ne moment more, he felt,
and they would drive him mad. It never occurred to him to pull the
pulsemeter plug out. Primeval instincts in him took the reins and their
command was: "_Kill it, kill_ this thing, _finish_ this agony."

To the front room he rushed, pursued by the insane shriekings of The
Brain. He grabbed the axe he'd left there and swung it against the
nerve-stem where it entered the pineal gland. With the third blow the
plastics cell cracked and the lignin poured out, a syrupy curtain
sliding down.

He dropped the axe and picked up the wire shears. Straining every muscle
he tore at the cables until one by one they snapped and with a rain of
sparks dropped down, dead snakes....

Then there was silence in the little room. The last shred of life, the
"sensorium commune" was severed and The Brain was dead.

* * * * *

Lee let the heavy shears come down and leaned upon the handles, panting
as after a hand-to-hand death struggle with a Samurai. Now that it was
all over, complete exhaustion left him weak, saddened and vaguely
wondering:

What had he done? He had destroyed the SUPERMAN, the MASTERMIND, the
powers of a GOD. Why had he done it? For no good reason excepting
entirely personal ideas of his own--because a friend had been murdered
cruelly. Because his own concepts of freedom and human dignity had been
violated. Because he personally loathed seeing Man-domineering
machines....

What did all this amount to in the eyes of the absolute? To nothing; to
nothing at all. For milleniums the struggle of human freedom versus
tyranny had raged; and it was undecided to this day. Who was he to take
sides? A nobody, a little fellow, a termitologist whose work meant
nothing to the world. How had he dared to sit in judgment over The
Brain, how had he dared to slay The Brain--a little David with nothing
more but "three smooth pebbles" in his hands....

Down at his feet the spilled lignin formed a widening pool; it
threatened to envelope his feet. It looked like blood. He shivered. Now
he had killed The Brain he thought of it again as a child. Man had
created it in his own image. Man had ruthlessly exploited his
Brainchild. If this titanic intellect turned toward evil things, the
fault was Man's. The Brain was innocent. He felt no remorse, but a great
sadness, a sense of tragedy as he stepped around the pool and closed the
door of the pineal gland.

"What a pity," he murmured. "Maybe