty, "I was right. The robots are marching!"

    As if his words had brought forth the sound, a new rhythm in the paean of terror began to make itself felt, more than heard. It was even, deep as primitive drums, as if giant clubs were used to turn the earth itself into a drum. It was slow, with a heavy insistent rhythm; slow as a funeral dirge, but more ominous. It continued as Wentworth drove the coupe around another corner, and the scene burst upon his eyes.

    At first, there was only the wildly terrified flight of people. They were in all stages of undress. Children screamed their fright as they ran barefooted across the freezing pavements; women raced with backward twisted faces and streaming hair, some falling, to rise and run again. A running man collided with another and lashed out at the other frenziedly. His blow fell viciously low in the body. The man he had struck did not check. He ran on, bent agonizingly forward, holding his body and still running. He did not even look at the man who had hit him.

    In an instant, the street was blocked with the fleeing scores of people, and once more the Spider and Nita van Sloan heard the thunderous reverberation.

    "Dick!" Nita gasped, and her voice was strained. "Dick, do you realize what they're doing! They're—they're pushing over buildings! Buildings in which people live! That must have been a huge tenement . . ."

    The screams of the new victims were tossed up like sparks in the hot breath of a holocaust. Beside the car, a woman with a child in her arms tripped over the curb and fell! In an instant, she was buried under the rush of other people.