mind

have believed it!” Kartr gave voice at last to his bewilderment.
“There are inhabitants?”
“One at least—I contacted an Ageratan mind!”
“Pirates?” suggested Rolth.
“In an open city—with all that light to betray them? Though, you may be right at that, that is just where they might feel safe. But be careful, we don’t want to walk straight into a blast beam. And that kind fire before they ask your name and planet—especially if they see our Comets!”
“Did he catch your mind touch?”
“Who knows what an Ageratan gets or doesn’t get? No one has been able to examine them unless they are either completely unaware or deliberately open. He could have been either then.”
“More than one?”
“I got out—fast—when I tapped him. Didn’t stay to see.”
The tailer was clicking madly. Kartr should have switched on the recorder, too. But without a machine to read the wire that was useless. From now on scouting reports would be oral. The sled glided slowly over a section where the buildings stood some distance apart, vegetation thick between them.
“Look—” Rolth pointed to the left. “That’s a landing stage there—if I ever saw one. How about setting down on the next one and going ahead on foot—”
“Get in closer to the main part of the city first. No use in walking several miles after we go down.”
They found what they wanted, a small landing stage on the top of a tower, a tower which seemed short when compared to the buildings around it, though they must have landed forty floors above street level. But it was a good place from which to spy out the land.
They dropped on it. Then Kartr whirled, his blaster out—aimed for the middle of the black thing scuttling toward him from the roof shadows. He tried in the same instant for mind contact—to recoil with an instant of real panic. And Rolth put his discovery into words.
“Robot—guard—maybe—”
Kartr was back in the sled as Rolth brought it up above the head of the figure.
Robot, guard or attendant, the thing stopped short when the sled left the stage surface.