ast cavity underneath The Brain,
just as is the thorax in the human body. It's strictly hush-hush of
course, but since you were good enough to say that you're going to help
me out, I might as well tell you. The Thorax is going to house the
'motoric organs' of The Brain. It already contains the living quarters
for guards, maintenance engineers, and the general staff and so on in
the event of war emergency. It also contains the first fully automatic
factories for the production of spare parts which would make The Brain
self-sufficient. Eventually it is going to contain a great many
developments such as 'Gog and Magog' as I call them--fascinating little
beasts, I tell you, even if at present they are still in the nursery
stage. Anyway, for the completion of its Thorax The Brain needs another
billion dollars, and for the operation of the Thorax Congress has to
pass the Brainpower-Extension-Bill. For eventually, of course, all
war-essential traffic and all war-essential industries have to be
brought under the centralized control of The Brain if the country is
going to win the Atom-war. Naturally this Brainpower-Extension-Bill has
been very carefully edited by the War Department so as to appear a
peacetime project for the technological improvement of transportation
and so on. Even so we have great reason to fear that one of those blind
mice which we elect for our law-makers might accidentally fall over a
kernel of truth and start a great big squeak over it.

"So that's why I'm faced with this invasion. That's why I'm pushed up
front while the brass cautiously retires behind the ramparts which I'm
supposed to hold. Please Oona, let me have another drink."

From the Sierra Mountains the nightwind came in gusts, making the
"Brainwave's" hull vibrate like the body of a cello, over its rubber
tires it trembled, from time to time it bent a little in its hydraulic
knees. Almost in tune with the wind, gusts of wild thought whirled
through Lee:

"The Brain.... So it was already possessed of some motoric organs.... So
it already _had_ some means to exert its will ... so it wasn't The
Brain's wishful thinking, that full automatization which would lead to
the auto-procreation of machines. It was reality.... Most ominous of
all, why had The Brain concealed from him the work which must have been
going on for months, for years in this mysterious "Thorax", seat of
motoric organs.... Why, unless--had it not been for tonight's accident,
the