Star quest

Chapter One
    JUMBO TEN was pulling out of the ranks.
    "J-10, LOCK ON YOUR TIER: SWING TO ZERO STRESS. FALL IN, J-10!"
    Jumbo Ten swung farther out of the advancing line, whirled and looked to the rear. He had been in the second wave moving toward the battle-scarred plain below. The third was crushing the very stones as it roared down the hill, an irresistible force, ten thousand tons of alloyed steel careening madly on to meet with the immovable object of the enemy front.
    "J-10, ARE YOU DAMAGED? CHECK YOUR SYSTEMS AND MAKE REPORT SOONEST!"
    He had to get away. For the moment, they thought he was simply malfunctioning. Before the truth seeped through their thick skulls, he would have to act. At most, he had only seconds to reach some level area and cant back, bringing his rockets into proper position. Escape was essential, for he had suddenly realized he was not a machine.
    "J-10, REPORT!"
    The tumult below made the plain a bad bet. Laser cannon erupted like acid-stomached giants, belching forth corrosive froth that even the alloy hulls could not withstand for any appreciable length of time. Forty Jumbos were clashing already—twenty on each side—and a hundred and twenty would be lobbing shells and exchanging beams within minutes. A compressed gas bomb sloughed into the earth a thousand feet ahead, exploded, tilting the Jumbos of the third wave, toppling three onto their backs where they lay spinning tread like helpless turtles. That opened a gap in the ranks. If he could move through the breach before the Generals realized he was not just damaged, he could make the top of the ridge and cant on the level brink for a blast-off.
    He could feel the remote control fingers of the Generals probing his circuits to discover why he was not reporting.
    Rut he knew who he was! And what he wasn't. He wasn't a machine. He wasn't a Jumbo, one of those all-purpose, highly sophisticated weapons systems. He was
ü
man. They had taken away his body and left him only his brain—but that was still a human brain, an individual.
    "RENEGADE! JUMRO TEN IS RENEGADE!" the probing officer shouted.
    So, the seconds had dwindled into nothingness. He shifted his huge bulk into high gear, his atomic-powered engines roaring with only a fraction of the power they could deliver. Five hundred tons of alloyed steal whined and choked, surging suddenly forward and up.
    "THIRD TIER CLOSE ON JUMBO TEN. CLOSE AND OBSTRUCT!"
    He swiveled his cannon about in a hundred and eighty degree arc, fanning the third tier with his heaviest beam.
Fomp-fompa-fomp
! went his launch tubes as he fired smoke grenades to cover his retreat The rocks crumbled to dust beneath him, his tread grinding the earth, ripping and gouging at the hill as it plunged him onward. The smoke was now a great blanket over all.
    There was a movement to his left Jumbo 34 came out of the fog. The red gem eyes of the radar swiveled about, locked on him and began glowing even brighter. A laser cannon came up. Jumbo Ten threw up a shield, struck out with an energy net and overheated J-34 until little wires melted inside the cannon, leaving it without a trigger mechanism. It would take J-34 some time to re-machine the needed parts from the twisted, useless ones and replace them. He rolled quickly on.
    At the top of the ridge, he came out of his own smoke cover, bucked over the lip, crashing onto flat ground. Below, the panorama of combat was impressive indeed. Giant organic brain directed fighting robos tore at each other with a vengeance. Instead of blood, there was molten metal and shattered transistors. The Setessins had attacked the Romaghin home planet, landing with their Jumbos in the Hellfire Desert. Over the last eighteen hours, they had pushed into the plains, but they would not go any farther. Already, the tide of battle was changing.
    But, he reminded himself, he didn't care any longer. He wasn't a fighting machine in the Great Cause of the Romaghin worlds. He was a man. A man from the village of the Giant Trees who had been shanghaied and deprived of his body. And of his love.
    He canted the huge machine with its hydraulic blasting legs, extended the glistening, polished tubes of the rockets, and shut down all other systems but the radar-negative shield that would protect him against Romaghin missiles when he reached the upper strata of the atmosphere.
    Three Jumbos lifted over the edge of the ridge, whirring, swung their head blocks one way, then the other, searching for him. There