"This way," Korm whispered. They squirmed through the brush, taking care to make no sound, keen eyes searching everywhere about. Kimball Trent felt the tension mounting unconsciously in his heart, felt the cold sheen of sweat on his body. He gripped the rifle with nervous hands, felt a bit of relief when Lura flashed him a brief warm smile. Somehow, they were very close at the moment. "There!" Korm said at last, squatted behind a bush. * * * * * Kimball Trent saw the building first, towering like the round silo of a Midwestern farmer, slotted windows strips of black against the gleaming red surface of seamless plastic. His gaze drifted to the ground, and muscles bulged along his back. There were people there, herded together in a great wire pen. There were men and women and children; and even from a distance, Trent could see the hate and fear and despair that tortured every face. He scowled unbelievingly when he saw the guards. They were metal men, robots, stalking steady guard duty a few feet outside of the wire enclosure. They were weird caricatures of men, quartz eyes staring straight ahead, concussor boxes dangling from waist cords, tiny puffs of dust spurting with each step of their flat mechanical feet. Kimball Trent shook his head. He had heard nothing of the robots, had never seen them when first he fought the Gharrians. Evidently they had been created after the world had been conquered. Now they walked in deadly silence, a menace against which an unarmed man would have no chance at all. A man died, even as Trent watched. He cried his hate and raced toward the fence, leaping high so as to clamber over it with catlike speed and agility. Trent felt the unheard warning coming from his chest, stifled it, even as electricity crackled and writhed along the figure of the man and dropped him in a smouldering blackened heap onto the ground. No sound came from the prisoners; they stared in dull hate, as the nearest robot ignored the crackling electricity and pulled the body below the lowest strand of wire. Dragging the corpse by the legs, the robot soullessly pulled it toward a shallow ditch, dumped it in, then again began its endless patrol. "The inhuman beasts!" Lura cried softly, tears in her eyes. A Gharrian came from the base of the tower, walking with its ponderous smoothness, the single eye glittering in the sunlight. There was something obscene and deadly about its deliberate stalking of the prisoners huddled within the enclosure.