Time Thieves

he had been hoping for. It showed him that one of them waited in the kitchen and indicated the others were most likely situated all over the house, keeping a watch on all approaches. Too it was evidence that, since he had driven the last mind probe away, they could not locate him telephatically - which meant his own power was at least equal to theirs, and perhaps superior.
        
        He stayed with the hedge but crawled farther along until he could not see the kitchen windows and could not be seen by anyone waiting there. He stood up, brushed himself off, and crossed the alley to the garage doors. He searched along the bottom sill, found the lever, depressed one end of it and lifted. The door swung overhead with only one scratchy bit of noise to draw anyone's attention. He was sure it could not have been heard inside the house.
        
        He crept along the dark shape of the car until he was kneeling beside the interior door which connected with the kitchen. Cautiously, he rose and looked through the corner of the glass. In the soft, blue light of the twenty-five watt safety lamp on the stove, the mechanical man leaned against the kitchen table, commanding a moderately good view through both kitchen windows. He was the only one in the room.
        
        Pete bent down, rested his back against the wall and opened his mental shield to permit a contact ribbon of telepathic energy to weave outwards.
        
        Immediately, the alien master, through the consciousness of his nearest robotic servant, sensed the emanations of his prey. The white sphere of the mechanical pseudo-mind bore down on Pete's own mind-
        
        -and blazed and ashed, smoked and dissolved, under a bolt of psychic energy which he delivered to it.
        
        The quasi-sentient wire circuits melted, becoming nothing more than glimmering slag. The liquid, sealed core of the manufactured mind cracked open and evaporated.
        
        Pete pushed away from the wall and got to his feet. He turned to the small window in the door and surveyed the kitchen. The robot lay still by the kitchen table.
        
        He opened the door, entered the kitchen, closed the door gently, and listened to the stillness of the house.
        
        He heard footsteps. A second robot, apparently the one which had been watching the side lawn from the dining room windows, appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, looking just the slightest bit surprised.
        
        Pete sought its white, spherical mental analogue, cracked it open like an eggshell and snuffed it out.
        
        It fell with a loud clatter and bounced twice without even a whimper of pain. Its face, from its mouth to its left eye, was melted, the features run together like wax.
        
        He had no more time for observation after he looked away from that ruined countenance, for he saw a third mechanical in the doorway. It was probably the one he had heard descending the stairs moments ago, and it held the amber, glasslike weapon.
        
        He twisted sideways as the first burst of silver darts whisked past him and chewed up the plaster. They made a humming sound as they quivered, like a dozen one-, pronged tuning forks. The plaster seemed just the slightest bit damp where they had penetrated it.
        
        He fell to the floor as the robot fired a second burst. The spines hissed past him, over his head. Had he been standing, they would have caught him in the chest and neck.
        
        He reached out, searching for the featureless, round mechanical pseudo-mind and the thought filament that would be trailing out behind it.
        
        “Please, please, please-” the robot chanted.
        
        Pete laughed aloud as he found the thing's mental analogue. He stabbed deep into it with a long, curved, imaginary knife, the edge of which he imagined to be serrated. The skin of the sphere split; air hissed out. It burst into a cold, white flame, ashed and dissolved, ceasing to be a thinking unit.
        
        The mechanical man sighed once and fell onto the table, bounced from it and struck the floor, hard.
        
        He laughed again. This was what it was like to come back from the brink of doubt, anxiety, to come from what you thought were the borderlands of insanity to a complete mastery of the world and all in it. He was exhilarated.
        
        He directed a thought to Della: