1899- Journey to Mars

“Billy,” Avi said, “there are stairs back here leading up.”

“We may be taking them,” Billy whispered, and snapped the cylinder to the Colt into place. In his left he hefted the JPM. “In fact, why don’t you head on up there and see if you can find Koothrappally. I’ll handle Cyclops.”

“You will get yourself killed, Billy!”

“Maybe so, and maybe not. Just....go.”

There was a final crash from across the room, and bricks and mortar flew in a cloud of dust. Cyclops—much larger and much more detailed than Billy remembered him—walked through the cloud, grinding bricks to dust beneath his massive feet.

“Uh,” Billy heard Avi say. “I am going now.”

Mort Prime’s laughter filled the chamber.

Billy looked down and realized the mad scientist was standing on a wide rug by his table. He looked at Mort Prime and smiled. The laughter halted abruptly.

Billy holstered his JPM, stepped to the side, bent down and snatched at the rug. Mort Prime fell against the table, the invisible bubble around him saving his head from a fatal blow, then he crumpled to the stone floor. The bubble around the crazed man winked out with a popping sound.

The robot advanced quickly, taking ten feet at a stride.

Billy snatched the cane from the madman and thumbed the button. He looked up, expecting the robot to freeze in its tracks, but it came on at a loping run.

“Shit,” he said. His eyes narrowed and he watched the thing’s massive knees and feet move toward him in a blur. He did notice, however, the exposed wires to the sides of the knees. His left hand came up and he fired once, twice. The robots’s lower legs ceased to swing back for their next stride and the robot pitched forward onto its belly and skidded towards him.

He leapt to the side at the last second, his Colt in his left hand and Mort Prime’s staff in this right. The Cyclops was the size of a Conestoga wagon, and Billy’s right boot got clipped as it came shrieking past, throwing up a shower of sparks. The sound was excruciating in Billy’s ears, and his right foot throbbed.

Billy got slowly to his feet even as he heard the robot slamming its massive arms into the floor in an effort to right itself. He hobbled over to Mort Prime, lifting the man to his feet and thrust the staff into his hands. He then held up his pistol point blank at Mort Prime’s nose.

“Turn it off,” he said.

“Mine is the greatest mind in—”

Billy flipped the revolver in his hand, grasped it by barrel and popped Mort Prime on the forehead with the pistol butt. The old man folded like and accordion and fell to the floor once more. Billy caught the staff on the way down.

Cyclops, its torso at a diagonal to the floor and dragging its legs behind, turned in a slow circle to face Billy. The light behind its visor glowed a dim red.

“Oh no,” Billy whispered to himself. “I know this one.”

Billy lunged to his right and away from Mort Prime and the spilled table as a beam of bright reddish light a foot wide flashed through the space he had occupied a moment before. Billy shot a quick look to see the pale light of evening where the robot’s death ray had blasted a massive hole in the side of the castle. He looked back to see the robot’s head swiveling his direction.

Billy threw all of his weight into another roll back the way he’d come as another ruby beam of light sizzled through the air and blasted a long narrow groove through the floor and into the castle below.

“Bad robot,” Billy said. His hand felt the various buttons on the staff. He clicked it, but to no avail. Then he remembered. Mort Prime had struck the floor with the staff. The activating stud was on the staff base, and it had to be pressed hard.

He quickly set the staff perpendicular to the floor and was about to strike it when he noticed the robot’s eye find him again. A cold feeling settled over him. He knew another roll back the way he had come would be his last. Instinctively he rolled the other way and over the crumpled form of Mort Prime. The robot’s head tracked him and when its gaze fell upon its master, the light behind its eyes winked out.

“That’s better,” Billy said.

Cyclops began clawing its way to him, its metal hands gouging out chunks of stone flooring and sending chips of stone flying. One of these struck Billy above his right eye and a trickle of blood dripped down.

The robot had advanced to within a yard. It gouged out an

other divot in the floor and lurched forward.

Billy brought the base of the staff down hard on the floor and the robot’s free hand, which had blurred to Billy’s neck, never closed.

Billy stood slowly, taking stock. Aside from the trickle of blood above his eye and the dull throbbing from his foot, he was going to live. He laid the staff on the floor and noticed that a portion of the massive bulk of the robot lay atop Mort Prime, crushing his legs and the lower part of his abdomen to the floor. A trickle of red blood came from his mouth and dripped to the floor. After a mere moment, the trickle became a flood. But his eyes were open.

“Not the sharpest stick in the woodpile, are you, Cyclops?” Billy said.