ry."

In that case, the young inventor reflected, it was only a freak of
nature that the Faber and nose-cone factories had been wrecked by the
shock. But in spite of the seismographic clues, Tom was not entirely
convinced. A nagging doubt still buzzed in the back of his mind.

The next morning Tom hurried off to his private glass-walled laboratory
at Enterprises, eager to continue work on his container, or robot body,
for the brain from space.

Tom frowned as he studied the rough sketch he had drawn in his office
the afternoon before. "This setup's full of bugs!" he muttered.

Nevertheless, Tom decided, the basic idea was sound. Grabbing pencil and
slide rule, he began to dash off page after page of diagrams and
equations.

"Chow down!" boomed a foghorn voice. Chow Winkler, wearing a white
chef's hat, wheeled a lunch cart into the lab.

"Oh... thanks." Tom scarcely looked up from his work as the cook set
out an appetizing meal of Texas hash, milk, and deep-dish apple pie on
the bench beside the young inventor's papers. Grumbling under his
breath, Chow sauntered out.

Tom went on working intently between mouthfuls. In another hour he
finished a set of pilot drawings. Then he called Hank Sterling and Arvid
Hanson and asked them to come to the laboratory.

They listened with keen interest as Tom explained his latest creation.

"No telling if it will work when the energy arrives from space," Tom
said, "but I think everything tracks okay. Hank, get these plans
blueprinted and assign an electronics group to the project. You'd better
handle the hardware yourself."

"Right." Hank rolled up the sketches.

"And, Arv," Tom went on, "I'd like a scale model made to guide them on
assembly. How soon can you have it?"

Hanson promised the model for some time the next day, and the two men
hurried off.

As usual, Arv proved slightly better than his word. The expert
modelmaker was devoted to his craft and as apt to forget the clock as
Tom himself, when absorbed in a new project. By working on in his shop
long after closing hours, Hanson had a desk-size model of the
space-brain robot ready for Tom's inspection when the young inventor
arrived at the plant early the following morning.

"Wonderful, Arv!" Tom approved. "Every time I see one of your models of
a new invention, I'm _sure_ it'll work!" Hanson grinned, pleased at the
compliment.

Tom hopped into a jeep and sped across the plant grounds to deliver the
model to Ha