Isaac Asimov's robots and aliens by Stephen Leigh & Cordell Scotten

Author:Stephen Leigh & Cordell Scotten [Leigh, Stephen]
Format: epub
Tags: Science fiction, Adventure, General, Science Fiction - General, Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, American, Fiction - Science Fiction, Space Opera, Short stories, Science Fiction - Adventure, High Tech, Robots, Technology & Engineering, Robotics, Androids
ISBN: 9780743434744
Publisher: I Books
Published: 2010-01-21T16:10:55+00:00

The Hunters were speaking with one another now, short bursts of high-pitched sound. SilverSide fingered the strands of semiconductors and colored wire around her neck. They were just made-things. Tools. They were less than animals, for all their sophistication. Yes, the technology made SilverSide ache to know more, but they violated all her most primal urges.

She wanted desperately to break these tools.

A crisscrossing of sudden laser fire raked the underbrush. SilverSide pushed to her feet with a howl and ran again. She felt the awful heat of their weapons strike her, and she turned and twisted as she fled so that none of the beams could touch her for more than a few seconds. Even so, she could sense internal damage: automatic alarm circuits overloaded and caused emergency sub-routines to be run, rerouting her nerve signals along undamaged paths to the brain.

Again her wolf shape aided her as it had before; she outdistanced the Hunters quickly. But she could still hear them, could still smell that sharp tang of steel and lubricants. They would track her forever, she realized, and if they did that, they would find PackHome.

You cannot allow that to happen. The First Law was plain here.

A new positronic pathway opened, glimmering. Another robot might have kept running until it ran out of power or was caught. Another robot might have been trapped by inbuilt programming.

The Hunters were tracking a wolf, and though she had chosen that shape, it was not the only one she could be.

SilverSide’s body began to alter. The great bulk of the wolf collapsed in on itself, the body becoming much smaller. The excess mass SilverSide squeezed outward, thinning it until the alloy was as thin as she could make it.

Great, powerful wings overshadowed her now. The wings beat, cupping air.

SilverSide flew.

She was a lousy bird. She was too massive, and there was nothing she could do to alter that. She didn’t fly well, and she couldn’t fly fast or high, but she flew.

Her moonshadow passed over the Hunters moving through the woods below.

The WalkingStones didn’t even look up. A wolf that changed into a bird was not in their experience.

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