From Cordwainer Smith's classic short story "Mark Elf." Carlotta stared at the machine. It had legs like a grasshopper, a body like a ten-foot turtle, and thre

From Cordwainer Smith's classic short story "Mark Elf." Carlotta stared at the machine. It had legs like a grasshopper, a body like a ten-foot turtle, and three heads which moved restlessly in the moonlight. From the forward edge of the top shell a hidden arm leapt forth, seeming to strike at her, deadlier than a cobra, quicker than a jaguar, more silent than a bat flitting across the face of the moon. "Don't!" Carlotta screamed in German. The arm slopped suddenly in the moonlight. The stop was so sudden that the metal twanged like the string of a bow. The heads of the machine all turned toward her. Something like surprise seemed to overtake the machine. The whistling dropped down to a soothing purr. The electronic chatter burst up to a crescendo and then stopped. The machine dropped to its knees. Carlotta crawled over to it. Said she in German, "What are you?" "I am the death of all men who oppose the Sixth German Reich," said the machine in fluted singsong German. "If the Reichsangehoriger wishes to identify me, my model and number are written on my carapace." The machine knelt at a height so low that Carlotta could seize one of the heads and look in the moonlight at the edge of the top shell. The head and neck, though made of metal, felt much more weak and brittle than she expected. There was about the machine an air of immense age. "I can't see," wailed Carlotta. "I need a light." There was the ache and grind of long-unused machinery. Another mechanical arm appeared, dropping flakes of near-crystallized dirt as it moved. The tip of the arm exuded light, blue, penetrating, and strange. Brook, forest, small valley, machine, even herself, were all lit up by the soft penetrating blue light which did not hurt her eyes. The light even gave her a sense of well-being. With the light she could read. Traced on the carapace just above the three heads was this inscription: WAFFENAMT DES SECHSTEN DEUTSCHEN REICHES BURG EISENHOWER, A.D. 2495 And then below it in much larger Latin letters: MENSCHENJAGER MARK ELF