t mix
accidentally, but the complex mechanism of a machine, capable of
continuing and making a duplicate of itself, as is F-2 here--that could
not happen by chance.

"So life began, and became intelligent, and built the machine which
nature could not fashion by her Controls of Chance, and this day Life
has done its duty, and now Nature, economically, has removed the
parasite that would hold back the machines and divert their energies.

"Man is gone, and it is better, Trest," said Roal, dreaming again. "And
I think we had best go soon."

"We, your heirs, have fought hard, and with all our powers to aid you,
Last of Men, and we fought to save your race. We have failed, and as you
truly say, Man and Life have this day and forever gone from this system.

"The Outsiders have no force, no weapon deadly to us, and we shall, from
this time on, strive only to drive them out, and because we things of
force and crystal and metal can think and change far more swiftly, they
shall go, Last of Men.

"In your name, with the spirit of your race that has died out, we shall
continue on through the unending ages, fulfilling the promise you saw,
and completing the dreams you dreamt.

"Your swift brains have leapt ahead of us, and now I go to fashion that
which you hinted," came from F-2's thought-apparatus.

Out into the clear sunlight F-2 went, passing through that black
cloudiness, and on the twisted, massed rocks he laid a plane of force
that smoothed them, and on this plane of rock he built a machine which
grew. It was a mighty power plant, a thing of colossal magnitude. Hour
after hour his swift-flying forces acted, and the thing grew, moulding
under his thoughts, the deadly logic of the machine, inspired by the
leaping intuition of man.

The sun was far below the horizon when it was finished, and the glowing,
arcing forces that had made and formed it were stopped. It loomed
ponderous, dully gleaming in the faint light of a crescent moon and
pinpoint stars. Nearly five hundred feet in height, a mighty, bluntly
rounded dome at its top, the cylinder stood, covered over with smoothly
gleaming metal, slightly luminescent in itself.

Suddenly, a livid beam reached from F-2, shot through the wall, and to
some hidden inner mechanism--a beam of solid, livid flame that glowed in
an almost material cylinder.

* * * *

There was a dull, drumming beat, a beat that rose, and became a
low-pitched hum. Then it q