ne could be stronger--the fear of what they would have to do if they
did not have to work much over a long period."

"What would it mean?"

"Why, they would have to start thinking! Most people don't mind
thought if it's concentrated in a narrow range. But if they have to
think in a broad range to keep boredom away--no, that's too high a
price for most of them! They avoid it when they can. And under present
circumstances they can." He stopped. "Of course that's a purely
hypothetical fiction I'm constructing."

Hart shook his head. "It sounds awfully real to be purely--" He, too,
caught himself up. "Of course, you're only positing a fiction."

Burnett started putting his desk papers away. "I'm leaving now. The
Preliminary begins soon. Want to come?"

The man's face was stolidly blank except for his brown eyes which
burned like a zealot's. Fascinated by them, Hart agreed. It would be
best to return anyway. Some of the bystanders had looked too curiously
at him when he had left. Who would willingly leave a Rite when it was
approaching its climax?

II

The Plaza was now thronged and the sacrificial pile towered over a
hundred feet in the cleared center area. Then, as the first collective
_Ah!_ arose, a giant slagger lumbered in from the east, the direction
prescribed for such commencements. Long polarity arms glided smoothly
out of the central mechanism and reached the length for Total
Destruction.

"That's the automatic setting," parents explained to their children.

"When?" the children demanded eagerly.

"Any moment now."

Then the unforeseen occurred.

There was a rumbling from inside the pile and a huge jagged patchwork
of metal shot out, smashing both arms. The slagger teetered, swaying
more and more violently from side to side until it collapsed on its
side. The rumbling grew. And then the pile, like a mechanical cancer,
ripped the slagger apart and then absorbed it.

The panicking crowd fell back. Somewhere a child began crying,
provoking more hubbub. "Sabotage!" people were crying. "Let's get
away!"

Nothing like this had ever happened before. But Hart knew instantly
what had caused it. Some high-level servo mechanisms had not been
thoroughly disconnected. They had repaired their damages, then imposed
their patterns on the material at hand.

A second slagger came rushing into the square. It discharged
immediately; and the pile finally collapsed and disintegrated as it
was supposed to.

The c