Bill 2 - on the Planet of Robot Slaves Read Free Page A

one of them soared overhead and ejected a stick of bombs from its cloaca. When the last bits of debris had clattered to the ground he rushed to the nearest arms locker and tore the door open with a kick with his clawed heel.
    “Great, really great!” he chortled and grabbed up the black tube inside that was lettered SAM in white.
    “SAM,” he said settling the rest onto his shoulder. “Surface to Air Missile.”
    His index finger caressed the trigger as he squinted into the sight. A lovely sight of crosshairs on the round belly of the nearest dragon.
    “Here's one from the troopers!” he ejaculated happily as he squeezed the trigger.
    The SAM clattered and clicked and a metal arm popped out of the barrel with a flag flapping from the end. YOU MISSED was embroidered daintily on the flag.
    “This bowby thing is nothing but a training dummy!” Bill howled and hurled it at him.
    But the dragon had caught the motion of the flapping flag and wheeled about in a tight turn. It dived. Smoke blew back from its gaping nostrils as it opened its mouth to exhale the tongue of lambent flame that would cook Bill like a chop on a spit.
    “This is it,” Bill muttered bravely. “To die so far from home — with a chicken foot.”
    Closer the flame came and closer — and the dragon blew up as a missile got it right in the belly button.
    “At least someone found a SAM that works,” Bill grunted as the thing crashed onto the latrine roof just before him. It made a great clanging sound, instead of the splatting sound that he had expected. This was explained when the dragon's head was torn off by the impact and crashed to the ground. Wires and rods projected from the severed neck, while hydraulic fluid rather than blood spurted from the broken pipes.
    “Should have known,” he said smugly. “A machine. Flesh and blood dragons are for the birds. Aerodynamically unsound. Wings too small for one thing.”
    And while he pondered these eternal mysteries he looked on with interest as the top of the dragon's head split and opened like a lid. This was very familiar. Particularly when the seven-inch-high, four-armed green creature looked out at him balefully.
    “You are a Chinger!” Bill gasped.
    “Well I'm not a dragon's cerebellum if that's what you are thinking,” the Chinger sneered.
    Bill groped up a chunk of broken concrete to crush the little green bastard but he was too late. The enemy alien kicked open a hatch in the dragon's neck and dragged out a tiny rocket harness which it slipped into.
    “Up the Chingers!” it squeaked as tiny rockets flared and it shot off into the sky. Bill dropped the concrete and looked into the control room in the skull. Just like the one in Eager Beager's head, with an operating console and tiny water cooler. There was even a metal label above the commode with a serial number on it. Bill leaned over and squinted at it.
    “MADE IN USA, that's what it says. I wonder what that means?”
    He wasn't the only one who was interested. Now that the attack was well and truly over, Dr. Praktis came crawling out of the ruins of the hospital. His quivering terror faded as scientific curiosity took its place.
    “What on earth is that?” he said.
    “Ain't nothing on earth. It is what is left of a bomb-laying, fire-spraying, Chinger flying-dragon machine.”
    “What does this mean — MADE IN USA?”
    “The same question that I was asking, Doc.” Bill looked around, then went and dug a gurney from the rubble. “Here, help me load this head aboard and we'll take it to the CO and see what he thinks.”
    Which proved hard to do since the headquarters buildings had taken a real pasting. An admiral, with the golden fouled anchors and soldering irons of a technical officer on his shoulders, stood staring gloomily at the smoldering remains when they approached. He looked up and nodded at Praktis.
    “They missed you and me, Mel, but got all the other officers. Every one. They were holding an orgy here for a Red