were brought back to usefulness when somebody
messed them up. Two or three machines--an electric ironer, for
one--operated slowly and hesitantly. That was occupational therapy. A
washing-machine churned briskly, which was convalescence. Others,
ranging from fire-control computers to teletypes and automatic lathes,
simply waited with their standby lights flickering meditatively
according to the manner and custom of Mahon-modified machines. They were
ready for duty again.

The young lieutenant was politely urgent.

"But I been there!" protested Sergeant Bellews. "I checked! It's a
communicator I named Betsy. She's all right! She's been mishandled by
the kinda halfwits Communications has around, but she's a good,
well-balanced, experienced machine. If she's turning out broadcasts,
it's because they're comin' in! She's all right!"

"I know," said the young lieutenant soothingly. His uniform and his
manners were beautiful to behold. "But the Colonel wants you there for a
conference."

"I got a communicator in the shop here," said Sergeant Bellews
suspiciously. "Why don't he call me?"

"Because he wants to try some new adjustments on--ah--Betsy, Sergeant.
You have a way with Mahon machines. They'll do things for you they won't
do for anybody else."

Sergeant Bellews snorted again. He knew he was being buttered up, but
he'd asked for it. He even insisted on it, for the glory of the
Metallurgical Technicians' Corps. The big brass tended to regard Metechs
as in some fashion successors to the long-vanished veterinary surgeons
of the Farriers' Corps, when horses were a part of the armed forces.
Mahon-modified machines were new--very new--but the top brass naturally
remembered everything faintly analogous and applied it all wrong. So
Sergeant Bellews conducted a one-man campaign to establish the dignity
of his profession.

But nobody without special Metech training ought to tinker with a
Mahon-modified machine.

"If he's gonna fool with Betsy," said the Sergeant bitterly, "I guess I
gotta go over an' boss the job."

He pressed a button on his work-table. The vacuum cleaner's standby
light calmed down. The button provided soothing sub-threshold stimuli to
the Mahon unit, not quite giving it the illusion of operating
perfectly--if a Mahon unit could be said to be capable of illusion--but
maintaining it in the rest condition which was the foundation of
Mahon-unit operation, since a Mahon machine must never be turned off.