e was paralleled by activities hardly less frenzied in
other places, far away.

Emergency bells sounded and colored lights danced, martial laws
automatically enacted by their sound and flicker. The wheels of crisis
turned and spewed forth from their teeth rudely awakened policemen
half out of uniform, military reservists called up to find themselves
patrolling darkened streets, emergency disaster crews assembling in
fire houses and on appointed street corners, doctors gathering in
nervous clutches at fully aroused hospitals and waiting beside
ambulances tensed for wild dashes into full-scale disasters. Where it
was night when the warning sounded, darkness descended as desperate
power conservation efforts were initiated; where it was daylight, the
terrified populace waited in horror for the blackness of the unlit
night. All of this, of course, took only minutes to get fully under
way.

Meanwhile, at the plant, Procedure One continued in full wild
tumultuous swing.

* * * * *

M-75 did not immediately follow Gaines and Sokolski out of the room.
Fascinated by the multitude of new things surrounding him on every
side, he held back. He glided over to the master control panel,
puzzled by its similarity to the board before which he had slaved so
long, and lingered before it for a few seconds, wondering and
comparing. When he had recorded it completely on his tapes, he swung
away and rolled out of the room in the direction the two men had
gone.

He found himself in a long, empty corridor, lined by open doors that
flickered by, shutterlike, as he flashed past. Ahead he heard new
sounds, sounds like the meaningless cacophony the men had shouted at
him before rushing off, superimposed over the incessant background
sounds--the shrilling, the clanging, the one particular repetitive
pattern. Some of the sounds touched and tugged at him, but he shook
them off easily.

The corridor led into the foyer of the building, jammed with plant
personnel. Their excitement and noise-making rose sharply as he
entered. The crowd drew tighter and the men began fighting one
another, struggling to get through a door that was never meant to
handle more than two at a time.

M-75 skidded to a halt and watched, unmoving. He sensed their fright,
even though he could not understand it. Although he was without human
emotion, he could evaluate their inherent rejection of him in their
action pattern. The realization of