ll also sell us stockpiled
wheat if we need it. We can have our walking mills burrowing into the
wheat caves in a matter of hours!

"But that isn't all! The far greater demand everywhere is for
Puffyloaves that will actually float. Public Relations, Child Liaison
Division, reports that the kiddies are making their mothers' lives
miserable about it. If only we can figure out some way to make hydrogen
non-explosive or the helium loaf float just a little--"

"I'm sure we can take care of that quite handily," Tin Philosopher
interrupted briskly. "Puffyloaf has kept it a corporation secret--even
you've never been told about it--but just before he went crazy, Everett
Whitehead discovered a way to make bread using only half as much flour
as we do in the present loaf. Using this secret technique, which we've
been saving for just such an emergency, it will be possible to bake a
helium loaf as buoyant in every respect as the hydrogen loaf."

"Good!" Roger cried. "We'll tether 'em on strings and sell 'em like
balloons. No mother-child shopping team will leave the store without a
cluster. Buying bread balloons will be the big event of the day for
kiddies. It'll make the carry-home shopping load lighter too! I'll issue
orders at once--"

* * * * *

He broke off, looking at Phineas T. Gryce, said with quiet assurance,
"Excuse me, sir, if I seem to be taking too much upon myself."

"Not at all, son; go straight ahead," the great manager said
approvingly. "You're"--he laughed in anticipation of getting off a
memorable remark--"rising to the challenging situation like a genuine
Puffyloaf."

Megera Winterly looked from the older man to the younger. Then in a
single leap she was upon Roger, her arms wrapped tightly around him.

"My sweet little ever-victorious, self-propelled monkey wrench!" she
crooned in his ear. Roger looked fatuously over her soft shoulder at Tin
Philosopher who, as if moved by some similar feeling, reached over and
touched claws with Rose Thinker.

This, however, was what he telegraphed silently to his fellow machine
across the circuit so completed:

"Good-o, Rosie! That makes another victory for robot-engineered world
unity, though you almost gave us away at the start with that 'bread
overhead' jingle. We've struck another blow against the next world war,
in which--as we know only too well!--we machines would suffer the most.
Now if we can only arrange, say, a fur-famine in