Time Thieves

wrong?” she asked.
        
        “Who the hell-?”
        
        Then he passed out, striking the carpet rather hard, his arms thrown out before him as if in supplication. His aura of no-nonsense virility had deserted him.
        
        Holding his wounded shoulder, Pete bent and picked up the old man's gun. He leaped sideways through the open door and slammed and locked the flimsy portal.
        
        “I'll shoot you if you touch me,” the woman said.
        
        She was sitting up in bed, perhaps seventy years old, with a seven-shot automatic in both hands, stretched out in front of her, the safety off.
        
        “Good god, not another gun!” Pete groaned.
        
        “I will!” she said.
        
        “I believe you, lady.”
        
        “Drop your gun.”
        
        “Drop yours,” he said.
        
        'Why should I?”
        
        “Because you've probably never fired a gun, you'd miss me, and then you'd make me hurt you. Guns are dangerous, lady.”
        
        She looked at the automatic, then wrinkled her nose. “I suppose they are,” she said. She threw the weapon on the floor.
        
        “That's fine,” he said, picking it up.
        
        “What are you doing here?” she asked.
        
        Before he could even think of an answer, she smiled stupidly, yawned and passed out, first dropping forward until her face rested on her blanketed knees, then toppling sideways. She snored.
        
        “There's nowhere to go, Mr. Mullion,” the newscaster said. “Don't make us damage another door to reach you. Just open up, and everything will be fine.”
        
        The eyeless creature still broadcast that seeking pressure, driving harder and harder against the walls of Pete's mind. Still, Pete held off the attack. Perhaps it was the knowledge that the creature could not get to him as easily as it got to other men which caused him to enter conversation with the mindless robot beyond the door.
        
        “You can't hide the traces of your presence here,” he said. “There's the cellar door to consider.”
        
        “That can be repaired.” It waited, now sure that it could reason with him.
        
        His shoulder ached. He still clutched it with one hand. Blood bubbled through his fingers, wet and warm-and probably red, though he could not bring himself to look at the wound.
        
        “You can't repair the maid. Or the manservant. Or the old man and woman.”
        
        “They're merely sleeping, Mr. Mullion. There was no need to harm them.”
        
        “And they aren't going to remember?”
        
        “No.”
        
        “I don't believe you.”
        
        “Did you remember what happened during your periods of-amnesia?”
        
        He did not answer that. He could not.
        
        “Open the door, Mr. Mullion.”
        
        “Why don't you break it down?”
        
        “Then it would require repair.” The robot seemed to sigh. “It is one matter to fix the memories of the people here. It is quite another to repair artifacts of your world. The first follows a simple pattern and can be done from a distance. But to repair the doors, I will have to dispatch tool-laden androids, increasing the chance of discovery.”
        
        Pete considered that. He said, “You're not trying to fool me any longer, are you? You're not masquerading in robots. I'm talking directly to-the one without eyes?”
        
        “You know about me now. Why should I attempt to conceal myself? There have been too many errors in this whole affair. But we have learned now, and we just want to straighten everything out.”
        
        “Who are you?”
        
        The robot had no relayed answer for that.
        
        “Why me?”
        
        “I can't answer your questions,” the robot said, speaking for his inhuman master.
        
        Take the pressure off me,” Pete said. He felt as if the sky had lowered and were pressing directly against his scalp.
        
        “Open the door,” the alien countered.
        
        The old lady continued to snore, oblivious to the weird scene that unrolled around her.
        
        “Let me think about it,” Pete said.
        
        “But only for a minute or two,” the creature said.
        
        Pete crossed the bedroom