d a glow of pride and triumph suffused his fine
dark eyes. "Grumbling again, old carper. What would you say if I told
you that I have solved even _that_ problem? I have given my master
machine intelligence!"

My wide-eyed, questioning stare must have conveyed my thought to him,
for he laughed shortly, and said, "No, I've not gone insane."

"It was an accident," he went on with amazing calm. "My first idea was
merely to build something that would reduce the necessary supervisory
force to one or two humans. But, when I had almost completed my second
experimental model, I found that I was out of the copper filaments
necessary to wind a certain coil. I didn't want to wait till I could
obtain more from the stores, and remembered that on the inside of the
door to the Death Bath there was some fine screening that could be
dispensed with. I used the wire from that. Whether the secret of life
as well as of death lies in those waste rays from the sun, or whether
some unknown element of the humans consumed in the flame was deposited
on the screening in a sort of invisible coating, I do not know. But
this I do know: when that second model was finished, and the
vitalizing current was turned on, things happened--queer things that
could be explained only on the ground that the machine had
intelligence."

He fell silent a moment, then his thin pale lips twisted in a wry
smile. "You know, Meron, I was a little scared. The thing I had
created seemed possessed of a virulent antagonism toward me. Look." He
bared an arm and held it out. A livid weal ran clear around the
fore-arm. "One of the tentacles I had given it whipped around my arm
like a flash. If I had not cut off the current at once it might have
squeezed through flesh and bone. The pressure was terrific."

* * * * *

I was about to speak, when from the screen nearest the entrance door a
beam of green light darted out, vanished, came again. Once, twice,
three times.

"Look, Chief, the signal. They're coming. The Council will soon be
here."

"They're over-prompt. My message must have aroused their curiosity.
But listen:

"I incorporated my new thought coil, as I called it, in the large
master machine. But I don't know just what will happen when the
current flows through that. So I shunted it. The machine will work,
routinely, without it. There is a button that will bring it into
action. When I shall have taken the proper precautions I will s