Invader

20

Hunter heard the advancing march of thousands of Saxon feet while the Britons around him still spoke quietly among themselves, unaware of their enemy. The coming battle caused Hunter’s tension under the First Law to rise, but he focused his attention on Steve. When the charge began, they would have to ride forward with the riders or risk colliding with those behind them. However, as soon as they could lose themselves in the confusion of battle, Hunter would take Steve off to one side. Their search for MC 6 and Jane could begin in earnest.

The men around Hunter stiffened suddenly. Ahead of them, the Saxons came tramping down the road, out of the forest. They, too, looked around warily, aware that their enemy lay near.

Suddenly a rider right behind Artorius raised an old, dented Roman post horn and blew an alarm. As the riders whooped and charged up the road, leveling their spears, Hunter and Steve kicked their mounts and rode with them. Ahead of them, the Saxons in the front swung their long lances down to a horizontal position or hefted their spears and threw them. Then they braced themselves for the impact. Arrows flew from the ranks behind them.

Hunter allowed his mount to canter forward, but reined in to keep his speed down. Next to him, Steve did the same, leaning low to avoid arrows and spears; riders behind them rushed past, shouting and screaming. Then, up ahead, the clash of men, horses, and weapons reached Hunter. On each side of the road, riders charged across the clearing and into the trees, then turned toward the road to catch the marching Saxons on the flanks.

“Follow me!” Hunter shouted to Steve. He angled to one side, and Steve rode after him away from the road. None of the riders paid particular attention to them; now that the battle had been joined, the riders in the rear ranks were picking their way among the trees to find a route to the action.

Hunter led Steve out to the far left flank of riders, then entered the trees. The sounds of fighting were clear, but the men and horses were out of sight. Steve rode up next to him and they stopped.

A quick motion in the trees ahead caught Hunter’s attention.

“Nowcan we look for MC 6?” Steve demanded. “It’s now or never, isn’t it?”

“No need to look,” said Hunter, pointing forward through the trees. “I glimpsed him over here a moment ago. There he is. Come on!”

Hunter kicked his mount and bent down low under the branches. MC 6 jogged through the trees toward a group of five Saxons, who turned at the sound of hoofbeats to defend themselves. Hunter judged that MC 6 still hoped to prevent harm to some of the humans somehow. Steve circled away from them, on a path to drive MC 6 back toward Hunter.

The Saxon warriors also dodged away from him. Instead of fleeing, however, they ran toward Hunter, fanning out among the trees so that the trunks protected them. Hunter just wanted to ride by them after MC 6, but he had no chance. Two spears came flying at him at once; he caught one on his shield and twisted in the saddle a second later to avoid the second.

A third Saxon threw a spear. While Hunter knocked it away with his shield, the first two Saxons ran toward him with their short swords raised.

Hunter swung his spear in a low arc, knocking their sword blades aside; they were startled to see him ride past them instead of pausing to fight.

MC 6 had darted away from Steve and came running up behind the Saxons.

“Stop! Stop fighting!” MC 6 called out. “You must not hurt each other!”

“Don’t move,” Steve shouted. “Under the Second Law, I order you to stop and join me! A First Law imperative requires that you cooperate long enough to hear me explain.”

As Hunter dodged two more Saxons running alongside him, slashing at his legs, he saw MC 6 turn and run to Steve. The danger of battle and his plan to communicate with humans had forced MC 6 to keep his hearing turned on. Past them, Hunter also spotted Ishihara running toward them. In a tree branch behind Ishihara, Wayne and Jane sat together about four meters above the ground, over a mule.

“Steve!” Hunter shouted as he raised his shield and swung his spear back and forth to block the sword-strokes of his attackers. “Ishihara is behind you!” Hunter tried to ride forward again, but one of the Saxons had grabbed his bridle, holding his mount. Hunter could not advance without harming the Saxons.

“Come on!” Steve yelled to MC 6. He dropped his spear so he could reach down with one arm to help the robot mount. “Swing up here!”

Hunter defended himself from the Saxons as they tried to pull him off his horse. He backed his mount away from them and flung his spear in front of a Saxon, to make him back away. Then he drew his sword and blocked the swords of the remaining Saxons.

Because Hunter still carried the team’s belt unit, Steve could not take MC 6 home on the spot. Besides, Hunter could not trigger it until Steve and MC 6 were much closer to him and their horses and the Saxons were out of range of the unit. Hunter heard other riders coming toward them now; he hoped they would drive the Saxons back.

Ishihara had stopped about ten meters away when MC 6 mounted behind Steve. Hunter guessed that Ishihara’s need to protect Wayne and Jane on the edge of the battle had interfered with his instructions to get MC 6, especially now that Steve already had him.

“Get him!” Wayne yelled. “Ishihara, get MC 6!”

Steve finally turned and saw Ishihara. “Stay away! Back off!” Then he turned and rode toward Hunter.

Ishihara remained where he was. Other riders appeared out of the trees, shouting as they leaned low under tree branches. They rode toward Hunter.

“Not too close!” Hunter called to Steve as he continued to fight the Saxons around him defensively.

Hunter swung his shield outward, pushing back one of the men on his left. At the same moment, he blocked the sword of a man on his right. He saw a spear coming toward him from a third Saxon also on his left and ducked to his right, but the motions of his arms were already committed and the momentum prevented him from avoiding the spear.

The heavy spear smashed into his left shoulder and he instantly felt a loss of control over his shoulder and arm. His energy level also dropped suddenly as some of his electrical circuits were severed. Though his awareness level did not change, he could no longer raise his shield. He felt the Saxons grab his limp left arm and pull. Afraid that some of his internal robotic parts would become exposed to them if he resisted, he allowed himself to be dragged off his mount to the ground.

Steve stopped several yards from Hunter with MC 6, confident that Hunter would fight his way free of the Saxons and join him.

“Get down and stay with me,” Steve ordered MC 6. As soon as the component robot had jumped to the ground, Steve dismounted. Then he looked up and saw Hunter wrenched from his horse by two Saxons. One of them raised his sword to slash at Hunter; Steve drew his sword and cocked his arm to throw it. “Hey! Hey, you!”

“No.” MC 6 grabbed his arm and held it fast. “Do not harm anyone.”

Suddenly, before the Saxons struck Hunter, they saw the other riders bearing down on them. The Saxons broke and ran as the riders closed in behind them.

Steve waited until Hunter had been left alone. Then he stuck his sword back into his belt and ran to Hunter. “Come on!”

MC 6 followed.

In another moment, the riders had moved out of sight. Shouts and the clash of weapons resounded through the trees nearby, but the movement of the battle had shifted the lines away from them. Suddenly Steve found himself with MC 6 and Hunter damaged on the ground in front of him.

“Hunter, can you hear me? Can I pullout the spear? Or will that make it worse?”

“Pull it out straight, please,” Hunter said calmly.

“Ishihara! Get back here,” Wayne called. He stood a distance away through some trees, near the mule. Jane and Wayne remained on a tree branch above them.

Steve took the spear shaft in his hands but looked back over his shoulder. “Jane! Come on!”

“I’m coming!” She jumped off the branch suddenly, dodging Wayne’s arm as he grabbed for her. However, as she tried to run toward Steve and Hunter, Ishihara blocked her way. She could not possibly beat his robotic reflexes and speed. In a moment, Ishihara had taken her arm, and he began to pull her back toward the mule.

Steve almost let go of the spear shaft to run to her, but realized that he could not help right now. If he approached Ishihara with MC 6, then Ishihara would try to grab the component robot and might succeed; he still followed Wayne’s orders under the Second Law. Steve also feared that if he left MC 6 with Hunter and ran to help Jane, Ishihara would dodge around Steve and would either catch MC 6 or at least chase him away. Then Steve would have to start over again-maybe without Hunter’s help.

Steve decided he would have to get Jane away from Wayne later. He drew the spear out slowly, as straight as he could. Then he knelt and unlaced Hunter’s leather armor. He loosened it enough to fumble in Hunter’s clothes for the torso panel that hid the belt unit.

Another glance over his shoulder told him that Wayne and Ishihara had taken Jane out of sight. Their mule’s hoofbeats had been camouflaged by the sounds of battle. Those sounds had grown more distant as Artorius’s riders drove the Saxons back.

“Here’s the deal, Hunter,” said Steve. “I’ll get the belt unit out and take us all back to our own time. We can secure MC 6, get you repaired, and then come back just a minute after we left to rescue Jane.”

“No.” Hunter took Steve’s wrist in his other hand and stopped him. “Listen carefully. I have identified a new problem. I have been running my self-diagnostic programs and I cannot be returned to our time in this condition.”

“Why not? You’re a robot-it’s not like moving an injured human. Even if we do a little more damage moving you, we can still get you repaired.”

“That is not what I mean,” said Hunter. “The trauma damage has triggered a more critical problem, according to the monitors that study my functions on a microscopic level. My system will explode with nuclear force if I return to our own time this way.”

“What? That doesn’t make any sense.” Realizing that they could not leave before talking this out, Steve drew his hand away and glanced around.

No one remained in sight. MC 6 stood motionless over Hunter and Steve. For the moment, they could talk safely.

“I don’t get it, Hunter,” said Steve. “You said the instability in the atoms of the component robots resulted from the particle shower in the time travel sphere, which combined the miniaturization process and travel through time. You haven’t been miniaturized at all. So what’s going on?”

“I have limited information with which to work,” said Hunter. “However, I surmise that some of my atoms have been made similarly unstable by the repeated trips I have taken. Trauma from the spear has destroyed the shielding on a specific location in my shoulder. The unstable atoms in that area are the ones that will explode in the particle shower if I return.”

“You mean this is the opposite problem of the component robots,” said Steve. “They can go home safely in the particle shower, but they’ll explode if they go through time normally to reach the moment they left. You’re saying you can’t use the belt unit, but you could wait around for hundreds of years safely?”

“That is correct.”

“Well…can’t we shield it again? Maybe MC 6 can handle the precision required.”

“That should be possible,” said Hunter. “I can direct him continuously by radio as he works.”

“So that’s what you want to do?” Steve asked quietly. He did not want to lose Hunter, but he understood that arguing with him about the Laws of Robotics was a waste of time.

“Not yet. I want to hear Jane’s expertise as a roboticist. As I said, I am working with limited information. I may be wrong. If so, then my parts might’ explode with nuclear force when they reach the time I left on our current mission, as the component robots have.”

“Maybe MC 6 can understand the damage.”

“Telling him is important in any case; even Jane would only understand the principles, not retain all the precise numbers. If I sustain further damage or energy loss, this information should be available elsewhere.”

Steve turned to MC 6. “Listen to everything he says and remember it.”

“Acknowledged,” said MC 6.

“I am transferring the data by radio link rather than speech,” said Hunter. “It will be much faster. In fact, we are finished.”

“Look, Hunter, can you get up and move? The only visible damage is in your shoulder. Do your legs work?”

“Technically, yes. Most of my body remains mechanically sound. However, a number of electrical circuits have been broken, some of which normally access my energy storage. I am able to reroute only minimal energy. While I might be able to walk upright for a short distance, the danger of falling and causing greater trauma is high.”

“You shouldn’t move.”

“Not if I can avoid it.”

“I see. MC 6, I want to talk about you,” said Steve. “Shut down your hearing and vision. I’ll have Hunter radio you to turn them on again; when he conveys my message, it will also have Second Law force.”

“Acknowledged,” said MC 6.

“Can we really trust MC 6 to make your repairs?” Steve asked. “What if he makes some interpretation of the First Law on his own without telling us and sabotages you? Then we’ll all be stuck here.”

“That is the clinching argument we need that he must cooperate,” said Hunter. “The First Law will neither allow him to change history nor to harm you, Wayne, and Jane by stranding you. He must repair my condition so that we can all go back.”

“All right. We have to make sure you and MC 6 are safe, then. And I still have to get Jane away from Wayne somehow.”

“We must also return for Harriet,” said Hunter. “First, however, I must warn you that I hear Wayne’s footsteps approaching to your left, in the trees about nine meters away. From my position here on the ground, I cannot see him.”