e a crab. Like some hideous
metal crab....

"That's the only thing that bothers me." Hendricks rubbed his wrist.
"I know I'm safe as long as I have this on me. But there's something
about them. I hate the damn things. I wish we'd never invented them.
There's something wrong with them. Relentless little--"

"If we hadn't invented them, the Ivans would have."

Hendricks pushed the sight back. "Anyhow, it seems to be winning the
war. I guess that's good."

"Sounds like you're getting the same jitters as the Ivans." Hendricks
examined his wrist watch. "I guess I had better get started, if I want
to be there before dark."

* * * * *

He took a deep breath and then stepped out onto the gray, rubbled
ground. After a minute he lit a cigarette and stood gazing around him.
The landscape was dead. Nothing stirred. He could see for miles,
endless ash and slag, ruins of buildings. A few trees without leaves
or branches, only the trunks. Above him the eternal rolling clouds of
gray, drifting between Terra and the sun.

Major Hendricks went on. Off to the right something scuttled,
something round and metallic. A claw, going lickety-split after
something. Probably after a small animal, a rat. They got rats, too.
As a sort of sideline.

He came to the top of the little hill and lifted his fieldglasses. The
Russian lines were a few miles ahead of him. They had a forward
command post there. The runner had come from it.

A squat robot with undulating arms passed by him, its arms weaving
inquiringly. The robot went on its way, disappearing under some
debris. Hendricks watched it go. He had never seen that type before.
There were getting to be more and more types he had never seen, new
varieties and sizes coming up from the underground factories.

Hendricks put out his cigarette and hurried on. It was interesting,
the use of artificial forms in warfare. How had they got started?
Necessity. The Soviet Union had gained great initial success, usual
with the side that got the war going. Most of North America had been
blasted off the map. Retaliation was quick in coming, of course. The
sky was full of circling disc-bombers long before the war began; they
had been up there for years. The discs began sailing down all over
Russia within hours after Washington got it.

* * * * *

But that hadn't helped Washington.

The American bloc governments moved to the Moon Base the f