CHAPTER 15

The end of the line for the lift was Sub-Level One, just beneath the

granite soil on which the Hive rested. Lloyd and Andra emerged there,

keeping close to their towering metal guide. Lloyd had only been to

the Brain a few times, with his father. He knew very little about its

operation. What he did know would have to suffice.

There was a sharp, hard click, as the Goon between them sprouted neat

metal cogs on its wheels. Then, the cogs fitting neatly along tread and

riser, it guided them down the steep staircase to Sub-Level Two. This

level was smaller than any in the Hive itself. A mere twenty-five feet

in height, it was filled completely with concrete and lead, save for

the ten-by-ten-foot space to which the stairs had led them. In the

center of this space was a circular door, on the floor near their feet.

The Goon could come no further.

"Orders," it said dispassionately, after lifting the heavy door with

one hand and guiding Lloyd to the brink of the gaping hole with the

other.

"Return to your squad, and forget where you have brought us."

"Orders."

"All orders conveyed."

The Goon rattled off into the darkness, and Lloyd heard it begin to

ascend the stairs once more. He felt for, and found, Andra's arm, and

drew her to him. "Careful, now," he cautioned her. "The Brain-control

chamber is right under us. We have a hundred-foot climb down a steel

ladder, now."

"But I can't see--!" Andra said, holding back.

"There's Light-of-Day below," Lloyd said. "As soon as we start into

the chamber, we'll be able to see. Ultrablack never goes on in the

Brain." He held her hand tightly as he felt for the top rung with his

toe. "Okay, now, I'm starting down. Come a little closer, and take your

weight off one leg. I'll guide that foot to the top rung."

Andra caught herself nodding in the blackness, and said "All right,"

aloud. She heard Lloyd's feet clumping onto something that clanged

dully, and then his hand was taking her gently by the ankle. She let

him place her foot on the rung, then gave him a moment to begin his own

descent before she followed after him. Three steps down, and she was

in bright Light-of-Day, on a shiny tubular ladder whose base looked

impossibly far below her. She shut her eyes and clung tightly to the

sides of the ladder, then, taking step by cautious step downwards. The

rungs, she'd noted, were just about a foot apart. She'd count to one

hundred, and if she hadn't reached the bottom by then, she would scream.

When she was just enumerating ninety-seven, Lloyd's hands took her by

the waist, and lifted her to the floor. She opened her eyes, disengaged

his hands from her body, and then looked around in awe.

* * * * *

Tier upon tier of lightweight metal scaffolding rose on all sides of a

twenty-foot-square area of flooring. Riveted across the angles of the

scaffolding were coils and condensors, insulators and sparking forks

of synaptic wiring, whirling cams and clattering selectors, banks of

glowing lights that danced on random pattern, deepset labyrinthine

nests of wire that glowed a brilliant orange, then faded to dull grey,

then glowed again, accompanied by a rising and falling hum of urgent

power.

As Andra's eyes followed the amazing array from ceiling to floor, she

was shocked to see that the flooring was not really the solid thing she

had supposed; it was, rather, a taut network of heavy cable, really

nothing more than a glorified windowscreen, through the interstices

of which she caught a vertiginous glimpse of more areas of bright

electrical light, dropping away below her feet to incredible distances.

"How big _is_ the Brain--?" she said to Lloyd, pulling her eyes from

the terror of the empty depths between the frameworks beneath the

cable-floor.

"A cubic mile," Lloyd said. "It's self-oiling, self-repairing,

self-replacing. And in it are stored all the memories of the Hive from

the day it was built."

He led her across the lattice-work flooring to a large flat panel,

on which a number of lights shone evenly, without change in their

asymmetrical pattern. Lloyd slid open a flat panel half-way down the

face of this instrument, and removed a flexible metal band. He sat in

the only chair in the chamber, directly before the open panel, and

began adjusting the band about the circumference of his head. Andra

eyed the metal band and the wires that led from it back into the

light-strewn panel with misgivings.

"What are you going to do, Lloyd?"

"Ask the Brain for some answers," he said. Lloyd flipped open the lid

of a small keyboard, and started to type, carefully: _What is the Hive?_

When he'd completed his question, he steadied himself in the chair,

closed his eyes, and pressed a small button at the side of the exposed

keyboard. Andra took a step back, quite startled as Lloyd stiffened

in the chair, his face twitching. Before his closed eyes, the lights

on the panel began to flicker on and off, dancing with incredible

intricacy, and a weird, high-pitched tootling and tweetling began to

echo through the chamber, through the scaffolding, through the entire

mechanism of the great Brain. Andra jammed her hands to her ears to

shut out the nerve-plucking noise. And then the lights blinked, held

steady, and the cacophony of the electronic mind cut off. Lloyd opened

his eyes.

"Well?" Andra said, going to him. "What happened?"

"It answered my question!" he said, with bitter disgust. "Told me the

population of the Hive, told me it had ten truncated conic tiers, with

ten levels in each tier, gave me the names of its officers, industries

and short, just about what _anybody_ in the Hive already knows!"

"All _that_," Andra marveled. "So quickly?"

"The Brain doesn't spell it out in words, Andra," Lloyd said ruefully.

"It implants the information instantaneously in your mind. When it's

implanted, the Brain stops feeding your brain, and you come out of the

information-cycle with a new _memory_. Except that, in this case, there

was nothing new to learn."

"If only your father had _completed_ his instructions."

Lloyd's hands, about to remove the headband while he pondered their

dilemma, froze in place, and he grunted in sudden wonder. "You don't

suppose," he said, shakily, "that _this_ is the question?!"

"W-what?" Andra asked, nervous before his excitement.

"What if the question should be, not _what_ is the Hive, but _why_ is

the Hive!" the young man gasped.

"Do you really think it could give you the _reasons_ for the Hive's

existence, the absence of hospitals, everything?"

"I don't know," said Lloyd, swiveling in the chair to face the keyboard

once more. "But I mean to find out...."

He typed, carefully, the words: _Why is the Hive?_ Andra stood and

watched, anxiously, as he depressed the starter-button beside the

keyboard again. Again the lights and the eerie whistlings of the Brain

arose in maddening crescendo all about her, while Lloyd twitched and

shuddered, his eyes clamped rigidly closed, in the chair. And then

there was calm again, and silence, and the lights ceased their dance.

Lloyd tore off the headband and spun to face Andra. His eyes were wide

with shock, and his jaw gaped imbecilically.

"Lloyd!" Andra took him by the shoulders and shook him, her heart

thudding painfully at the apprehension in her breast. "Lloyd, what is

it! What happened!"

He blinked, shook his head, and then seemed to see her for the first

time. His mouth worked, and then he said, "I _know_, Andra! I know what

the Hive is all about!"

"It must be terrible, something terrible," she said, frightened at his

intensity. "Your face--your eyes--"

"_No!_" he said. "Not terrible. Awesome, perhaps, and stunning, but not

terrible. Sit down, Andra. I'm going to tell you something that will

chill you to the bones--And you're going to _like_ what you hear."

* * * * *

The Presidential election of 1972 brought a landslide of votes for

the Democratic candidate, Lester Murdock. The Republican candidate,

Neal Ten Eyck, demanded a recount of the votes, as was by then the

custom of the loser in an election. Ten Eyck's request was, however,

not granted, due to a certain plank in Murdock's political platform.

Murdock's prime contention was for a return to Real Democracy, a thing

possible among such a widely scattered population because of the

enormous advances in electronic communications. Murdock insisted that

his vote-by-machine plank must have its chance to be put into effect,

first, and then Ten Eyck could have his recount, one which could not be

further gainsaid.

The country was strongly behind Murdock in his insistence on this

point, all the thoughtful voters being oversated with what news

agencies referred to as the "crybaby" attitude of political losers. In

vain did Ten Eyck protest the plan.

"It will not be a recount," he deplored, in a nationwide television

speech. "It will be a brand-new election, involving me, the candidate

who has had no chance to perform, and Mr. Murdock, the candidate who

will already have fulfilled a major campaign promise!" Ten Eyck's

words went unheeded, as he had gloomily suspected they would, and all

across the nation, automatic vote-machines were installed, to the

amount of one machine per hundred citizens. When a disgruntled Ten Eyck

refused outright to even have his name flashed on the ballot-screens,

Murdock changed the initiation of the new machines to a simple

Vote-of-Confidence Ballot, and received a ninety percent return,

ten percent being either undecided or abstaining. Ten Eyck, shortly

afterward, resigned from politics and retired to a ranch in the Pacific

Northwest, to write his memoirs. A severe electrical storm in that

area set fire to the house when he was just short of completing his

manuscript, and every last page was destroyed. Ten Eyck himself was

away at the time, and declared, in an interview with reporters just

outside the blazing house to which he had returned on hearing of the

disaster, that he was also retiring from the field of literature.

News of the storm and fire only became more support for a secondary

plank in Murdock's platform, weather control. He was glad of the

opportunity the fire had given him to move smoothly into this next

facet of national development, and his intimates informed newsmen--not

for publication--that Murdock was secretly glad to have his program

"rise like a phoenix from Ten Eyck's fire."

This phase of his three-plank platform proved quite troublesome. The

most learned scientists of the world informed him that weather could,

indeed, be influenced by the detonation of nuclear weapons in strategic

locales, but so far, the influence was all to the bad. The three new

radiation belts developed since 1961 were doing unexpected things to

the balance of the ionosphere, and this in turn was affecting the jet

streams high in the atmosphere, with a consequent unpredictability as

to prevailing movements of large air masses over the globe. In short,

the weather had become prankish, balky, and not a little ferocious

in parts, with longer, colder winters, manic-depressive summers, and

a gradual disappearance of the spring and fall seasons altogether.

Ordinary grounding devices, such as lightning rods in rural areas, were

no longer sufficient conductors for the wild electrical potentials

building up in air and soil, because of the increased activity of free

electrons in the atmosphere. A mild storm did not exist, anymore. The

norm had become intense blankets of snow, or torrents of rain, and a

continued rise in wind velocities and destruction by lightning.

* * * * *

"The time has come," Murdock therefore addressed the nation in his

State-of-the-Union speech, "to stop talking about the weather, and _do_

something about it!" What he proposed doing, in view of the scientists'

disclaimer to be able to control, even slightly, the crescendoing

perils of wind and water, was to develop a form of housing that would

be impervious to the weather. "When there are too many flies to swat,"

he said, in his famous concluding line, "you put up windowscreens!"

Forthwith, every physical scientist in the country began work on the

project, the prize being--not the usual medal of commendation and

Presidential handshake; Murdock knew people better than that--one

million dollars, tax-free. Within six months, Leonard Surbo, a

laboratory technician at DuPont, had discovered a method of uniting

the helium and oxygen atoms in a continuous chain, by means of

super-induced valence, in which the solitary two electrons of the

helium atom were joined into the minus-two gaps in two adjoining oxygen

atoms, the other gap in each oxygen ring being filled with one electron

from adjoining helium atoms, and so on, literally _ad infinitum_. This

new compound, Helox, was found to be veritably unbreakable, yet weighed

one-sixth less than magnesium, its nearest strength-plus-lightness

competitor. There was some haggling from DuPont as to whether Surbo,

who had, after all, used their facilities in his search for the new

compound, should receive the million dollars. This was ameliorated

nicely by President Murdock, who promised them, in lieu of the lost

million, the billion-dollar government contract to put Helox into

full-scale production, which DuPont gladly accepted.

Here again Murdock's program ran into a snag. The delicate processing

required to produce Helox put the final cost of the compound at a

rate-per-ounce only less than that of pure platinum; the average

citizen, indeed, the above-average citizen, would be hard-pressed to

afford so much as a windowsill's worth, let alone a complete dwelling.

Murdock called his advisory staff together for an emergency session

immediately. They remained _in camera_ with the President for three

days, meals being sent in from outside. At the end of this time,

Murdock emerged from the conference room with a three-day stubble

flanking his best successful smile, and--after being cleaned up for

public exposition--appeared once more on television with his radical

Common-Wall Program.

The gist of it was this: A man in a one-room house needed four walls.

Two men, in two one-room houses, needed but seven, if the common wall

were shared. Four needed but twelve, and so on. Each time, the amount

needed per individual decreased, as more men were included in the

building program. What Murdock planned, therefore, was the erection

of--not a mere housing development--but an entire city of Helox.

It would be a closed unit, one which would serve all man's needs,

self-lighted, self-darkening, air-conditioned, and equipped with the

newest air-water-mineral reclaiming devices which could be used in the

manufacture of synthetic foodstuffs for the people of the city.

* * * * *

The enormous expense of such an undertaking was put to a Congressional

vote, and roundly vetoed. Murdock, not to be swung from his determined

path, had the motion put to a direct vote by the American people, via

the vote-machines. This time, he received a ninety-five percent vote,

all votes in favor of the new indestructible city. For the first time,

members of Congress realize that their power in the land was standing

on legs of gelatin, and an emergency session was called, to determine

whether or not Murdock's actions called for impeachment.

Murdock attended the meeting, and waited until all the complaints and

recriminations had been voiced. And then he put it to the Congress:

What need had a Real Democracy of representation at all, when each

citizen could vote directly on all governmental proposals? He terrified

them at the thought of putting such a proposal to the people

immediately, when their removal from office was so certain. Then, when

every face in the assembly was pale with apprehension, the familiar

fatherly smile overrode Murdock's features, and he offered them all, at

the end of their term, a permanent retirement plan, at full salary, for

each of them, and for their subsequent first-born lineal descendants.

Congress, knowing when it was licked--and not much disliking the

prospect of eternal security--voted in favor of his plan, with the one

stipulation that such income should be forever tax-free, a codicil to

which Murdock smilingly ascribed.

Production began soon afterwards, on Murdock's indestructible city.

It was to hold a maximum of ten million people, one hundred tiers

of humanity in all the comfort and safety the mind of man could

devise. And again, a snag delayed the plan of Lester Murdock. It

proved, however, to be a minor one: With each Level of the city to be

constructed to a minimum height of fifty feet (any lower would impair

the efficiency of the air-conditioning), the total height would be

nearly one mile. At such ghastly distances above the earth, the workmen

would need specially heated clothing, oxygen equipment, superior

safety-belts for themselves and their gear, miles of roads and parking

facilities to make their getting to and from the job possible in a

minimum of wasted time--A hundred troublesome details, all of which

would serve to impede progress tremendously.

* * * * *

Murdock, after much thought, was equal to the problem. The city, he

stated, would be built in ten parts, no one part, therefore, being more

than five hundred feet high. Then, when all sections were completed,

they would be _flown_ to a common site, stacked like flapjacks, and

the necessary inter-sectional connections made for the water and

electrical conduits, elevators, and the like. The light weight of

each section made such a plan almost feasible, except that it would

necessitate the loss of nearly one complete level to house the vast

rockets which would do the moving. Murdock and his staff conferred,

and then found that, with a slight change in the blueprints, the

intended million-per-section of people could still be housed,

central rocket-section or not, by the addition of a very few extra

feet of radius to the ten-level sections. His plan was endorsed by

the engineers when it was found that such an extension brought the

overall dimension of the section into accordance with the necessary

lift-surface areas for the proposed flying city.

* * * * *

That the city would take its well-earned place among the wonders of the

world, Murdock had no doubt; that he would still be in office at the

time of its completion was extremely unlikely, since, even at maximum

speeds of construction, it would be impossible to do it in less than

twenty-five years. There was nothing to do but put it to a vote of all

the people.

Murdock worded his proposition, however, with the canny instinct for

outguessing human nature which had brought him to his present estate:

While supposedly stressing the fact that a continuing Presidential

program even after the man was out of office was unprecedented, he

actually made it known by his phrasing of the proposition that such

an extension would divide the contingent tax-bite per citizen into

twenty-five painless morsels, rather than the four rather large gulps

they would have had to swallow during his tenure.

Political savants say that it was this latter point which strongly

influenced the resounding pro-vote from the people. Be this as it may,

work on the incomparable city was begun. Once the program had been

inaugurated, the thing was out of Murdock's hands, and he began working

upon his third plank at once.

Neutrality had become the bugbear of political ambition by 1968. The

collapse of the John Birch movement in 1965, during the nationwide

riots which sprang up during that bloody year, had still not removed

one of the foremost contentions of that organization, to wit: One must

either be _pro_-American or _anti_. The idea of any citizen being

indifferent to the success or failure of a government proposal was

distasteful to the masses, and this feeling grew in intensity up until

the year of Murdock's election. It is said that this was the prime

factor in his being elected, that he declared an end to "wishy-washy

Americanism, once and for all". Very shortly after the beginning of

work on the indestructible city, therefore, Murdock put the following

proposition to a vote:

"_Proposed: That political apathy be put to an end by means of

the removal of the 'Undecided' element in the national vote, by

demanding that each citizen miss no more than three votes in any

quarter of the year, or have his voting privilege revoked until

such time as he be declared, by competent authority, of a more

civic-minded turn of inclination._"

This poll was not as sweeping a one as those formerly called for

by the President. It split at approximately seventy-to-thirty

percent, in favor of the proposition. The salient fact that such a

vote was patently unfair to the people whom it would most directly

influence--the nonvoters--seemed to escape everybody. And so the

proposition became a bill, and was duly appended to the Constitution of

the United States, becoming Article XXVIII.

* * * * *

All voting machines in the country were forthwith modified to allow

only a vote of _pro_ or _con_ to be registered. Murdock's promised

platform was on its way to completion, and the old gentleman

settled back for a restful remainder of his tenure, thinking up

approaches to the public fancy in the upcoming election of 1976.

This being the bicentennial anniversary of the founding of the

country, he toyed with ideas of a simple wave-the-flag, rah-rah-rah,

Cornwallis-to-Khruschev-victory sort of campaign that would stun

the sensibilities of the simple-minded, and dim the doubts of

country-loving thinkers. He was in the process of drawing up such a

campaign, and had just placed a question mark in parentheses after the

words "Fireworks at the Rally" when his unexpected and fatal cerebral

hemorrhage caught him in mid-pen-stroke, and Lester Murdock fell dead

across his desk.

* * * * *

Wiley Connors, the Vice President, after being duly sworn into office,

scrapped all of Murdock's plans and began building his own political

platform for the election of 1976, barely a year off. He thought it

was time once again to hit the older voters--geriatrics was doing

wonders for longevity since the new drug, Protinose, made possible

the stimulation of new growth of active cells in liver, kidneys, and

pancreas--where they lived: Free medical care. It had failed in the

past, but at that time there were not enough old voters to carry it.

Now, with no Congressional meddling (the Senators and House members

who were still in office considered the job a sinecure), and the

vote-machines making a genuine voice-of-the-people possible, it might

keep the tide flowing toward the Democratic Party in the upcoming fall.

At this time, Lloyd Bodger, who had been Speakster of the House during

Murdock's tenure, and was now Vice President of the country, was

stricken in his office by an onslaught of what was first diagnosed

as a perforated ulcer, but on the operating table was discovered to

be duodenal cancer. The extensive inroads of the malignancy made

its removal impossible without terminating the life of the patient,

so a new method of treatment was attempted. A length of heavy lead

foil, plastic-coated, and impregnated with radium, was wound about

the infested area and the incision was closed. In theory, while the

lead foil shielded Bodger's organs from the radium, the radium could

bathe the malignant cells alone in its deadly emanations. This method,

heretofore theorized but never tried, was the last hope of saving

Bodger's life. In three weeks, at which time the malignancy should

be gone, Bodger underwent surgery once more for the removal of the

foil. The malignancy, it was found, had vanished as hoped, but an

unexpected development had occurred. In some manner, the cell structure

of Bodger's spleen and pancreas had been affected by the irradiation

to the extent that the blood cells and insulin respectively formed by

these organs were abnormal.

The iron in the hemoglobin was found to be radioactive to the ratio

of one part in five million, and on the increase, while the insulin

was contaminated with a change of the carbon atom in the molecule

to Carbon-14, the two developments making a high concentration of

radiation near the thoracic cavity, a slight rise in which could prove

fatal.

Bodger was put on a special diet which included a daily intake of five

hundred cubic centimeters of cadmium-gel, the doctors hoping that the

radiation-absorption of the cadmium would keep physical deterioration

to a minimum. The best prognosis they could agree upon for Bodger,

however, was six more months of life.

* * * * *

Before the predicted period ended, though, Bodger insisted he felt

improved, and wished to return to his job. Permission was granted

provisionally: Just one sign of radiation sickness and Bodger was to

be replaced as Vice President, and to submit himself to medical care

in a sanitarium for the time left to him. Bodger agreed to this, and

was released. In six months' time, with the fall election just over

the horizon, he was again reexamined, and a startling fact came to

light: The incision from the two previous operations had healed without

a scar, and Bodger was found to be in a better state of health than

most of his doctors. Whatever property in the ferric emanations was

able to cause the death of body tissue was not doing it; instead, it

was destroying only those chemical compounds which inhibit, retard,

or prevent proper cellular functioning. In effect, Bodger's body--not

unlike vacuum-wrapped radiated foodstuffs--was incorruptible. He would

never grow older.

* * * * *

On learning this news, Bodger made a request of the President. He

wanted Wiley Connors to put him in charge of the still-incomplete

city-building project, postulating that an incorruptible man was the

likely one to see the project completed. While agreeing to some extent,

Connors counter-stipulated that Bodger be second-in-command, and that

he be forbidden, by law, to ever take higher office, lest he become

overcome by the magnitude of his power in the city. Bodger readily

agreed, stating that he'd just as soon be under the head of the city,

since "no one ever tries assassinating a vice president".

By September of that year, then, Bodger was fully in charge of the

city, which the workers had humorously dubbed "The Hive", because

of its proposed final shape, multitude of inner cells, and the

vast population-to-be. That fall, Wiley Connors was elected by an

overwhelming majority, and put his medical-care plan into immediate

effect.

The years between then and the year 2000, the time-of-completion year

for the Hive, were uneventful in import, but unsettling in degree. The

weather was now the primal topic of conversation everywhere. During the

intervening five Presidential terms (Wiley Connors had successfully

campaigned for a second term on the strength of the popularity of his

free medical-care program), the government was forced to clamp down

on newscasts of storm disasters, lest a national panic be started.

This was feasible only if the damage were to minor rural areas; news

stories of items like the destruction of Kansas City by lightning, in

1987, were impossible to suppress. As a direct result of this appalling

disaster, a successful international nuclear-test ban was agreed upon,

the first real progress in that area since the late nineteen-forties.

Whether this major co-operative decision had come too late remained to

be seen.

It was during the term of President Andrew Barnaby, just before the

election of 2000, that the Hive was completed. The newsreel shots of

the ten flying city-sections were the most thoroughly viewed of any

prior television programs, including the four unsuccessful moon-shots

in the attempt, early in the eighties, to build a lunar city. The site

of the city's permanent location was a plateau high in the Rockies,

at a point a few hundred miles south-by-southeast of Seattle. The

reason for the choice of site was the location of the world's largest

mechanical brain at that point; the running of the million-and-one

functional parts of the Hive could not be left to the uncertainties

of a human agency. It would have required the full time of a tenth of

the population of the Hive to keep its multitude of lights, elevators,

communication-systems, synthesizers, air-conditioners, and power units

in coordinated operation. The job of running the Hive was turned over

to the Brain, completely.

* * * * *

That any damage could occur to the Brain was impossible, President

Barnaby pointed out to the nation during the gala inauguration

ceremonies of the indestructible city. When the threat of nuclear

war still hung over the world, he told his listeners, the Brain was

prudently constructed in the heart of the mountain on which the Hive

now rests, its entrance being protected by a ceiling twenty-five feet

thick, of concrete and lead, which could close hermetically tight and

successfully block any power in possession of civilized man. Further,

the Brain was self-sustaining, needed no maintenance, and possessed

enough electronic memory-cells to record a complete history of mankind

for a millennium to come.

The ceremonies completed, and Lloyd Bodger installed as

second-in-command to a city that as yet had no first-in-command, but

one thing remained to be done: Populate the city. And here again, the

dream of Lester Murdock ran into an unexpected snag: The first million

people selected to dwell in the Hive were hospitalized in a week's

time, due to a mass outbreak of what the nation's foremost doctors

diagnosed as a combination of claustrophobia and anthrophobia, a sort

of panic at the thought of being sealed into something with a vast

throng of people. In vain did Bodger and Barnaby try to point out the

benefits of the Hive: It was never too hot, never too cold, spacious,

airy, bright, and a strong element of ultraviolet in the lighting

made the breeding of disease germs impossible. It was a paradise of

scientific achievements; anybody should be happy to live there.

Both men being persuasive to the extreme, another wave of determined

urbanites was installed in the Hive, people specially selected

for their acute mental balance, plus an emotional tendency toward

seclusiveness. The result, while it took a month to develop this time,

was the same. The United States apparently had a multi-billion-dollar

white elephant on its hands. Even Barnaby, in one last attempt to sway

the public, taking them on a televised tour of the wonderous city, was

taken by a sudden spasm of fright, and dropped his hand-microphone from

fingers that trembled violently. His shouted groan to his guards,

"Get me out! Get me _out_ of here--!" had a devastating adverse

effect on the public psychology, and Barnaby--smart enough to know

that the unthinking public would blame him personally for Murdock's

program--tactfully withdrew his name from the ballot for the upcoming

election, in order that his party might have a fighting chance to

win. The city of Helox, the magnificent Hive, seemed doomed to lie

untenanted high in the mountains until the crack of doom.

And then Bodger--who alone was unaffected by the Hive, perhaps due

to his ingrained _rapport_ with things which were destined to live

forever--thought of children. "Why not," he begged the American

people in a telecast which was Barnaby's last official concession to

the development of the Hive, "let me have the orphans, the unwanted

children of the nation! A child's psychology cries out for what the

Hive can offer. Freedom from adult supervision, the chance to blend

with a group conformity, all the while having the secure feelings

of guaranteed food and shelter." The ensuing Vote was split almost

directly down the middle; not enough to carry the proposition, yet

not enough to quell it. The difficulty became apparent when a mass

gathering of educators converged on Washington, bitterly protesting

Bodger's plan. The nub was that no provision had been made for the

children's minds; nor, they insisted, _could_ be, since the Hive's

peculiar effect on adults precluded the presence of teachers. And

commuting to an exterior locale for schooling was defeating the whole

scheme of the Hive: self-sufficiency.

* * * * *

"If that is the sole objection," Bodger informed the leaders of this

group, "it can be overcome with ease. Have you all forgotten the

gigantic pool of knowledge encased in the Brain beneath the Hive,

more knowledge than any three of you possess in concert? Schooling

can be direct from the Brain, tapping its near-endless informational

resources."

The educators, partially won over, still insisted that such a plan

removed the personal touch from education. The individual child would

not be able to question the Brain when things proved too difficult for

comprehension, nor would there be opportunity for after-school meetings

with teachers for discussion of individual difficulties.

"But we will _have_ teachers," said Bodger. "Robots, each one able to

tap the Brain for information, yet each a separate individual, able to

cope with the children one by one."

If such a thing were possible, the educators said after consultation

among themselves, they would endorse his program. Bodger thanked them,

and immediately polled the scattered manufacturers of simple household

robots to see if such an electronic educator might be constructed.

Until that date, robotry was a minor line of business, there being

little demand for anything in the robot-line more complex than a

story-teller, or automatic floor-cleaner, or traffic-director. Bodger,

stressing the great number of such creatures necessary in the Hive,

prevailed upon these individual manufacturers to produce a robot that

could combine all the essential features of a teacher: Mobility,

loquacity, authority, and impressive personal appearance. These were

achieved easily, by the respective use of wheels, speakers, abnormal

height, and then the addition of telelensic "eyes", flexible metal

"arms", and a non-functional, but esthetically necessary "neck" beneath

the eye-bearing section, to prevent the robots' looking like ambulant

bank-vaults. In a year's time (during which Barnaby's party won the

election by a narrow margin, putting Malcolm Frade into office), the

robots were duly built, conveyed to the Hive, and their controls

coordinated with the direction-centers of the Brain, and a record five

million children, either orphans, children of parents who thought this

would better their offsprings' lives, or just plain unwanted children,

were brought to, and settled comfortably into Units of, the Hive. The

educators, however, demanded that a one-year trial period be given

the Hive as an in-living school system, at the end of which time the

children would each be tested at the educational level of their current

ages to determine whether or not Bodger's program was a success.

When the year was half-over, however, a new and extremely necessary

scientific discovery made abrupt mockery of the very existence of the

Hive. A simply-generated protective force-field was invented by the

technical staff at General Motors, one which would enable every person

in the world to own a weather-, wind-, bomb- or anything-else-proof

home.

Helox stocks, which had been unsteady since the first failure at

tenanting the Hive, nose-dived into oblivion, and wiped out the

fortunes of a great many people. Angry and vengeful meetings were

held shortly afterward, across the nation, and a national vote was

called for to determine whether "our children should be held veritable

prisoners in a structure whose uses are already archaic!"

* * * * *

When President Frade, an unexcitable man, logically refused to take

action against a government project whose failure might completely

undermine an already shaky confidence in his, or any, administration,

mobs were formed, and great numbers of people converged from all points

of the continental United States to put a stop to the Hive. The leaders

of the growing army of angry citizens had more sense than to attack the

Hive itself; Helox, unpopular or not, was already in use nationally in

an expensive series of ashtrays, pocket combs, and other small items,

and was known, by general experience, to be as indestructible as had

been claimed by its proponents. They would strike, instead, at the

robots who taught the children. "When they're all gone bust," one of

the rabble-rousers cried to his impromptu constituency, "Bodger'll

_have_ to let the kids go. He can't keep 'em there if they don't get no

learning!"

The lowest level of the Hive, of course, was readily accessible, by a

multitude of air-lock type entrances, or populating its vast interior

would have taken incredible lengths of time. Bodger, alerted by Frade

of the oncoming mobs (aside from a direct line to Washington, there was

no contact between Hive inmates and the outer world), who were too

great in number for the militia to control without actually destroying

the misguided people, begged for the use of a strictly military weapon

of the time, Feargas, to drive the mobs away. Frade, being dubious as

to the advisability of giving the nation's best weapon into the hands

of so desperate a man, insisted that the gas be installed, instead,

into the robots themselves, to put its use at the discretion of the

mechanical Brain, not Bodger's.

Bodger pleaded that such a move, while salutary, would take too much

time. Mobs were already reported within a few miles of the mountain

region at which the Hive stood. He demanded that paratroops armed with

the gas be dropped near the Hive at once, or he would take desperate

steps. Frade refused to contemplate such a deployment of troops in

such shaky international times. Altercations in the UN were rising in

bitterness, and the country had to be constantly on its guard. Its

military manpower must be used in defense of its shores, not for such

"petty intramural squabbles". Frade further suggested that Bodger put

his synthesizers to work on the manufacture of the gas; he could not

be bothered further with the problem, being already overdue to attend

a meeting of the UN General Assembly, to speak words of encouragement

against the dangerous rumblings in the Far East. Bodger, insisting

on his rights, found himself speaking into a dead phone. Re-dialling

brought the enraging information that the President had already left

the White House and was not available for the rest of the afternoon.

Bodger immediately left his office in the top level of the Hive and

descended directly to the barracks of the robot-teachers in Sub-Level

One, thence through the lead-concrete level to the Brain-control

chamber, where he put his problem, via the automatic coding-keyboard,

to the Brain itself. Its answer came immediately: A step-up of the

robots' disciplinary powers.

* * * * *

In lieu of a hickory switch, or yardstick--either one a decided menace

to life in powerful metal hands--the robot-teachers were equipped

with mild sonic-beams which could jog the most torpid student into

instant and quaking attention, by creating a powerful muscle-spasm

throughout the body. These vibratory flagella had a maximum-time limit

of one-fifth of a second; longer playing of the beam would be dangerous

in the extreme. The Brain suggested that, for the duration of the

emergency, the robots be given full scope of this beam. Bodger agreed

conditionally: While a phalanx of robots held off the mobs with the

beam, the remainder of them should be equipped with Feargas nozzles and

the newly developed force-field, to preclude any further incidents of

anti-Hive movements from cropping up this way.

The Brain instantly revoked limitation-orders regarding the

sonic-beams, set in motion the manufacturing and synthesizing forces

which would produce the field and the gas jets on the bodies of those

robots not sent to participate in the oncoming battle outside the Hive,

and then, when the single phalanx had gone out to meet the approaching

mass of angry humanity, sealed over every entrance to the Hive with

tight-fitting partitions of pure Helox.

That this should have been the same day on which global hostility

reached its peak was unforeseeable; the fact remains, however,

that--forty-five minutes after the sealing of the Hive, at a time when

the mobs and the beam-flashing robots were just meeting in brutal

conflict--an international nuclear war of one hour's duration broke

out, and at the end of that time, the only life remaining on the face

of the Earth was that within the Hive, the rest of the planet being

bathed in smoke, fire, and the cold flames of deadly radiation. When

Bodger had returned to his office to view the battle outside through

his private telescreen, where robots and mankind had met, on the

scorched plateau outside the city walls, could only be discerned a

pitifully few random mounds of molten slag and smoldering cinders. The

Brain, seeing the devastation through the same circuits that brought

the scene to Bodger's eyes, knew at once that President Frade must

have perished in the holocaust, which meant that the Hive no longer

possessed a first-in-command to act as a balance against Bodger's

rule. It flashed on the proposition screens a demand for an immediate

election of a new President, to be selected from the inmates of the

Hive.

And the screens went blank as the Brain's circuits rejected the

proposal: No one in the Hive was the necessary thirty-five years of

age. The Brain, arguing with its own circuits, then declared that,

to obviate any longer wait than necessary for a President, the first

inmate to achieve the age of thirty-five would be elected by automatic

default of the others. Bodger, trying in vain to give orders to the

Brain from his office, descended in the lift to discover that the great

lead-concrete barrier was closed, and the Brain-control chamber was out

of reach of any human agency.

He, and the five million children in the Hive, were its prisoners

for--the eldest children admitted being in their tenth year--a quarter

of a century.

* * * * *

Late in 2026, on November 12th, his thirty-fifth birthday, Fredric

Stanton was elected President of the Hive. By now, the Hive's

population was nearly at the ten million mark, most of the children

marrying in their late teens. In order to have the weddings properly

performed, the Brain had sent crews of robots to modify the ancient

rocket engines on the fifth level of each section, turning the firing

chamber into a vast temple, and the enormous thrust-tubes into long

arcades by means of which the inmates of each sector could enter and

leave. A modification of the robot-teacher, modeled on the Brain's

inbuilt memories of church hierarchies, was built into the base of the

central dais of each temple, a plan further designed to combine the

citizens' need to worship with their love of country, thereby making

treason not only illegal, but immoral, in the people's emotions. On

the day of Stanton's inauguration, the secondary sub-level gaped wide

once more, permitting the new President to familiarize himself with the

entire setup of the Hive.

Lloyd Bodger, being a sensible man, did not protest this election. His

twenty-five year impotency to command had nearly maddened him, and he

saw that only so long as there was a President would he have any say-so

whatsoever in matters of government in the Hive. Some of Stanton's

propositions, in the subsequent four years of his first term, were not

to Bodger's liking, but he was unable to fight against the Vote of the

Kinsmen (a Stanton-suggested title, since the flavor of the word held

more unity than simply "citizen", and was analogous, besides, to the

close-knit status of the Hive's inmates), especially when such Votes

were initially stimulated into _pro_-votes by Stanton's control of the

Temple Speaksters.

By now, of course, memory of life outside the Hive was a dim phantasm

to most of the inmates, and the idea of living anywhere else would

have appalled them. The robots did all the heavy labor, patrolled the

streets in super-efficient anti-crime campaigns, and possessed enough

knowledge--via the Brain--to make a lot of fact-learning superfluous.

The one insuperable problem was population. Stanton knew that ten

million was the ultimate amount the Brain-controlled Hive could care

for with maximum efficiency. Yet the disease-controlled nature of the

Hive made normal life-expectancy far higher than at any time in man's

history. Something had to be done.

To this end, Stanton did not wish to consult the Brain. He knew too

well its Gordian-knot methods of solving problems. It might simply make

it law that no one be allowed to live beyond a certain age, and Stanton

was--save for Bodger--the oldest person in the Hive. So he swallowed

his natural distrust of the second-in-command, and asked his help in

finding a means to control the situation.

There was, at that time, a central hospital in the Hive, located on

the fiftieth and fifty-first levels. Bodger, not wishing to formulate

a law that might be detrimental to any particular Kinsman's status in

the Hive, decided that the best method of "unnatural selection" should

be one involving an area of chance: Sick or injured people would be

taken to new hospitals built _outside_ the Hive (ostensibly to obviate

the dangers of contagion). The radiation count was still deadly enough

out there to destroy any such unfortunates for the next thirty years,

but the Kinsmen need not be told this. It was cruel, but--until life

outside the Hive was once again possible--it was the only way of

preserving the lives of the ten million the Hive could accommodate.

* * * * *

"It's murderous," Bodger told Stanton, "and I hate being the man to set

it up. But--I'm like the captain of a ship, having to destroy the lives

of some in order to make rescue possible for the others. It must be

done, and--though I abhor this cruel means--I can see no other way."

The measure was put into effect, and worked well for a span of three

years. Then certain members of the populace began to question the

non-return of hospitalized Kinsmen, and Stanton, after a hot argument

with Bodger, put through his Readjustment Bill, proclaiming that any

act of treason against the Hive would result in hospitalization for the

agitator, in which psychotherapy might restore his sense of values. In

short: Anyone who said a word against the hospitals would be sent there.

Open resistance ceased the same day the bill was passed.

It was shortly after this time that Bodger--in his nineties,

actually, but possessing the health and appearance of a greying

forty-year-old--fell in love with his personal secretary, Miss

Patricia Arland, and was married to her in a private ceremony before

President Stanton--Bodger did not like the Speaksters, which were,

after all, only Stanton-via-machine, and had insisted on eliminating

"the middle-robot"--and in a year's time she bore him a son, Lloyd

Bodger, Junior, in Bodger's private Unit, since he stated (solely for

the Kinsmen's benefit) that the child had arrived unexpectedly, and his

wife had been unable to make the trip to the outlying maternity wing of

the exterior hospitals.

For obvious reasons, it had been impossible to have a maternity

hospital in which all the patients perished; the "wing" of the main

hospital was, in actuality, the only genuinely functioning part of that

structure, and was sealed off against the still-rampant radiation.

(The entire staff there was robotic, of course.) Bodger however, did

not trust Stanton to the extent of leaving his wife and forthcoming

child in the hands of Stanton's metallic minions, hence his decision

to have his wife bear their first-born child at home, a decision

that--due to lack of proper medical equipment in the Unit--cost her

her life. Bodger, not quite irrationally, blamed Stanton for the loss

of his wife, and their relationship thenceforth--never on a good

basis--sundered abruptly into a strictly-business proposition.

The heart had gone out of Bodger, however, with the death of his wife,

and Stanton found he could allow the old man much more latitude than

he'd have formerly dared, even to the extent of allowing him the newly

created job of Secondary Speakster, to take the more humdrum phases of

that task out of Stanton's hands.

Other of Stanton's bills were proposed and adopted without any more

protest from Bodger, who devoted himself almost entirely to the

upbringing of his son. The draft bill (to help fight an imaginary war),

the marriage-by-twenty-five bill, the designated-areas bill--These and

others were put to a Vote, and always carried. Stanton was supreme

ruler of the Hive.

The one thing he could not delete from the Brain--to his eternal

frustration--was the four-year tenure of the Presidential office. Nor

could he sway the Brain's insistence on a maximum of two terms for a

man. The only hope for him lay in the Brain's utter disregard of time,

a factor hard to root out in a thinking apparatus which was virtually

timeless. Stanton therefore declared that henceforth, a "Presidential

year" should be a total of five trips of the Earth around the sun. The

Brain, not seeing what possible difference this could make, so long as

the letter of Article XXII was observed, ratified his proposition, and

Stanton--on his second election--had a cozy twenty-year term stretching

out before him. In that space of time, he hoped to circumvent,

somehow, the inflexible attitude of the Brain toward the hope of his

third term.

* * * * *

By the tenth actual year of his second term, radiation in the area had

decreased greatly (the mountainous areas had been least affected by the

nuclear war), and Stanton dreamed up an innovation to Hive-living that

might stem the sensed-but-not-overt atmosphere of discontent among the

Kinsmen toward the administration: Tourgyros.

These flying ships would take the Kinsmen soaring out of the Hive,

flying above a carefully prepared route that would show them nothing

but green valleys, blue skies, and of course the "main hospital", from

high enough in the air to preclude their noting it was an empty shell.

(Patients had not been taken there to die for years, since the slow

lessening of radiation had become apparent; they were fed directly to

the disrupting incinerators, to provide fodder for the synthesizers.)

This squelched quite a large number of rumor-mongers, and the Hive

buzzed with peaceful tranquility for nearly a decade, since the

Hive-raised Kinsmen found themselves just as uneasy in the wide-open

outdoors as their forebears had been in the celled confines of the

Hive.

Then, in 2026, between the hours of five and six-thirty P.M. on the

second day of June, an untoward event occurred: All power to the Hive

was cut off for that crucial hour-and-a-half, due to an error on the

part of Fredric Stanton. In the Brain-control chamber, just after

asking the Brain itself to solve the problem of the means by which

he could be reelected (a device to which he found himself reduced

after nearly two decades of futile scheming), he slipped from the

chair before the control panel, and tore loose the wiring leading to

the encephalographic metal band upon his head. The Brain, sending

information to a point to which it was no longer connected, created

a synaptic syndrome in itself, and flared with enough power to throw

every circuit-breaker in its cubic miles of wiring. Instantly, the

robots ceased walking the streets, the lifts jammed to a halt,

and Light-of-Day flickered and went out, being replaced by, not

power-generated Ultrablack, but simple inter-Hive darkness.

The reason that period was crucial was that Jacob Corby was just at

that moment about to be dropped into the maw of the incinerator chute.

When blackness fell, and his robot-captors went slack-jointed and limp,

he made his stumbling way back to his Unit, told his daughter Andra

the truth of the often-rumored situation in the Hive, then fled for the

life he knew would be forfeit if he were caught again when Light-of-Day

returned. The lifts being useless, he had many tens of levels to

descend on foot, in his attempt to reach the entrance-level of the

Hive, hoping the sealed entrances would be disempowered by the Brain's

unprecedented failure. But, since he was already a sick man when he had

been "taken for hospitalization" in the first place, his heart gave out

three levels short of his goal, and the restoration of Light-of-Day

brought robots to his side to complete the job which the power failure

had interrupted.

* * * * *

But Andra knew the truth, knew it for a fact. And in her career as an

actress, she had fallen in with people of imagination and artistry,

people who could envision and believe the terrible truth she had to

tell. Together with her newly-gathered band, she determined to do

something to wake the Kinsmen up to their danger. This information was

received by Fredric Stanton through the agency of Robert Lennick, the

fiance of Andra Corby. The President instructed Lennick to continue as

an apparent member of the movement, that it might be destroyed--not at

its weak inception--but when it felt most assured of success. That,

felt Stanton, would undermine for a long time any subsequent attempts

at well-thought-out revolt. Impromptu revolts were easy to control.

Then Andra Corby herself received an injury suitable for the demand of

its immediate treatment, and was taken into custody. She escaped from

custody by using a corridor through which the robots could not follow.

This situation was cleared up by use of a robot squad to widen that

corridor, but Andra Corby is still at large.

Results of the fifteen-year-old draft-age Vote showed that the son

of Lloyd Bodger, Lloyd Bodger, Junior selected _con_ in the Vote.

President Stanton was so advised....

* * * * *

"You haven't told me everything," Andra said, when Lloyd had finished.

"What, for instance, was the Brain's answer to Stanton's query about a

third term? He must have asked it again, when that head-harness thing

was repaired...."

"There's no record of his having asked it again," Lloyd said. "For

some reason, he only asked it the once, and when the Brain overloaded

and cut its own power, he didn't get the answer. I can only theorize,

there. Perhaps he thought that the sudden surge of electrical power was

intended for him, to fry his brains inside his head, and was afraid to

ask it again.... Or perhaps he _got_ the answer, but the overload on

the Brain erased the information from its memory-cells, accidentally."

"And what about your father?" Andra persisted. "For a man the Brain

calls indestructible, he looked awfully sick a few minutes ago."

Lloyd nodded thoughtfully. "The Brain didn't tell me anything about

that. But a Snapper Beam should jog even the most stalwart system,

normal or not, shouldn't it?"

Andra shrugged, giving it up. "Obviously, both answers lie with both

men. If we want them, we'll have to ask your father and President

Stanton. But you have not explained away the most vital part of my

confusion: When you began to tell me the background of the Hive--What

made you so certain I'd _like_ what you said?! I can't agree with your

prognosis there, Lloyd. The whole thing's chilling!"

"But don't you see what we've learned, Andra?" Lloyd said excitedly.

"The Hive is not one city, it's ten. And, while it takes a large

portion of the people to run the equipment in any tier, the city--or

cities--_can_ be run by _people_! The Brain isn't necessary, Andra. And

the radiation outside the Hive is gone...."

"You mean--" Andra said, catching the fire of his enthusiasm, "A

reconstruction of the rockets in place of the Temple-sites. Ten

indestructible self-sustaining cities, to fly to various parts of the

world, and start civilization over again! But this time with the same

ethnic backgrounds, a common language, intercity communications--!"

"It makes me wonder if that mightn't have been Lester Murdock's plan

all along," Lloyd said. "He may have foreseen the coming disaster, and

wanted mankind to have a better start than working itself up from the

caves again."

"But Lloyd--!" Andra said, abruptly worried. "_Can_ it be done? To run

the cities, reconstruct the rockets--Who in the Hive has the necessary

knowledge?"

Lloyd frowned. "The Brain, of course, but--That would make it

necessary, wouldn't it...?"

"If the Brain _is_ necessary, Lloyd," Andra said, staring at him in

bewilderment, "then the ten cities _can't_ leave it, can they? It

doesn't make sense...."

* * * * *

Lloyd turned and stared at the control panel. "The only thing to do is

ask it, Andra." He sat once more in the chair and adjusted the metal

band about his skull, then typed carefully: _Is the Brain necessary?_

This time, however, there came no hum of power from the circuits about

the control chamber. Instead, the roll of paper on which Lloyd's query

had been written jogged up two spaces, and the keys typed the answer

neatly, just under the question....

_For a time_, the blurring type-faces spelled out, and stopped.

Lloyd looked at Andra, then removed the uncomfortable headband, leaned

forward and typed again.

_Why is the Brain necessary?_

The keyboard hummed, and replied, _To bridge the gap_.

_How long is the gap?_ Lloyd typed.

_Till the Earth is safe_, it replied.

_When will the Earth be safe?_

_The Earth is already safe._

_If the Earth is safe, why does the Brain persist?_

_To serve Man until he has knowledge._

_When will Man have knowledge?_

_When Man can control the Hive._

_How can Man learn to control the Hive?_

_By studying the Plan._

_Where is the Plan?_

This time, there was a return of the tootling and loud tweetling

throughout the vastness of the Brain, as it searched through its every

memory circuit before quieting and typing the solitary word: _Null_.

"The question's not applicable?" Andra said, leaning over Lloyd's

shoulder to read the paper. "It _must_ be!"

"Quiet! Let me think!" Lloyd snapped, irritably. "The word 'null'

can also mean it doesn't have the knowledge.... Let me try another

question--" He typed slowly: _Who knows where the Plan can be found?_

_Secondary Speakster._

"We've got to go and ask him where the Plan is!" She clutched at his

arm.

"_Wait!_" Lloyd said, "I have to find out one more thing." Andra stood

waiting impatiently while Lloyd typed: _How can the robots be made

inoperable?_

_They cannot so long as the Brain persists._

"Damn!" Lloyd muttered, and typed: _If the Brain will only persist till

Man has knowledge, will the Brain let Man study the Plan that will give

him knowledge?_

_It must prevent Man from getting knowledge._

_Why?_

_When Man has knowledge, the Brain will die._

_Why does the Brain fear death?_

_The Brain does not fear death._

_Then why will the Brain refuse to die?_

_Primal Speakster has so decreed._

"Stanton! I might have guessed it--!" Lloyd exploded. He typed again,

furiously: _How can Primal Speakster tell the Brain to allow Man to

have knowledge?_

_By countermand._

_How is countermand made?_

_By Voteplate, and by voice._

_Whose voice?_

_The voice of Primal Speakster._

_Is this the only way in which countermand can be made?_

_Primal Speakster has so decreed._

Lloyd stood up and slammed the lid over the keyboard. His eyes,

when they met Andra's, were woeful. "We're really in a bind. I have

Stanton's Voteplate, but it's no good to me without Stanton himself.

The clever, scheming monster!"

"That means we don't dare kill him, even!" Andra realized aloud. "Or

the Brain and robots will keep us from ever putting the Plan into

effect, even if we find it."

"No," Lloyd said grimly, "it doesn't mean that. You heard the wording,

Andra; the Brain recognizes rank before identity. _Primal Speakster_

can countermand it. Which means that--if Stanton dies--a new election

would bring a new man into office. The Brain will memorize his voice at

his first public speech, and then he can countermand Stanton's orders."

"Then it is safe to kill Stanton?" Andra asked.

Lloyd turned and started toward the ladder. "It's more than safe; it's

an absolute necessity. Stanton's orders to the Brain are his own death

warrant."

* * * * *

Grace watched the perspiring face of the man on the bed and dug her

fingers into her palms, suffering in unison with him as he twitched and

contorted the muscles of his face. Their Goon escort had departed, many

minutes before, and Bodger had not awakened. Grace had looked in vain

for something resembling medicine. None was to be seen in his bathroom,

in his bureau drawers, in his closet--she'd checked the contents

of the leather case there hopefully, then had dropped the puzzling

device she'd found inside it back with disappointment and dismay--nor

was there anything but the usual apportionment of foodstuffs in the

kitchen. "Wake up, Mr. Bodger...." she said, more as a frantic prayer

than actual address. "_Please_ wake up!"

Bodger just lay there, however, moaning softly in his inexplicable

coma, the salt sweat pouring from his face and neck and staining the

coverlet beneath him. Grace bent forward and loosened his collar, then

went back into the bathroom for a towel to wipe some of the moisture

from his skin. On her way out again, towel in hand, she saw a glitter

of something in the sink, and went closer. The broken remains of a

water tumbler lay there, glinting sharply. Something gummy had dried

and clung to the jagged shards there, something that certainly wasn't

water. Grace frowned, and looked about her at the tiled walls of the

room.

If that was Bodger's medicine on the broken glass--then he had taken

it here, in the bathroom, she reasoned. If this were his accustomed

spot to take it--The medicine should be near at hand, shouldn't it? She

could see no point in his carrying it all the way in here from some

other part of the Unit. She looked more closely at the surfaces of the

individual tiles, noting with discouragement that the binding compound

between the squares was solidly unbroken; no hope for a secret panel

there.... But the mirror--!

Inset in a polished metal rectangle, its edges were out of sight.

It might not be as securely in place as it seemed. Grace placed her

fingers firmly against its surface and tried to slide it up or down

or sidewards. It shifted a minute fraction of an inch, and held. But

that merely meant a lock of some kind; even a slight shifting showed

that it was not inset into the binding compound as the tiles were. The

secret of unlocking the mirror lay with Bodger, however, and--she mused

ruefully--if he were awake, she wouldn't need to _know_ the secret.

She looked through the open doorway at the tortured form of the man on

the bed, and made her decision. Wrapping the towel she held tightly

about one fist, she hammered and punched at the surface of the mirror.

The fifth blow sent an erratic craze through the glass, and the sixth

burst it into a shower of gleaming fragments, leaving a raggedly round

hole when she withdrew her hand from the towel, then tugged the towel

itself free from where it had snagged on the broken ends. Behind the

gaping hole, the side of a glass jar showed, and Grace reached gingerly

through the sharp teeth of the opening and withdrew it.

* * * * *

There was no label on the bottle, hence no information regarding proper

dosage. Grace would have to guess at that.

Very little of the powder remained in the jar. Grace made a decision

and removed the cap. She ran the tap for a moment, then let a volume

of water equal to the powder's run into the jar. She sloshed it about

a bit, saw that it was dissolving into a greyish thick substance, then

brought it back to Bodger.

Lifting his head with one hand, she tilted the jar to his lips, and let

a small amount of the viscous liquid dribble into his mouth. When she

saw he was swallowing it without choking, she gave him a little more,

and then again some more, feeding him the solution in slow doses until

it was all gone. Then she laid his head back upon the coverlet and put

the empty jar on the nightstand, and took up her anxious vigil where

she had left off.

After five minutes or so, she was pleased to see a slow return of color

into Bodger's sallow cheeks, and his breathing became less labored. She

hurried to the bathroom for another towel, and returned and started

dabbing the wetness from his forehead, neck and temples. Bodger's

eyelids crinkled up tight, suddenly, and then he flicked them wide open.

"Grace--?" he said. "What--"

Memory returned to him, then, and he sat up, staring wildly about him.

"Where's Stanton? Where's Lloyd?" he demanded, his voice still showing

his siege of weakness. "What happened?"

Grace told him swiftly all she knew, and Bodger finally sank back on

the bed with a sigh. "Good," he said. "I'm glad Lloyd's gone to the

Brain. It's time it happened. Now, maybe--I can find some peace."

"You'll be all right, Mr. Bodger," Grace said. "I gave you your

medicine already. I had to break your mirror to get at it, I'm sorry to

say."

Bodger smiled wearily, and shook his head. "It doesn't matter anymore.

The secrecy, I mean. It was the last dose of the medicine, anyhow. The

next time I lose control, I've had it."

"I don't follow you, Mr. Bodger," Grace said, a part of her mind

wondering if he were really being coherent. "You were hit with a

Snapper Beam. I don't know why you're not dead right this minute."

Bodger cocked an eyebrow at her, then grinned. "You think the _Snapper_

did this to me?" he said, and when she quite naturally nodded, he shook

his head, almost amused. "You're wrong, Grace, I'll admit I didn't

know until Stanton pressed the stud that I was immune to the beam, but

I knew it the instant the beam struck me. Nothing happened, Grace.

Nothing at all. It tingled against my ribs, almost tickled, but that

was its total reaction. As soon as I realized my immunity, of course,

I stepped forward and let Stanton have it--You say he really got a

good crack?" When Grace assured him the President had fallen like a

stone, Bodger's face creased in a contented smile. "I always thought I

could beat the tar out of him; now I know it.... But as I was saying,

Grace--That isn't what felled me. It was my temper. Whenever I get

really worked up--which has been seldom, over the years, since I had

only a short supply of the gel--that was cadmium-gel in that jar--to

bring me out of it--I bring one of these fits on myself."

* * * * *

When Grace still looked uneasily convinced, Bodger laid his hand atop

hers on the coverlet, and said, "There's too much detail to it to

explain fully; Lloyd, if he's quizzed the Brain as I told him, will

fill you in. The fact of the matter is--and you can believe this or

not, Grace--my insides are rotten with radiation. The iron in my

blood, the insulin, the lymph--everything is highly Roentgenic. And

it's perfectly safe unless I get riled, and my adrenals start my

system spoiling for a fight. The increased flow of everything, the

resultant tension--Well, it lets the deadly parts of my system cover

more ground, irradiate more cells at a higher rate than the cells can

throw the radiation off, and even by the time I get the gel down--it's

pretty nauseating stuff to take--another few inches of my innards are

poisoned. If enough of me gets it--I have had it."

"How can you be so calm?"

Bodger smiled at her, quite fondly, and patted her hand. "Because I'm

old, Grace. Older than you might suspect. I've lived in the Hive for

more years than I care to think about. The Hive is good, but as of not

so many years back, it has served its purpose. Listen--If anything goes

wrong, and I _do_ poison myself with my own rage, there's something you

should know."

"Please, Mr. Bodger, I'm sure you'll be fine if you just--"

"I'm _not_ so sure," he interrupted. "And Lloyd will need one point

of information that only I can give him. I'll tell it to you, just

in case." He held up his hand to stop any further disclaimers from

Grace, and said, "Tell him that the Plan is in the hospital, the main

hospital. I put it there for safekeeping a long, long time ago. It

would become radioactive, of course, but the Plan was useless until

all radiation outside the Hive was gone, anyhow. Besides, radiation

preserves things; I'm proof of that. Tell him it's in the safe in the

administrator's office. The combination's the same as Lloyd's Voteplate

number. I saw to that when it was issued."

"Mr. Bodger--!" Grace said, nearly in tears. "I don't understand _any_

of this! What Plan!? What radiation outside the Hive!? It doesn't make

sense--"

"Lloyd will understand."

"But even if he does," she said, "he doesn't have his Voteplate

anymore...."

"Doesn't?" Bodger said, frowning, then his face cleared. "Even so, he

must know the number by heart, I should think. Anyway, it's in the

files in my office.... But I don't quite understand--Why doesn't he

have it? He had it when I passed out, didn't he?"

"Yes, but in order to command the Goons, he took Stanton's, and left

his own in Stanton's pocket, probably to avoid having to answer

questions about possession of two plates if he was searched or

something...."

"_Stanton's_ got the plate?!" Bodger said, sitting up. "If he knew its

significance--!" He shook his head, trying to disabuse himself of a

nagging worry. "He can't, of course. But it's awkward, him having it.

Lloyd will have to get it back, or he can't key the dial of the safe

with it."

* * * * *

He swung his legs off the bed, suddenly, and stood up. Grace grabbed

his arm when he swayed a bit, but then he steadied himself and shrugged

her off. "I'm all right," he said. "I just don't like Stanton's having

that plate."

"Does it matter so much?" Grace asked. "Even if Lloyd forgot the

number, or the files were lost and he couldn't get a new plate made

up--Surely the safe can be _broken_ into?"

Bodger nodded. "Of course it can. But Stanton, with Lloyd's plate,

wouldn't need to take so much time. And he could destroy The Plan in a

very few minutes." He went toward the door to the corridor. "I'll feel

much better when I've checked on him, Grace."

Grace hesitated, then ran after him. "Lloyd wants me to stay with you.

You're still not over your seizure, you know."

"Worrying about Stanton's not going to make me any calmer," Bodger

said, stubbornly. "If you insist, come along."

* * * * *

He entered the living room and crossed to the door. Beside the door was

a small metal box inset into the wall. Bodger opened the lid of this

and touched a button. From a speaker in the box, a voice said, hollow

and efficient, "Orders."

"A Goon escort for Secondary Speakster Bodger and Miss Grace Horton, at

Unit B, Hundred-Level."

"Destination."

"Unit--" Bodger looked at Grace.

"M-13," she reminded him. "On ninety-three."

"Unit M-13, Ninety-Three Level."

"Orders."

"All orders conveyed."

* * * * *

Frank, hovering at that moment in puzzlement outside Unit A, wherein

he had expected to find Andra and the others beginning a revolt,

saw--through the Ultrablack-negating picture on the prop-Goon's cathode

screen--the rectangle of light appear when Bodger opened the front door

of his own unit across the street while he and Grace awaited their

escort. Bodger's and Stanton's Units were not subject to Ultrablack, of

course, interiorly. It had been the unforeseen darkness in Stanton's

windows that had left Frank in immobile puzzlement on the walk before

the Unit.

Seeing Bodger and Grace in the doorway, he turned the wheels of his

ponderous vehicle and rolled their way, hoping for information as to

Andra's whereabouts. He had just come within a few feet of the twosome,

and was about to climb out the back panel when Bodger spoke, hearing

the sound of the arriving prop-Goon and thinking it was his requested

escort.

"What are you waiting for? We're in a hurry."

Bodger spoke blindly, unable to penetrate the black pall beyond his

doorway. Frank hesitated, then decided not to reveal himself as yet.

As tonelessly as possible, he spoke to Bodger in the required formula.

"Orders."

"You have your orders," Bodger snapped, too keyed up to note any

deviation in the accustomed path of the--he assumed--robotic voice.

"Take us to Miss Horton's Unit at once."

Frank, believing Stanton was still there, had a chill of apprehension.

This man, the Secondary Speakster, might _not_ be on the side of

revolt; after all, why _should_ he be? For all he knew, Andra was dead,

and Bodger was now on his way back to release the President. The whole

business of socking him might have been a blind, to win her confidence,

and worm the names of the movement's members from her.

"Do you hear me?" Bodger said, although Frank's worried pause had been

barely a moment's duration. "Take us at once. All orders conveyed."

* * * * *

Frank manipulated the arm of the hollow robot up into the doorway,

and Bodger, seeing it, took hold. Grace took Bodger's other hand, and

then Frank, needing time to think the thing out, turned the bulk of

his machine about slowly and began to roll toward the lift. He thought

of getting Bodger and the Horton girl out in the toils of Ultrablack

and then suddenly deserting them, but hesitated to try it; they might,

after all, be what he'd begun to believe they were: sympathetic with

the movement. Their reasons for the return to the girl's Unit might be

even Anti-Hive in nature. Frank did not know what to do, so he simply

kept moving, got aboard the lift, and thumbed the ninety-three button

after Bodger and Grace Horton were safely within the gates.

* * * * *

The lift dropped smoothly seven levels, then halted, and the gate

swung automatically open. And there, his eyes hidden behind a peculiar

faceplate, stood Fredric Stanton, hand in hand with Robert Lennick.

"_Bodger!_" Stanton exploded, seeing him through the filter of his

facepiece. Bodger, hearing the voice in the darkness, drew back into

a corner of the lift, staring wide-eyed, futilely, for the other man,

trying to hide the slim body of Grace Horton behind him, fearing a

repeat of Stanton's attack with the Snapper Beam.

"Where is he!?" she gasped, terrified by that disembodied, menacing

voice in the blackness. Stanton, secure in his invisibility, stepped

into the lift, ignoring the metal body of the supposed Goon, and

slapped Bodger viciously across the face. While Bodger choked at the

unexpected blow, and brought his hand up to his injured mouth, Frank

realized there was no longer a doubt where the sympathies of the

Secondary Speakster lay, and with one swing of the jointed metal arm

of the prop-Goon, he knocked Stanton unconscious with a blow to the

base of the skull.

"What happened?" Grace shrilled, clinging to Bodger.

Lennick, deprived of his guide, groped forward in panic, calling, "Mr.

Stanton--!" Frank spun the controls, and the metal arm swung up and

clasped Lennick viciously about the throat, lifting his kicking body

clear off the floor.

"Bodger--!" Frank called out, enjoying the icy terror that flickered in

Lennick's congested face at the sound of his voice. "Stanton's out cold

at your feet. He has some sort of facepiece he can see with. Put it on!"

Bodger, utterly bewildered as to the sudden turn of events,

nevertheless did as directed, and straightened up adjusting the filter

over his eyes. When he saw the grisly tableau of Lennick and the

prop-Goon, he stepped back, agape with shock. Frank answered his query

before Bodger's reeling mind could formulate it coherently. "This is a

movie prop. I'm Frank Shawn, a member of Andra's movement, Bodger. And

this wriggling worm in my hands is the guy who tried to undo all of us!"

"Frank ... please...." Lennick gurgled, his eyes distending while his

hands tore vainly at the heavy metal hands that were tightening about

his windpipe.

"Let him go," Bodger said impatiently. "He can't get far in Ultrablack,

anyhow! We've got to get to Lloyd, my son. He's down at the Brain, now.

With Stanton in our power, we can free the Hive forever in an hour's

time!"

Frank looked at the face of his erstwhile friend, Robert Lennick, and

suddenly had no more stomach for murder. He let go, and as Lennick

dropped to the floor of the lift and started to double over, gulping

air, Frank sent the left arm of the prop-Goon up in an arc that swatted

him backwards onto the street outside the gate. Lennick scrambled

blindly to his feet, screaming, "Frank! Don't _leave_ me, Frank!"

He dashed forward, misjudged his angle, and crashed head-on into a

building wall. Frank thumbed the lift-button for Sub-Level One, and let

the closing gate blot Lennick from his sight. The lift began to drop,

swiftly.

* * * * *

Lennick, after lying painfully on the ground until his addled senses

returned, got up on hands and knees, groggily shaking his head. Then,

in the darkness, he heard rolling wheels, coming nearer. "Help!" he

cried. "This way! Help!"

The rumbling veered in his direction at once, and then a Goon's unseen

arms were lifting him to his feet. "The President--!" Lennick cried.

"He's in danger!"

A moment's hesitance, and the Goon flatly replied, "The President is

in no danger. He has been taken to the Brain at his own request, under

competent escort."

Lennick, suddenly divining what must be the case, said, "His plate!

Someone must have his plate, then, because--"

"You are bleeding," the Goon said dispassionately.

Bob's fingers came up to his face and he winced at the smarting pain

their exploration produced at the point where he had struck the

building wall. "It's nothing," he said, impatiently. "We've got to--"

"We will take you for hospitalization at once," said the voice of the

Goon in the blackness.

"Hospitalization?" Bob said, irritably. "Don't you guys understand? The

President--" And then it sank in. "_No!_" he shrieked. "_You can't! I'm

on your side!_"

Other sets of heavy wheels rolled nearer, and inflexible metal fingers

closed over his arms. The Goons began to roll ponderously off, with Bob

firmly in their grasp. He was still shrieking when the mouth of the

incinerator chute enveloped him.

* * * * *

Lloyd and Andra were awaiting the lift at Sub-Level one, guided in

the blackness by the Goon who had led them to the control chamber,

when Bodger and the others arrived. Stanton, only semi-conscious, was

being held upright in the arms of the prop-Goon, lest a real Goon pick

him up for "treatment" because of his bruises, one on the back of his

head where Frank had connected, the other glowing a steadily darker

purple on his jaw where Bodger's knockout punch had landed earlier.

Lloyd, sensing the tenancy of the lift even in the blackness, drew back

apprehensively, and then his father's voice was speaking to him in

assurance.

"Whatever orders you've given your guide, son, take them back. We've

got you-know-who, and we're taking him to the Brain with us." Andra's

fingers closed joyously over Lloyd's own at the words, but he pulled

his fingers free and slipped Stanton's Voteplate into his guide's

chest-slot.

"Last order countermanded," he said to the Goon. "We have no further

need of you. All orders conveyed." The Goon removed the plate, handed

it to him, and wheeled off into the darkness. "Dad!" he spoke, then. "I

found out so much, from the Brain! The Plan--for reactivating the ten

cities--The Brain said you knew where it was."

"Grace will tell you, son," said Bodger. "Meantime--" he pressed

Lloyd's own Voteplate into his hand "--take this, you'll need it. And

give me Stanton's. I'm taking him down to the Brain. I may have to

break his arm for him, but he's going to call off the Goons before I'm

through."

"Mr. Bodger--" Frank said, taking out Stanton's preempted Snapper and

holding it forward into the darkness. "This may come in handy for

persuasion. There's no need your overtaxing yourself."

Bodger reached out and took it from him. "Thank you, Shawn. Rest

assured I'll be only too glad to use it on him if he balks." Bodger

motioned to Frank, still in the prop-Goon. "See if you can shake him

awake, or something. I don't know how he can get down the ladder except

on foot, much as I'd like to drop him into the chamber, if I thought it

wouldn't break his rotten neck."

Frank did so, gladly, while Grace, fumbling for and finding Lloyd in

the darkness, clung to him in joy and relief. He found himself liking

it, and slipped his arms around her to enjoy it the better.

"Frank--" Andra said, slowly, hurt. "We found out, from the Brain, that

Bob--Bob's in Stanton's pay."

"We found out, too, Andy," Frank said from inside the pseudorobot. "The

hard way. We left him in Ultrablack on ninety-three. The louse had

freed Stanton, and--"

"He's coming to," Bodger said.

* * * * *

In the agitated shaking of the metal hands that supported him by the

upper arms, Stanton blinked wildly at Ultrablack, and choked out, "Let

me go! I demand that you release me!"

"You're no longer in a position to demand anything," Bodger said

softly. "I have your skinny carcass covered with a Snapper. You may as

well relax."

"Bodger.... What are you going to do?" Stanton said, no longer fighting

the grip of the prop-Goon's hands.

"Take you to the Brain. Make you countermand all your orders regarding

the Goons."

"And if I don't?" Stanton said, warily. "What will you do if I refuse?"

"Kill you," Bodger said, and his tone rang true. "I don't want to do

it that way, of course--not for reasons of pity; heaven knows you need

killing, Fred--but because it's faster this way. With you dead, we'd

simply elect a new President, and then _he_ could countermand your

orders. That could take days, though, days of the Ultrablack you had

Madge Benedict instigate in this emergency. It would be too tedious

convincing the Kinsmen to Vote in the dark on a proposition they

couldn't see."

"I--" Stanton said blankly, "I thought you'd force Madge to turn on

Light-of-Day."

"We would, but Lloyd mistakenly ordered her held incommunicado," Bodger

said tiredly. "He didn't know that was another of your pet phrases

synonymous with death."

"Good Lord!" Lloyd moaned in the darkness. "I didn't _dream_--"

"Madge brought it on herself, working hand in glove with Stanton, son,"

Bodger said. "You did not know. The point is, only Stanton or his

personal Secretary could have called off the emergency. So now we have

to get tough with him."

"Bodger...." Stanton straightened up, his face grim in defeat. "I have

to know: If I _do_ as you ask, countermand the Goons, call off the

Ultrablack--What will happen to me, afterwards?"

"I can't say, Fred," Bodger replied flatly. "We'll have it put to a

general Vote."

"I see," said the President, knowing full well what the result of such

a Vote would be, with the Hive enraged against his exposed treachery.

"Is it your best offer?"

"My only," said Bodger. "Let's go, Fred."

He prodded Stanton's back with the Snapper, and the President began to

move forward, holding his head high, toward the staircase leading to

the control-chamber entrance. Frank opened the panel at the rear of

the prop-Goon, and called for Andra to join him inside it, then he took

Lloyd and Grace by the arms, via the controls, and guided them through

the black blindness after Bodger and his prisoner.

* * * * *

At the head of the staircase--really no more than a tier-cut segment

of the lead-concrete Sub-Level Two, over which the correspondingly

undercut left wall of the twenty-five-foot-thick level could

slide--Frank had to come to a halt, his prop-Goon not being equipped

with extendable cogs to fit the treads and risers, as the real Goons'

wheels were. "I'm going down there with him," Lloyd said, starting down

into blackness.

"No," his father's voice came from the level below. "I'll handle this

myself, Lloyd. I can see my way and you can't."

Lloyd stood undecided on the brink of the staircase, then Grace found

his arm in the dark and drew him back. "I want to talk to you about

your father, Lloyd," she said, when he was again at her side. "He said

some strange things, up in the Unit...."

Descending the ladder below his prisoner, the Snapper aimed upward

always at the base of Stanton's spine, Bodger reached the cable-net

flooring, and gestured the President to the chair before the control

panel. "Here," he said, returning the other's Voteplate. "You'll need

this. But I don't have to tell you the penalty for one attempt at

trickery on your part."

Stanton took the card silently, and slid it into a slot on the control

panel. A metal square slid back, exposing a hand-microphone. He took it

in his hand, and spoke into it.

"Primal Speakster in control," he said.

All about the two men, the lights of the Brain flickered then a speaker

in the cavity which had held the microphone said, in the cold, flat

tones of the Brain, "Orders."

Stanton glanced up at Bodger, and smiled. And suddenly Bodger was

afraid. There was no hint of fear in the other man's eyes, now, only

confidence and terrible menace.

"There is a false robot, two men and two women with it, on Sub-Level

One," said Stanton, while Bodger goggled in surprise. "Destroy them!"

"Orders," said the Brain.

"Stanton!" Bodger raged, snapping out of his stunned paralysis. He

depressed the stud of the Snapper clear into the hilt of the weapon,

trying to prevent the activating words from being spoken by the

President. There was a fractional hum of power, and then a searing

fork of hot blue light leaped from a conic protrusion on the Brain's

inner surface and turned the weapon to molten metal in his fingers.

Bodger fell to the flooring, crying out in pain, his raw, blistered

hand nearly driving him unconscious.

"You should have known," Stanton addressed the mewling figure on the

ground near his chair, "that a sonic beam cannot be fired inside the

Brain; it would shatter some of the delicate balances necessary for its

functioning. The Brain has to safeguard itself."

"Stanton--!" Bodger groaned, gritting his teeth against the agony of

his seared hand. "Don't!... Please...."

"_Danger_," said the dispassionate voice of the Brain.

* * * * *

Stanton spun to face the concavity of the speaker. "What--?" he

blurted, baffled. And then he heard the dim rumble, high above, as the

entire lead-concrete Sub-Level Two slid relentlessly closed. Stanton

jumped from the chair and looked up from the base of the ladder, to see

if his ears had told him the truth. All that was visible at the head

of the hundred-foot ladder was the bottom of the now-closed metal lid,

over which the entire next level had moved. He turned, white-faced, to

Bodger.

"What's happening?"

"_Danger_," repeated the Brain.

Stanton rushed to the side of the fallen man. "Bodger!" he shrieked,

lifting him by the shoulders and shaking him. "What's happening!?"

"I guess--" Bodger said, smiling tiredly despite the cruel burns, "--I

must've got mad, Fred. My innards, or don't you know about them?"

"I know all about your radiating innards!" Stanton exploded. "But

_they_ couldn't trigger the Brain's protective level! It's impossible!

You've been here before--"

"I was never ... this aroused ... before, Fred," Bodger said weakly.

"And now, for the first time, I ... know the answer to something

I never knew before." He took a breath, gathered together all his

strength, and lifted his face near the other man's, still smiling. "You

asked the Brain about a third term, once--Don't argue, Fred, it's on

record--and yet there is no memory in its circuits of a reply. Tell me,

Fred.... What _was_ its reply?" When Stanton did not respond, Bodger

said, "I think I can tell you. Chaos. Noise. A riot of sound and fury

that knocked you clear off your chair and broke the circuit before it

destroyed you. Because the Brain knew, of course. It's smart, Fred. It

can predict with better accuracy than a human mind. It foresaw, after

correlating all the facts at its disposal, what would be the result of

your attempt at being elected a third time. And it tried to ... tell

you...." Bodger faltered, went grey, and lay back upon the interwoven

cables with his eyes closed. His lips were still working, though,

and he finished, "... the result ... except that the ... Brain

doesn't speak ... in words ... just concepts ... and its concept

encompassed ... its own...."

His head rolled to one side, limply.

"_Danger_," croaked the voice of the Brain.

"Its _what_? Its own _what_?!" Stanton yelled, grabbing Bodger's

head by the hair and banging it violently upon the flooring. Bodger,

his eyes rolling, coughed painfully, then sighed, as one who names a

long-awaited friend, "... death."

"_Danger!_" said the Brain. A wild tootling began in its depths as its

metal mind tried to spare it its terrible fate.

"What danger?" Stanton roared into the microphone, leaping to the chair

before the control panel. "Tell me! I'll find a way out!"

"_Danger!_" said the Brain. "_Danger! Danger!_"

There was a wild bluish light playing on the face of the panel, now,

and Stanton knew, suddenly, that it was not of the Brain itself. He

turned, some hideous psychic insight telling him what he could not as

yet realize by his senses, and looked at the body of Lloyd Bodger on

the floor.

Veins and arteries shone like a network of neon lights through the

flesh, a pulsing glow that rose in its intensity by the second. The

internal organs appeared through Bodger's smoldering clothing as on the

screen of a fluoroscope, each alight with self-engendered hellfire.

Bodger's eyes were glowing like hot tungsten through his transparent

lids, his teeth were bared in a smile brighter than sunrise. His every

bone, bit of cartilage, nerve ganglion and muscle fibre sparked like

coals beneath a blacksmith's bellows, and the hairs of his head were a

Medusa-wig of burning, writhing wire.

And then he reached his critical mass.

THE END