Kate Wilhelm - The Killer Thing

The dinghy skimmed close to the ground. There was the cottony sky overhead, with a glare that half filled it. There were the white cliffs and the black cliffs, and beyond them the white wool desert, interwoven with silver threads in a random pattern, where sky and land met like the inside of a flattened sphere. There were the gentle hills stretching endlessly as the winds tore down the mountains and deposited them grain by grain on the dunes. One day it would be a world of nothing but desert, a world of death and heat and glaring white desolation. It was like Tarbo, Trace thought. Once you understand it, you don’t leave it.

He circled the valley, gained altitude and speed and circled it again. He could see a small section of the robot where it had freed itself from the mountain of rocks and sand. It was a brilliant reflection that pained his eyes. He looked in on the robot then and when he turned the last time there was no way he could change his mind, no way he could stop. He felt nothing. He had known that he had to find the killer robot and destroy it. He had found two… “The war’s over for both of us, brother,” he murmured.

When the killer things met in a fiery embrace, the voices in his ears were singing.