f
serological data for the entrains of ECAIAC, a perfect record of not a
single unsolved case.

And the penalty was in his eyes, if one cared to look beyond the
thick-lensed glasses. No one ever did. They were remote eyes, a little
bewildered, a little hurt ... a mirror gone dull from times remembered
but irretrievably lost.

* * * * *

Beardsley stepped onto the corridor slidewalk, coasted to the escalator
and rode it down. Still immersed in his thoughts, he pushed into
ECAIAC's room ... _and again it happened_.

So shockingly sudden, there was not even time for remonstrance at
himself. The feeling hit him as always before, straight and unerring, a
surging impact that smashed forward and stopped him in his tracks,
literally paralyzed.

He caught his breath convulsively. How often had he come here? And how
often had this happened, even when he'd sworn he wouldn't let it? There
was something about the sight and sound and feel of ECAIAC that got to
him, that seeped beneath flesh and bone and into his brain and sent his
senses singing. Beardsley managed to gulp, as he observed the shiny
black colossus that filled the entire length of the ninety-foot room; a
dozen techs scurried around it, taking notes, attentive to the flashing
lights in red-and-green and the faint clicking of thousands of relays
that rose in susurration.

But more than that arose. It was something that pervaded the room, not a
pulsing but a _presence_, a sort of snapping intangible intelligence
that reached beyond the audible and sheared at Beardsley's nerve-ends.

And it hadn't been there a moment before. That was the shocking thing.
Beardsley knew that it _knew_! It was sentient, it was alive and aware
and waiting, and it was listening.

As always, it knew that _he_ had entered.

Beardsley gulped again, stood frozen for half a minute. None of the
techs seemed to notice; they had often chided him about it, but he was
used to that now. At last he broke the spell and made his legs move,
feeling cold sweat as he hurried along the length of ECAIAC toward
Arnold's office.

There ... just about there ... by the rheostats, where the four red
lights and the two green made a baleful pattern against the black metal
skin. He felt it stronger than ever this time, something reaching and
sinister aimed solely at him. He skirted the place with a quick goosey
hop, stumbled a little and felt panic, but made it all right to the