“Damn it, have I got to spell it out? As long as that machine was just an oversized half-wit, it was all right. Kind of a monument to the war, and all. But now I’ve seen what it can do… Crewe, we can’t have a live killer sitting in the middle of our town—never knowing when it might take a notion to start shooting again!”

“Finished?” Crewe asked.

“It’s not that we’re not grateful—”

“Get out,” Crewe said.

“Now, look here, Crewe—”

“Get out. And keep everyone away from Bobby, understand?”

“Does that mean—?”

“I’ll take care of it.”

Blauvelt got to his feet. “Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”

After Blauvelt left, Crewe rose and dropped a bill on the table; he picked the command transmitter from the floor, went out into the street. Faint cries came from the far end of the town, where the crowd had gathered for fireworks. A yellow rocket arced up, burst in a spray of golden light, falling, fading…

Crewe walked toward the plaza. The Bolo loomed up, a vast, black shadow against the star-thick sky. Crewe stood before it, looking up at the already draggled pennants, the wilted nosegay drooping from the gun muzzle.

“Unit Nine five four, you know why I’m here?” he said softly.

“I compute that my usefulness as an engine of war is ended,” the soft rasping voice said.

“That’s right,” Crewe said. “I checked the area in a thousand-mile radius with sensitive instruments. There’s no enemy machine left alive. The one you killed was the last.”

“It was true to its duty,” the machine said.

“It was my fault,” Crewe said. “It was designed to detect our command carrier and home on it. When I switched on my transmitter, it went into action. Naturally, you sensed that, and went to meet it.”

The machine sat silent.

“You could still save yourself,” Crewe said. “If you trampled me under and made for the jungle it might be centuries before…”

“Before another man comes to do what must be done? Better that I cease now, at the hands of a friend.”

“Good-bye, Bobby.”

“Correction: Unit Nine five four of the Line.”

Crewe pressed the key. A sense of darkness fell across the machine.

At the edge of the square, Crewe looked back. He raised a hand in a ghostly salute; then he walked away along the dusty street, white in the light of the rising moon.

COMBAT UNIT

I DO NOT like it; it has the appearance of a trap, but the order has been given. I enter the room and the valve closes behind me.