Time Thieves

looked up and blinked, coloring slightly red.
        
        Before she could cry out for help, one of the triplets rammed into the oak door from the other side. The panel shook, popping one of the four screws which held its two hinges in place. Against an ordinary man, it would have offered all but certain protection. It would go down in seconds before the triplets.
        
        “What are you doing here?” the woman asked.
        
        He saw she was in a white and black maid's uniform. It was very unlikely, then, that she was alone in the house. Her employers, and perhaps even other servants, would be within calling distance.
        
        The mechanical man slammed into the oak door again. The portal boomed and burst another screw, ripping loose the top hinge. The screw pinged on the edge of the steel sink and rattled away, across the table, out of sight.
        
        Pete stumbled across the room, gripped the edge of the table to steady himself.
        
        “Here now!” the maid shouted. “Whoever's there! You can't go about busting up this place! Look what you're doing there!” She started to round the table toward the door. She seemed to have no concern for her personal safety, and she was prepared to risk her own well-being to keep the place tidy and in good order.
        
        “You better stay back-” Pete began.
        
        She threw the coffee cup at him.
        
        He ducked.
        
        It smashed on the refrigerator, behind him.
        
        He thought he heard voices somewhere else in the house, raised in question at the sound of destruction. He realized it would be as bad to be caught housebreaking by these people as to be rounded up by the mechanicals. Edging around the opposite side of the big worktable, trying to keep out of the maid's way, he made for the swinging door and the rest of the house that lay beyond it.
        
        “Stop that, now!” the maid told the triplets.
        
        One of them struck the door again, harder than ever.
        
        The bottom hinge tore loose of the frame. A screw rattled away over the red tile.
        
        The heavy-set woman leaped back, surprisingly agile for her weight, and narrowly avoided getting conked solidly by the falling door. It smashed into the red tile, trembling.
        
        Pete reached the swinging door and looked back. The maid was waving her fist at the first intruder, advancing on him belligerently. The robot looked momentarily confused, then distressed. As she beat at his shoulder with a big, hammy fist, he turned to look directly at her, squinted-
        
        -and caught her as she slumped unconsciously to the floor. He set her down gently, straightened up and looked at Pete.
        
        That unseen, ponderous force exploded across the surface of his mind again. His shields held against it.
        
        He pushed open the swinging door, ran across the dining room and into a narrow hallway hung with original oils. Then he bounded upstairs and hurried along the main upstairs hallway. He was no more than ten feet from an open doorway when a white-haired old man stepped out and fired at him, point blank, with a small, heavy, deadly looking revolver.
        
        Pete felt hot white pain blossom in his right shoulder, sending spidery tendrils through his neck and down into his heart.
        
        “No closer,” the old man said. “I'll put the next one right in the middle of your chest. Believe me, I will.”
        
        “I believe you,” Pete croaked.
        
        “You stand right there,” the old man said.
        

----

    XII
        
        
        Pete nodded.
        
        “Is he dangerous?” someone asked in the room behind the old man. It was a woman's voice, breathy and obviously frightened.
        
        “I've got him under control,” the old man said.
        
        “Be careful, Jerry.”
        
        “I'll be careful, for God's sake!” Jerry hissed. He was an old man with a wife who pampered him, and he was enjoying this moment of heroism. He fairly clothed himself in the aura of the virile, no-nonsense man of the house, gripping his gun as if it were the main touchstone to his glory.
        
        “Has he got a gun?” she asked.
        
        “No-” He looked beyond Pete, seeing the twins for the first time.
        
        “Is something