Rhythm of the Spheres Read Free Page B

droning, the shattering tempest, the intolerable high piping ended. And everywhere the people fell, sleeping among the dead robots, as though they had been strung to the point of breaking, sapped of strength and then abruptly relaxed.
    And as though it had vanished from Earth, America was deaf to cables, to all communication beyond the gigantic circle of sound.
    But that midnight over all Europe the drone sounded and Europe’s robots began their dance of death . . . and when it had ended a strange and silent rocket ship that had hovered high above the stratosphere sped almost with the speed of light and hovered over Asia—and next day Africa heard the drone while the black answered it with his tom-toms — then South America heard it and last of all far off Australia . . . and everywhere terror trapped the peoples and panic and madness took their grim toll.
    Until of all that animate metal horde that had fettered Earth and humanity there were a few scant hundreds left-escaped from the death dance through some variant in their constitution. And, awakening from that swift sleep, all over Earth those who had feared and hated the robots and their slavery rose against those who had fostered the metal domination, and blasted the robot factories to dust.

AGAIN the hill above the caverns opened, the strange torpedo ship blinked into sight like a ghost, as silently as a ghost floated into the hill and the rocks closed behind it.
    Narodny and the others stood before the gigantic television screen, shifting upon it images of city after city, country after country, over all Earth’s surface. Lao, the Chinese, said: “Many men died, but many are left. And the Ruler of Robots is no more. They may not understand— but to them it was worth it.”
    Narodny mused: “It drives home the lesson—what man does not pay for, he values little.”
    And Narodny shook his head, doubtfully. But soon harmonies were swelling through the great cavern of the orchards, and nymphs and fauns dancing under the fragrant blossoming trees—and the world again forgotten by Narodny.
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