of the rats.

Mostly they stayed away from him, avoiding the strange being that had
invaded their underground realm, but he could see them hiding in corners
and scurrying along the sides of the tunnels, going about their
unfathomable rodent business.

Around him, six rat-like remote-control robots moved with him, shifting
their pattern constantly as they patrolled his moving figure.

Far ahead, he knew, other rat robots were stationed, watching and
waiting, ready to deactivate the Nipe's detection devices at just the
right moment. Behind him, another horde moved forward to turn the
devices on again.

It had, he knew, taken the technicians a long time to learn how to shut
off those detectors without giving the alarm to the Nipe's instruments.

There were nearly a hundred men in on the operation, controlling the
robot rats or watching the hidden cameras that spied upon the Nipe.
Nearly a hundred. And every single one of them was safe.

They were all outside the tunnel and far away. They were with Stanton
only by proxy. They could not die here in this stinking hole, no matter
what happened. But Stanton could.

There was no help for it, no other way it could be done. Stanton had to
go in person. A full-sized robot proxy might be stronger, although not
faster unless Stanton was at the controls, than the Nipe. But the Nipe
would be able to tell that the thing was a robot, and he would simply
destroy it with one of his weapons. A remote-control robot could never
get close enough to the Nipe to do any good.

"We do not know positively," Dr. Yoritomo had said, "whether he would
recognize it as a robot or not, but his instruments would show the metal
easily enough, and his eyes would be able to tell him that the machine
was not covered with human skin. The rats are small enough so that they
can be made mostly of plastic, and they are covered with real rat hides.
In addition, our friend, the Nipe, is used to seeing them around. But a
human-sized robot? Ah, no. Never."

So Stanton had to go in person, walking southward along the tracks,
through the miles of blackness that led to the nest of the Nipe.

Overhead was Government City.

He had looked out upon those streets only the night before, and he knew
that only a short distance away there was an entirely different world.

Somewhere up there, his brother was waiting, after having run the gamut
of publicity. He was a celebrity. "Stanley Martin, the greatest
detective i