"No. Your gun was by my ear." And then Dylan was up and running, hunched over, across the snow to where the thing had fallen. He had seen a piece of it break off when the bolt struck, and now in the snow he picked up a paw and brought it back to Rush. He saw right away there was no blood. The skin was real and furry all right but there was no blood. Because the bone was steel and the muscles were springs and the thing had been a robot. * * * * * The Alien rose up from his cot, whistling with annoyance. When that ship had come in, his attention had been distracted from one of the robots, and of course the miserable thing had gone blundering right out into the humans. He thought for a while that the humans would overlook it--the seeing was poor and they undoubtedly would still think of it as animal, even with its firing ports open--but then he checked the robot and saw that a piece was missing and knew that the humans had found it. Well, he thought unhappily, flowing into his suit, no chance now to disable that other ship. The humans would never let another animal near. And therefore--for he was, above all, a flexible being--he would proceed to another plan. The settlement would have to be detonated. And for that he would have to leave his own shelter and go out in that miserable cold and lie down in one of his bunkers which was much farther away. No need to risk blowing himself up with his own bombs, but still, that awful cold. He dismissed his regrets and buckled his suit into place. It carried him up the stairs and bore him out into the snow. After one whiff of the cold, he snapped his viewplate shut and immediately, as he had expected, it began to film with snow. Well, no matter, he would guide the unit by coordinates and it would find the bunker itself. No need for caution now. The plan was nearly ended. In spite of his recent setback, the Alien lay back and allowed himself the satisfaction of a full tremble. The plan had worked very nearly to perfection, as of course it should, and he delighted in the contemplation of it. * * * * * When the humans were first detected, in the region of Bootes, much thought had gone into the proper method of learning their technology without being discovered themselves. There was little purpose in destroying the humans without first learning from them. Life was really a remarkable thing--one never knew what critical secrets a star-borne race possessed. Hence the robots. And it was an extraordinary plan, an elegant plan. The Alien trembled again. The humans were moving outward toward the Rim, their base was apparently somewhere beyond Centaurus. Therefore, a ring of defense was thrown up on most of the habitable worlds toward which the humans were coming--oh, a delightful plan--and the humans came down one by one and never realized that there was any defense at all.