ow."

"There's the time machine, sir."

"But isn't there some other way? Perhaps if you went out and talked to
them...."

"You know there's no other way. Those people believe you've brought
disaster to the human race and they mean to kill you. And if you don't
hurry they will," Towney said urgently. "The time machine is set for
twenty years in the future. Please hurry, sir!"

The door was beginning to give. Clark looked around unhappily and then
walked to the time machine. "All right, I'll go. In the future I know
the results of my work will be appreciated. I'll be a hero and
benefactor of mankind."

Towney heard the door crash and roughly pushed his employer into the
time machine as the mob burst through. "Push the starting button, push
the starting button. Quick!" he screamed as the first of the mob reached
him.

Clark's hand leaped to the control lever just as a brick crashed into
his head. His hand completed its motion with more force than he had
intended as he sank unconscious to the floor and the machine was set for
a thousand years in the future instead of twenty.

* * * * *

The year three thousand had been a brilliant one for the robots, in
fact, the most brilliant since the last human being had died some five
hundred years before. They had reached Venus and Mars and were now
planning a trip to Jupiter. And this very day, a huge statue of Jacob
Clark, the creator and benefactor, was to be dedicated on the site of
what once had been his laboratory. It seemed a shame that most of the
records concerning him and his time had been lost in one of the great
wars that had helped to extinguish the humans. The statue though was
good for surely he looked like a robot. One of the few human books still
in existence said that the Creator had created in his own image.

It was right at the foot of his own statue that the Guardians of the
Shrine found Jacob Clark. They picked up his unconscious, bleeding body
and laid it tenderly on a nearby bench. They bent over him with all the
gentleness and solicitude that had been installed in his very first
models and had been handed down from generation to generation of robots.
They wanted to help him but they were very puzzled.

"Perhaps it came from a far part of the earth," one of them said.

"Or maybe a mistake was made at one of the birth factories," said
another. "See, it is losing oil at a great rate."

"Perhaps," mused the elder, "it