lace a member human worker.

Before they left, all three union men placed orders for household Soths.

"Hell," said one, "that's less than the cost of a new car. Now maybe my
wife will get off my back on this damfool business of organizing a
maid's and butler's union. Takes members to run a union, and the only
real butler in our neighborhood makes more than I do."

* * * * *

That's the way it went. The only reason we spent a nickel on advertising
was to brag up the name of W. W. M. and wave our coup in the faces of
our competitors. By Christmas, production was up to two thousand units a
month, and we were already six thousand orders behind.

The following June, the Ollies moved into a good hunk of the old
abandoned Willow Run plant and got their production up to ten thousand a
month. Only then could we begin to think of sending out floor samples of
Soths to our distributors.

It was fall before the distributors could place samples with the most
exclusive of their retail accounts. The interim was spent simply
relaying frantic priority orders from high-ranking people all over the
globe directly to the plant, where the Ollies filled them right out of
the vats.

Twenty thousand a month was their limit, it turned out. Even when they
had human crews completely trained in all production phases, the
fifty-six Ollies could handle only that many units in their secret
conditioning and training laboratories.

For over two more years, business went on swimmingly. I got a fancy
bonus and a nice vacation in Paris, where I was the rage of the
continent. I was plagued with requests for speaking engagements, which
invariably turned out to be before select parties of V. I. P.s whose
purpose was to twist my arm for an early priority on a Soth delivery.

When I returned home, it was just in time to have the first stink land
in my lap.

An old maid claimed her Soth had raped her.

Before our investigators could reveal our doctors' findings that she was
a neurotic, dried up old virgin and lying in her teeth, a real crime
occurred.

A New Jersey Soth tossed a psychology instructor and his three students
out of a third floor window of their university science building, and
all four ended an attempted morbid investigation on the broad,
unyielding cement of the concourse.

My phone shrieked while they were still scraping the inquiring minds off
the pavement. The Soth was holed up in the lab, and wou