ly must be so and harbor only friendly, innocuous thoughts toward
The Brain. My actions will seem innocent enough; it is my thoughts
wherein my danger lies. Whatever I do; I've got to direct that from the
subconscious: act as by instinct and keep the mind a blank."

He opened the door and looked around--as usual--in this vault as silent
as the grave of a Pharaoh. There was a little dust on the glass cubicles
of "_Ant-termes-pacificus_" and there were a few lines scribbled on the
yellow memo-pad on his desk:

"Thanks for the weekend, boss. Everything normal and under control. Next
feeding time at 8 p.m. the 27th. So long, Harris." Of course; he had
given Harris, his assistant, the weekend off. That had escaped his mind
in the excitement when The Brain's mutiny began.... And now it was the
29th.

"They must be ravenously hungry by this time," he thought, and that
thought was in order because it was a normal thought.

He walked through the rows of the cubicles, halting his step every now
and then. The fluorescent screens on which The Brain drew the curves of
its observation-rays showed two sharp rises of the lines marked
"activity" and "emotionality". The lower levels of the glass cages
already were opaque; the glass corroded by the viscous acids which the
soldiers had squirted from their cephalic glands in their attempts to
break out and to reach food.

"Poor beasts," Lee thought, and he thought it without restraint because
it was normal, a perfectly harmless thought. But then; below the layers
of his consciousness his instincts told a different story.

"This is marvelous," they triumphed. "Fate takes a hand; they are
desperate; they're ready for the warpath and even the tiger and the
elephant would run for cover when their columns march."

As if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to do Lee
walked over to the south wall, the one which separated the lab from the
interior of The Brain. He removed a sliding panel marked
"L-Filler-Spout" and there it was before his eyes, looking almost like a
fireplug. There was one in every apperception center and there were
hundreds more throughout The Brain, and their purpose was to replenish
the liquid insulation which shielded the sensitive electric nervepaths
of The Brain. Without looking at the thing, concentrating his every
thought upon the hunger of "_Ant-termes-pacificus_", Lee unscrewed the
cap and put a finger into the opening. The finger came back covered