e was a dull-red light. The gaze, touching me, seemed to
bring a physical chill. The ears were like tiny megaphones with a grid
of thin wires strung across them.

The neck was set with ball and socket as though the huge head were
upon a universal joint. There were lateral depressions in the neck
within which wire strands slid like muscles. I saw similar wire cables
stretched at other points on the mailed body, and in the arms and
legs. They were the network of its muscles!

The top of the head was fashioned into a square cap as though this
were the emblem of the thing's vocation. A similar device was moulded
into its convex chest plate. And under the chest emblem was a row of
tiny buttons, a dozen or more. I stared at them, fascinated. Were they
controls? Some seemed higher, more protruding, than others. Had they
been set into some combination to give this monster its orders? Had
some human master set these controls?

And I saw what seemed a closed door in the side of the huge metal
body. A door which could be opened to make adjustments of the
mechanisms within? What strange mechanisms were in there? I stared at
the broad, corrugated forehead. What was in that head? Mechanisms?
What mechanisms could make this thing think? Were thoughts lurking in
that metal skull?

From the head abruptly came a voice--a deep, hollow, queerly toneless
voice, utterly, unmistakably mechanical. Yet it was sufficiently
life-like to be the recreated, mechanically reproduced voice of a
human. The thing was speaking to me! A machine was speaking its
thoughts!

Gruesome! The iron lips were unmoving. There were no muscles to give
expression to the face: the lens eyes stared inscrutably unblinking.

* * * * *

It spoke: "You will know me again? Is that not true?"

My head whirled. The thing reiterated, "Is that not true?"

A mockery of a human man--but in the toneless voice there seemed
irony! I felt Mary clutching at me.

"Why--why, yes," I stammered. "I did not realize you could talk."

"I can talk. And you can talk my language. That is very good."

It turned away. I saw the small red beams from its eyes go to where
the cage bars were less blurred, less luminous, as though there was a
rectangle of window there, and the Robot was staring out.

"Did it speak to you like that, Mary?" I asked.

"Yes," she whispered. "A little. But pray do not anger it."

"No."

For a time--a nameless time in which I