'Jesus H. Christ on a crutch!' said Cooper, looking beyond him. 'What in the hell is that!' Curtis turned around. 'Holy shit!' Finn and Andre were running at top speed toward them, while behind them, gaining with every massive stride, was Tales. The bronze giant, with Benedetto at the controls, was moving slowly, awkwardly, but with the length of its strides, it didn't need to move fast. Servomotors within it whined with each giant stride. The huge arm lifted the bronze obelisk of a sword.
'Skirmish line!' Cooper shouted out to his battalion. 'Fire at will!'
A hundred plasma rifles opened up on the advancing robot, wreathing it in an aura of blue flame and blackening the bronze. Benedetto was blinded by the plasma fire, but he remained at the controls, keeping the robot advancing toward the soldiers. He felt the intense heat building up as the relentless barrage continued. The bronze began to soften.
'I knew I should have installed cannon in this ridiculous contraption,' Benedetto said, grimacing with pain. The controls were growing hot to the touch. 'I'm going to be cooked alive like some damned lobster.' He slammed a control lever forward, but the robot arm holding the sword remained immobile, the servomotors damaged by the plasma fire. 'Damn it!' Benedetto swore. He reached for the level controlling the arm holding the shield.
'Maintain fire!' Cooper shouted as the strike force and the Ranger unit poured everything they had into the robot. Molten metal was now running down its exterior like hot wax flowing down a candle. The robot's impassive features sagged. Molten bronze fell to the ground in globs with each step it took.
Inside the control room, it was like an oven. The interior walls were starting to glow red. Benedetto's skin was turning red and blistering. His hands were being crisped as they worked the controls. 'Christ!' he screamed, in agony. 'CHRIST!'
The left arm extended from the giant's body and then bent at the elbow back toward the robot's chest. Benedetto was blind now, but he knew the soldiers were somewhere in front of him. With his last ounce of strength, he released the locks holding the shield in place and then slammed forward the lever controlling the arm.
'Look out!' Curtis shouted.
The massive bronze shield spun toward them like some flying saucer. The soldiers scattered, but the shield ploughed into the ground where they stood, crushing a number of them beneath hundreds of pounds of superheated metal.
'Concentrate your fire on the legs!' yelled Cooper. 'Slag that fucker!'
Benedetto's hair burst into flame. He screamed as his skin crackled and the fluid ran out of it. He smashed his head repeatedly against the interior wall of the control room, then staggered back and fell over the railing, landing hard on his back in the room below. The impact snapped his spine. Overhead, at the dome of the robot, the huge V-20 warp disc came loose from its fastenings and plummeted down, crushing him as it smashed into pieces.
'He's going down!' Delaney shouted. 'Run for it!'
The left leg gave way and the robot, melting like solder, slowly toppled. Its shadow fell over the soldiers as they ran and then it slammed into the ground hard enough for the shock of the impact to knock several of those closest to it off their feet.
Delaney slowly picked himself up off the ground. 'The bigger they are-' he said.
Steiger glared at him. 'Don't say it.'
EPILOGUE
'I still say Curtis was right,' said Steiger. 'This was a dumb idea.'
'You didn't have to come,' Delaney said.
'Andre, will you talk some sense into this guy?' said Steiger. 'It's over, for Christ's sake! What's the point of running this risk? What if we run into S.O.G. agents?'
'He's right, Creed,' Andre said. 'You didn't have to come, you know.'
'All right, all right,' said Steiger. 'So I wanted to find out how it turned out, too. But what if we've timed it wrong? What if we-'
'We've clocked back in months after the Argonauts should have returned,' Delaney said. 'We should know soon if there was any significant disruption or if the S.O.G. has managed to adjust the situation. We did have a mission to complete, you know. I want to find out if-'
'There it is!' said Andre, pointing.
The Argo was riding at anchor in the harbor of Iolchos. 'All right,' said Steiger, 'so we find out what happened and then we're out of here. The sooner we get back through that confluence, the better I'll like it. Our report's going to look bad enough as it is. If General Forrester finds out about this, he'll hand our asses to us.'
'Look down there,' said Andre, pointing to an area where the framework of a ship was being erected. 'Isn't that Argus?'
'So it is,' Delaney said. 'Come on.'
The shipwright was astonished to see them. 'Fabius! Creon! Atalanta! By the gods, we thought you were dead!' He clapped his arms around each of them in turn.
'We came close enough to Hades, old friend,' said Delaney. 'We managed to escape the dead warriors of Colchis, but when the ship left without us, we had to make our way back over land. It was a long, hard journey, but we had to come back and find out what became of all of you.'
'It has been a long time,' Argus said. He shouted to one of his workmen. 'Demetrios! Take over for me! I will return later.' He turned to the temporal agents. 'Come, we will sit down to dinner and we shall have some wine and I will tell you all about it.'
Inside the modest house close to the wharves, they sat and listened as Argus told them what became of the Argonauts after they left Colchis.
'We thought we had made good our escape from Colchis,' Argus said, 'but Aietes sent his fleet to pursue us. For days we fled from them, but they kept on closing the distance between us until finally we saw that we could not escape and we would have to fight. But Medea tricked her brother, Apsyrtus, the commander of the Colchin fleet, into coming ashore with all his captains and sitting down to a parley. She made him promise to let us go if we gave up the golden fleece without a fight, but while she met with her brother and his captains, we had already come ashore. We fell upon them and killed every last one of them, just as Medea had planned. Then, before the Colchin fleet could recover from the loss of its commanders, we slipped away from them in the dead of night. When Jason saw Medea standing there, covered with her brother's blood, I tell you, such a look came upon his face that it was as if he were seeing her for the first time. His passion cooled somewhat after that.
'We sailed on until we came to the island of Circe, the sister of King Aietes. Medea insisted that we stop there and we could not see why, but it seemed a pleasant island and Jason wished to please her. We came ashore and supped at Circe's table. I tell you, such a woman I have never seen before and hope never to see again. All the gold and gemstones in the world, and she wore many, would never make up for such ugliness. A fat, pustulant old hag she was, and such a smell came off her! I tell you, one look at that woman could turn a man into a swine!
'Well, there we sat, trying to avoid gazing at her so that we could keep down our food, and Medea begins to rail at her, to shout about all the abuse that she had suffered at her hands- and I never did quite understand what this abuse was, unless it was that as Aietes' sister, she stood higher than Medea at the Colchin court-and to shout how she would be far greater now that she would be queen in Iolchos with the golden fleece. Well, not surprisingly, Circe did not take kindly to this loud display and she drove us from her table and her island, both. So, we set sail once more, Jason even more silent than before. But not Medea.
'She began to make plans for the palace we were to build for her in Iolchos and she had me design a pleasure barge upon which she would cruise between the islands. Well, then a storm came and kept us busy and her quiet for a time. Of course, when the storm had passed away, she blamed us for her discomfort and demanded that we provide smooth sailing from then on. Still, we all tried to be patient.
'Well, we did not encounter such adventures upon our return journey as we did when you were with us, only that there were other storms which we survived-thanks to the lessons you had taught me, Fabius, about sailing in a storm-but then when we were drawing close to home, we came upon an island where we found the fallen body of a giant made from bronze. The bronze was molten, as if this giant had been placed within some fantastic forge and
