Spider by Norvell Page

bitter cold that was seeping into his tight suit; forgotten everything save the chase. It was the first moment in all this mad night of battle that he had been able to put his mind entirely upon the problem of the robots. Mechanized monsters they undoubtedly were, but he was equally certain that they carried men inside them—and men as ruthless as if they were soulless robots! In heaven's name, who could be the leader, the director of this mad jehad of slaughter? But he had a clue to that, even though it was a lead he could not understand.

     

    Three rich houses had been looted, smashed by the robots—and a fourth house just beside them, richer than the others, had not been looted. That fourth home had been guarded by a man of the Drexler agency, and on his chest was tattooed the sign of the murder monsters! Wentworth had always had the highest regard for Frank Drexler, and he was loath even now to believe the man capable of such infamies. And yet . . . there was the evidence of the Drexler guard, and the trail of the robots led upstream toward Drexler's riverside home!

    Now that he was farther from the shore, the force of the current was extremely powerful. It was labor to set each foot before the other; labor too to drag his weighted legs free of the sucking mud upon the river bottom. Swirls of it lifted like torpid dust to cloud against the shortened ray of his lamp. There was a numbness in his limbs that was the creeping paralysis of cold. Wentworth was like that, canted forward at a forty-five-degree angle against the current, fighting for each step, when the light reached out and wrapped itself about him.

    For an instant, Wentworth thought that it was the blinding reflection of his own lamp, hurled back by the higher swirl of the mud. Then he realized that the light was far more powerful than his own. A muffled oath burst from his lips and crashed deafeningly within the helmet. He twisted his head about, peered out of the small sideport in the helmet—and then his hand flicked to the knife at his waist! Peering at him from the black wall of the water were two great balls of light and he realized as he stared at them, that the light poured from the eyes of one of the robots! God, he had been a fool! He should have guessed that they would post a rear guard!

    Wentworth ripped the knife from its sheath, but he had no intention of battling the robot in these depths if he could avoid it. His purpose was to find their lair, and then to arrange for its destruction. He wrenched his feet free of the mud, tried to thrust himself swiftly upstream. He moved with incredible speed for a diver, but it was slow, terribly slow. The robot moved with the same implacable pace that it used upon land, neither faster nor slower. It was too powerful to heed either mud or water pressure. The glare of the lights glittered from the steel. The knees lifted steadily, the feet swung forward six feet at a stride!

    After that single instant of struggle, Wentworth realized that flight was useless. If he was to go on with his pursuit—and it was characteristic of the Spider's indomitable purpose that he did not even consider abandoning his task!—there was only one possible course. He must destroy this robot!

    On the face of it, the thought was madness. Bullets and the headlong charge of trucks had not stopped these monsters, nor had the impact of a wall of brick done more than delay them for a space of moments! Yet, with only that slim-bladed knife which he gripped in a cold-numbed hand, Wentworth turned to face the enemy! His mouth was a lipless gash across his face, and his eyes were narrowed and intent. He shifted his feet in the silt of the bottom, kicked free of their weights. His left hand moved rapidly upon the weights that were attached to his belt. There were five of them, weighing ten pounds each.

    The robot was only two strides away now and Wentworth swiftly unfastened three of the five weights from his belt. The buoyancy of his