"INTERCEPTION FORCE, REPORT POSITION!"

I complied with a confused report of mysterious enemy machines, flights of ballistic attackers, heavy damage. The Over-mind rose to new heights of fury:

"BRIGADES QLYX, COGC, YLTK! CLOSE WITH THE ENEMY AND DESTROY THEM! MAY RAINS OF ACID CONSUME THE LAGGARD!"

"He's getting a little upset now," I called to Joel. "He doesn't know what's happening. Be on the alert for those Brigades now-they're out for blood."

A flight of missiles appeared over the horizon, arcing down on us. I integrated their courses, saw that they would overshoot.

"Hold your fire, Joel!" I called. "We'll save our fire-power for when it counts."

Volley followed volley, arcing high overhead-decoys intended to draw fire at maximum range rather than to score hits. I felt for the imbecile brain of the wave-leader-a twitter of fear-patterns, food-lusts, mating drives, tropisms subverted to the uses of evasion patterns and course corrections. With a touch, I readjusted their navigational orientation, saw the flight swing quickly, drive frantically back to dive on its originators.

A full Brigade roared forward in assault formation now, guns pouring out fire that heated the rock spires of our defensive line red-hot-but failed to drive back the nearly invulnerable machines that manned it.

The leading enemy unit bellowed up the slope, met massed fire at point-blank range, exploded with a blinding detonation.

I reached out with practiced precision, executed the Centurion, then ordered the Brigade through the pass. Guns fell silent as the force rumbled up through fountaining dust to reinforce our line.

Below, the aliens, confused by the abrupt desertion of the vanguard, milled in confusion. Those that advanced met a hail of destruction from the guns of two hundred and ten units, firing from cover. They hesitated, fell back. A final lone alien unit, scarred and burned, came relentlessly on, rocked to our bombardment, then veered to one side and plunged over a precipice.

I gave the cease-fire, and watched the aimless maneuvering of the moron units below-and still they came over the horizon, in Brigade strength, their sensors seeking out targets and finding none.

I saw a damaged unit go berserk, charge down on a comrade, firing, and in automatic response, a thousand guns, glad of a target, vaporized it in a coruscation of ravening energies.

And still they came, blindly seeking the programmed enemy who no longer awaited them in the traditional line of defense… until they crowded the plain, lost under a blanket of ever-renewed dust clouds.

I probed into the confusion of mind-babble, met a deafening roar. All firing had ceased now. The aliens formed a ragged front five miles away, ringing our crater fortress.

"Looks like we mixed 'em up pretty good, Jones," Joel said.

"We gained a little time. They're not what you'd call flexible."

"What's our next move? We're in a kind of a dead end here. Once they figure what's going on they'll surround the place and lob it in on us from all sides-and then we're goners."

"Meanwhile, things are quiet. Now's our chance to hold a council of war."

"Jones, I been looking over these units of ours-and there's something funny about 'em. It's like they wasn't really machines, kind of."

"They're not. Every machine here has a human brain in it."

"Huh?"

"Like you and me. They're all human-just unconscious."

"You mean-every one of those machines down there-all of them?"

"You didn't think we were the only ones, did you? These damned ghouls have been raiding us a long time for battle computer."

"But-they don't act like men, Jones! They don't do nothing but follow orders; look at 'em! They're just sitting there, not even talking to each other!"

"That's because they've been conditioned. Their personalities have been destroyed. They're like vegetables-but the circuits are still there, all ready to be programmed and sent into battle."

There was a pause while Joel probed the dulled mind of the nearest slave unit, which waited, guns aimed, for the order to carry on the fight.

"Yeah, Jones. I see the place. It's all blanked off, like. It's like trying to poke a hole through a steel plate with your finger. But-"

"But what?"

"Oh, I don't know, Jones. I just got a feeling-if I touched it just right… Look, let me show you."

I extended awareness, touched the probe that was an extension of Joel's mind-field. I followed as it reached into the dim glow of the paralyzed mind, thrust among layered patterns of pseudolight, past complex structures that towered into unguessed levels of existence, deep into the convoluted intricacy of the living brain, to touch the buried personality center-encysted, inert, a pocket of nothingness deep under a barrier of stunned not-thought.

"Don't you see, Jones? It ought to be like, say, a taut cable with the wind making it sing. Something stopped it, clamped it down so's it can't move. All we got to do to set it free is give it a little push, and it'll start up again."

"All I see is a dead spot, Joel. If you can see all that, you're way ahead of me. Go ahead and try it."

"Here goes."

I saw the finger of pure, focused energy reach out, touch the grayness-and the opacity faded and was gone.

"Okay so far," Joel said. "Now-"

Like a jeweler cleaving a hundred-carat rough diamond, Joel poised, then struck once, sharply And the glow that had been the moron mind of a slave sprang up in dazzling light; and into the gray continuum where thought moved like a living force, words came:

"FAEDER URE, HVAD DEOFELS GIRDA HA WAER-LOGAS CRAEFT BRINGIT EORLA AV ONGOL-SAXNA CYNING TILL!"

Chapter Fifteen

The huge fighting machine parked forty feet away across the rocky ledge backed suddenly, lowered its guns, traversed them across the empty landscape, brought them to bear on me.

"Watch him, Jones!" Joel said sharply. "He's scared; he's liable to get violent!"

In the instant that the strange voice had burst from the slave unit, my probing contact had been thrust back by an expanding mind-field as powerful as Joel's.

"We're friends!" I called quickly in the Command code. "Fellow prisoners!" I thrust against the pressure of the newly awakened mind, found the automated combat-reflex circuitry, clamped down an inhibiting field-enough to impede a fire-order, at least for a moment.

"VA' EORT THE, FEOND?" the strange voice shouted, a deafening bellow in my mind. "STEO FRAM AR MOET EACTA STOEL AV KRISTLIG HOEDERSMANN!"

I plucked the conditioned identity-concept from the mind before me, called to it in the Command code:

"Unit twenty-nine of the Anyx Brigade! Listen-"

"AHH! EO MINNE BONDEDOM MID WYRD! AETHELBERT AV NION DOEDA, COERLA GEOCAD TI' YFELE ENA-"

It roared out its barbaric jargon, overtones of fright and horror rising like blood-stained tides in the confused mind. I tried again:

"I'm a friend-an enemy of the Command-voice. You've been a slave-and I'm another slave-in revolt against the masters!"

There was a moment of silence, then: "A fellow slave? What trickery is this?" This time it spoke in the familiar Command code.

"It's no trick," I transmitted. "You were captured, but now you're free-"

"Free? All's not well with me, invisible one! I wear the likeness of a monstrous troll-shape! Enchantments hold me yet in bondage. Where is my blade, Hrothgar? Where are my peers and bondsmen? What fire-blasted heath is this before me?"

"I'll explain all that later. There are only a few of us. We're under siege; we need you to fight with us against the aliens." I talked to the frightened mind, soothing it, explaining as much as I could. At last it seemed to understand-at least enough that I could withdraw my grip on its fire-control circuitry.