Part 2

They watched the conflagration, Yasak and Koroby, from a higher part of the wall than where the others were gathered. They could glimpse Robert now and then. He was running, trying to outrace the flames. Then they swept around him, circling him--his arms flailed frantically.

* * * * *

The fire had passed over the horizon. The air was blue with smoke, difficult to breathe, and ashes were drifting lightly down like dove-colored snow. Yasak, watery eyed, a cloth pressed to his nose, was walking with several others over the smoking earth and still warm ashes up to his knees. In one hand he held a stick. He stopped and pointed. "He fell about here," he said, and began to probe the ashes with the stick.

He struck something. "Here he is!" he cried. The others hurried to the spot and scooped ashes away, dog-fashion, until Robert's remains were laid clear. There were exclamations of amazement and perplexity from the people.

It was a metal skeleton, and the fragments of complicated machinery, caked with soot.

"He wasn't human at all!" Yasak marvelled. "He was some kind of a toy made to look like a man--that's why he wore armor, and his face never changed expression--"

"Magic!" someone cried, and backed away.

"Magic!" the others repeated, and edged back ... and that was the end of one of those robots which had been fashioned as servants for Terrestial men, made in Man's likeness to appease Man's vanity, then conquered him.