Did the Robots see her? She ran in their direction, her clothing catching and tearing on the undergrowth. She neared the head of the file, could hear Burwood stumbling along behind her. The metal figures stood there, unmoving--watching her? Each one twelve feet tall, they could have stamped her to death. * * * * * Behind her, Diane heard a hoarse scream. She whirled instinctively, lost her footing, fell. One of the Robots had taken Burwood, who was thrashing and kicking helplessly as it bore him aloft and held him feet pounding on air, two yards off the ground. She didn't like Burwood, but she had nothing against him. He screamed again, his voice breaking. "Put him down," Diane shouted. She might as well have been talking to the ingots from which the Robots had been fashioned for all the heed they paid her. She whirled again, sought Starbuck, couldn't find him. Starbuck always talked of the Robots, perhaps he knew how to communicate with them. Now the Robot had set a trembling Burwood down on the ground. Now a great noose of rope was drawn about his neck, its other end slung over the branch of a huge, bare-limbed tree. Now.... Something neither warm nor cold touched Diane, grasped her about the middle, lifted her. It was a nightmare. It was unreal, not happening to her. The ground spun giddily, all vision receded behind a wave of vertigo, then returned, still spinning. Diane clawed at the metal head, at the hard, unblinking eyes, scraping uselessly. She might as well try to scrape down the side of a mountain with her fingernails. Burwood was hanging. Feet dangling, arms bound behind him, he twisted and writhed in his last death agony. Diane shuddered, turning away, striking her head sharply against the hard metal of the Robot. When her vision cleared again, she was on the ground, another Robot stalking soundlessly toward her for all its great bulk, a noose identical to the one from which Burwood dangled suspended from its metal hand. But the scene had changed, Diane realized wildly. A great air-ship, a rocket, had landed midway between the file of Robots and the burning village. Vaguely, she remembered that Starbuck had once said only Robots from the Citadel itself used the rockets, since only a few remained from man's last great War. Starbuck was nearby, shaking but holding his ground, shouting at the Robots as if his very life depended on it. And, Diane thought despairingly, it did. "Leave her be!" Starbuck cried. "You're making a terrible mistake. We're not from the village. We're Shining Ones. We're Shining Ones, I tell you. We came here to join you, to be conscripted. We want to work for the Robots. See, we're Shining Ones!"