of
Brent Taber's top-secret conference again and again. In the comfortable
rationalization of which he was capable, his whole zeal and hostility
were fashioned around Brent's "arrogant disregard of democratic
processes." Who did this bureaucrat think he was? Did he consider
himself smarter than the People? Did he feel they couldn't be trusted
with revelations affecting their survival? Well, by God, they'd been
trusted with word of the bomb and its implications, and they'd reacted
admirably. So they were entitled to frankness concerning this new threat
to their security.

Of course, Senator Crane reserved the right to enlighten them in his own
time and in his own way. After all, hadn't they elected him and thus
given him leeway to use his own judgment in their best interests?

But who the hell had elected Brent Taber?

Nobody.

So Crane listened to the recording and picked out what he classified as
the key lines.

_A routine autopsy revealed some peculiar things ... The man had
two hearts...._

_The blood? Could it have been a new kind of plasma?..._

_All in all, gentlemen, eight identical specimens have been picked
up in various American cities ...

Exactly alike...._

Crane ran through the rest of it and threw himself moodily into a chair.
The idiots! The stupid unelected, self-appointed guardians of democracy!
Not once--not _once_, mind you--had a single one of these great brains
referred to the obvious.

It was a Russian plot!

All those allusions to the extraterrestrial was so much bilge. The
Russians were infiltrating the country with synthetic men. This
meant--oh, God--it meant that in a short time Russia would be able to
create an army of these monsters and overwhelm the world.

Senator Crane sprang to his feet and measured his indignation in long
strides across the thick, expensive carpeting on his floor. The
traitor! The sheer, compulsive opportunist! That was certainly all that
Brent Taber could be called. Using this deadly situation as a means of
furthering his own interests.

Senator Crane deliberately stilled his rage and objectively considered
what he should do about it. With the obvious source of the androids
logically deduced, there was only his own defensive procedures to be
considered. And they had to be considered carefully. As he saw himself,
he stood alone, against a group of bumbling idiots, with the future of
the nation at stake. What to do?

T