Strange Highways

asked.
     "Leave him," Curanov said.
     "Here to rust?"
     "He'll sense nothing more."
     "Still-"
     We should be getting back," Curanov said, shining his light around the snowy scene. "We shouldn't expose ourselves."
     Keeping close to one another, they returned to the lodge.
     As they walked, Curanov reviewed certain disturbing data: 9. He dismantles robots, though none but other men know what he does with their parts ....

     "As I see it," Curanov told them when they were once again in the lodge, "Leeke did not take the rifles. Someone - or something - entered the lodge to steal them. Leeke must have come out of his inactivation nook just as the culprits were leaving. Without pausing to wake us, he gave chase."
     "Or was forced to go with them," Tuttle said.
     "I doubt that he was taken out by force," Curanov said. "In the lodge, with enough light to see by and enough space to maneuver in, even with lessened perceptions, Leeke could have kept himself from being hurt or forced to leave. However, once he was outside, in the storm, he was at their mercy."
     The wind screamed across the peaked roof of the lodge, rattled the windows in their metal frames.
     The three remaining robots stood still, listening until the gust died away, as though the noise were made not by the wind but by some enormous beast that had reared up over the building and was intent on tearing it to pieces.
     Curanov went on: "When I examined Leeke, I found that he was felled by a sharp blow to the ring cable, just under the head - the kind of blow that would have had to come suddenly from behind and without warning. In a room as well lighted as this, nothing could have gotten behind Leeke without his knowing it was there."
     Steffan turned away from the window and said, "Do you think that Leeke was already terminated when ..." His voice trailed away, but in a moment he had found the discipline to go on: "Was he terminated when they dismantled his legs?"
     "We can only hope that he was," Curanov said.
     Steffan said, "Who could have done such a thing?"
     "A man," Tuttle said.
     "Or men," Curanov amended.
     "No," Steffan said. But his denial was not as adamant as it had been before. "What would they have done with his legs?"
     "No one knows what they do with what they take," Curanov said.
     Steffan said, "You sound as if Tuttle's convinced you, as if you believe in these creatures."
     "Until I have a better answer to the question of who terminated Leeke, I think it's safest to believe in human beings," Curanov explained.
     For a time, they were silent.
     Then Curanov said, "I think we should start back to Walker's Watch in the morning, first thing."
     "They'll think we're immature," Steffan said, "if we come back with wild tales about men prowling around the lodge in the darkness. You saw how disdainful Janus was of others who had made similar reports."
     "We have poor, dead Leeke as proof," Tuttle said.0
     "Or," Curanov said, "we can say Leeke was terminated in an accident and we're returning because we're bored with the challenge."
     "You mean, we wouldn't even have to mention - human beings?" Steffan asked.
     "Possibly," Curanov said.
     "That would be the best way to handle it, by far," Steffan said. "Then no second-hand reports of our temporary irrationality would get back to the Agency. We could spend much time in the inactivation nooks, until we finally were able to perceive the real explanation of Leeke's termination, which somehow now eludes us. If we meditate long enough, a proper solution is bound to arise. Then, by the time of our next data-vault audits by the Agency, we'll have covered all traces of this illogical reaction from which we now suffer."
     "However," Tuttle said, "we might already know the real story of Leeke's death. After all, we've seen the footprints in the snow, and we've seen the dismantled body .... Could it be that men - human beings - really are behind it?"
     "No," Steffan said. "That's superstitious nonsense. That's irrational."
     "At dawn," Curanov said, "we'll set out for Walker's Watch, no matter how bad the storm is by then."
     As he finished speaking, the distant hum of the lodge generator - which was a comforting background noise that never