Fear that man

intervals.”
        “So whoever gave him the orders would not be aware of our presence.”
        “Correct.”
        Sam interrupted the dialogue. “That’s a relief. I like you both too much to kill.”
        “One thing I’ve been wondering about,” Gnossos said. “Why didn’t you acknowledge my radio message just after the collision?”
        “We didn’t receive any,” Sam said, perplexed. “We tried to get through to you, but you didn’t answer.”
        “A broken radio?” Hurkos offered.
        Sam forced himself to his feet, walked to the console. “Report on the condition of the radio/receiver.”
        WORKING PROPERLY.
        “That shoots that theory.”
        “But how could my secret master control the radio if he doesn’t even know what’s going on here?” Sam traced his fingers over the seams of the console chair.
        Gnossos shrugged, got to his feet. “Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe they do know that Hurkos and I are here and they’re just waiting for the best moment to knock us off. But that’s a question we’ll leave till later. Right now, let’s check out your laboratory. I have an idea.”
        
        The three of them stood looking up at the robosurgeons. Sam shivered at the sight of them: men-talented but not men. He hated every machine he came in contact with, though he was not sure why.
        “Someone could have machined the cases for these,” the poet said. “But there are only a few companies that have the facilities to produce the delicate interiors. No one could make his own robosurgeon from scrap without billions in equipment and hundreds of trained minds. Whoever put this together would have had to purchase the factory-made workings.”
        Sam flicked the control knob that lowered the machines out of the ceiling. Ponderously, they came. When the underslung arms had spread to the sides and the machines were almost to the top of the table, he stopped them. Then he caused the main component to revolve so that the access plate faced them.
        Gnossos rubbed his palms together: sand on stone. “Now we’ll find a few clues.” He threw back the latches that held the plate on, dropped the cover to the floor. “Every company carries a list of purchases and customers. With one little serial number, we can find the buyer and, consequently, the constructor of this tub.” He bent over and peered into the dark interior of the globe. He looked puzzled.
        “Awful dark in there,” Hurkos said.
        Gnossos put a hand inside, reached in… and in, in, in up to his elbow.
        “There’s nothing in it!” Sam said.
        “Oh yes there is!” Gnossos shouted painfully. “And it has hold of my hand!”

----
        

    V
        
        Gnossos tore his hand out of the machine, rubbed it against his chest. It was red and raw and bleeding in a few spots.
        “What the hell is in there?” Hurkos asked, leaning away from the open machine.
        Sam stifled some low-keyed scream he felt twisting up toward his lips.
        As if in answer to Hurkos’ question, a jelly-mass began dripping onto the table from the open access plate. It collected there, amber spotted with areas of bright orange. It trembled there, quivered. Piercing, low-scale hummings bathed its convulsing form. There was something like a skin forming over it, the amber and orange changing to a pinkish-tan hue that made it look amazingly like human skin-too much like human skin. The skin expanded, contracted, and there were pseudopods pulling the mass across the table toward the warmth of their bodies.
        They had backed nearly to the door. “There were no mechanical insides!” Gnossos said, rubbing his hand.
        “But it moved,” Sam argued. “It operated like a machine. How could it do that without moving parts?”
        The jelly-mass burst in places as bubbles of something reached its surface, flopped open and left pocks. But the pocks were healed rapidly, and the skin was returned to normal.
        “That-that thing was its insides, its working parts,” Gnossos said. “The jelly-mass operated the shell like a machine.”
        The last of the mess dropped from the bowl of the main component. There was more than could have been contained in the main sphere; apparently all the sections had been filled and were now drained empty. The jelly-mass, shapeless, plunged over the end of the table, struck the floor with a sickening sloshing noise, and moved toward