Hell's Gate

vibrabeam on his opponent. But it wavered, swept across the stair railing to the mechanical's left. The wood splintered, popped, danced into the air in hundreds of shards, rained down on Lynda and him where they stood ten feet away.
        The mechanical's own beam smashed into an easy chair, blew a cloud of smouldering stuffings into the air. The littlest pieces, glowing orange, came down and stung their bare arms where they touched. Lynda slapped at her robe and at Salsbury's clothes to keep them from catching fire.
        Salsbury depressed the firing stud again. The robot backed, trying to avoid the weapon. But there was nowhere it could go. It came up against the wall, shivering like a man left in his underwear on the tundra. Seconds later, it pitched forward, smashed onto its face. It tried to get up, managed to make it to its knees, then crashed forward again, bouncing on the carpet. Its fingers groped at the nylon, trying to find something to help pull it erect. The brass tip of the weapons finger was bright with reflected moonlight. Then, at last, it was still.
        “You got him!” Lynda cried. She was reacting like the little girl again, exuberant despite the still pervading terror of the scene about her.
        Salsbury stood, his knees cracking painfully, aimed the vibrabeam at the robot's head and blew its metal skull open, spilling its mechanics onto the rug.
        It was over.
        His entire body seem to expand, to swell with triumph.
        He turned to Lynda to say something… and caught the movement of the second killer out of the corner of his eye.

CHAPTER 9
        
        It had come up the cellar stairs with the stealth of a cat, its movements further concealed by the activities of the first robot, the excitement of that fight. It was a mirror image of the first and exactly like the robot of the previous night. The lizard-things wasted no money on a variety of molds. He only wished they would have seen fit to endow the mechanicals with something other than those two blue penny eyes that seemed to eat into everything they settled upon. Now, as they stood congratulating themselves, it moved through the cellar door, coming fast, leaped the couch, came down heavily on cushions, bouncing, and was almost on top of them.
        Victor raised his vibratube to fire, not very hopeful about getting a shot in. The mechanical swung its arm, cracked Salsbury's wrist a solid blow that rattled his teeth in his jaw like pearls on a string, set every bone between his hand and teeth vibrating like tuning forks. The tube sailed into the air, arcing backwards out of reach, turning lazily over and over to clatter in a dark corner somewhere… completely beyond reach.
        Lynda screamed.
        Victor grabbed her, pushed her backward, turned in time to feel the rush of air preceding the mechanical, then the full impact of its heavy, component packed body. He was catapulted to the left, struck an oblong coffee table with his knees and went over that with a great deal of explosive grunting and even more pain. His chin cracked the end of a lamp base exactly where it had been bruised in his fall the night before, then skidded on the rug, brush burning it. It was almost as if some hostile fairy sprite were sitting overhead planning the choreography. He spat out a piece of tooth, tasted blood. His chin burned. The weight of the mechanical adversary was pressing upon him.
        He strained, heaved, pushed the robot sideways enough to squirm out from under it. He rolled quickly to see where it was and to get out of the thing's immediate range. He flopped onto his back just in time to see that it was directly overhead, coming down in a crushing body slam. Then the thing was on his chest, had knocked every ounce of air out of his lungs in one heavy gush. It threw a thick arm across his throat to hold him still. It brought the other hand around; the one with the vibrabeam finger.
        Salsbury heaved again, only succeeding in making the mechanical increase the pressure on his throat. He gagged, wondered vaguely why he had to be vibra-beamed and strangled. One should be enough surely.
        The brass tip pointed somewhere above and between Victor's eyes. The top of his head would go easily, wetly.
        Abruptly, there was another impact as something struck the back of the robot. The thing pitched over Salsbury, carried forward by whatever had slammed into it. He rolled sideways, sat