allistics experts working with The Brain on curves for
long-range rockets to be aimed at the vital centers of some foreign
land; it might be some mild looking librarian submitting the current
products of foreign literature to the analysis as to "idea-content"; or
else it could be a lab to plot campaigns of chemical warfare; or some
astronomer, happily abstracted from all bellicose ideas, might employ
The Brain's superhuman faculties in mathematics to figure comet courses
and eclipses which in turn would form material for the timing and the
camouflaging of those man-made meteorites science would use in another
war. Directly or indirectly, he knew, practically every project
submitted to The Brain would be of a military nature. Of this there
could be no doubt.

Sometimes, especially when tired, he could feel the weight of those
billions of rock tons over his head and it was like being buried alive
in the tomb of the Pharaoh. And also in that state of mental exhaustion
at the end of a long day, he sensed the emanations of The Brain's
titanic cerebrations as one senses the presence of genius in human man.
The knowledge that all this mighty work was being devoted to war had
deeply depressing effects on him. Would there be anybody else in this
vast apperception area who worked for the prevention of war? A few
perhaps; Scriven would be one of them in case he had a lab somewhere in
here and time to work in it. Lee didn't know whether he had. He hadn't
seen Scriven again after that inauguration speech he had made when Lee,
together with other newly appointed scientific workers had taken "The
Oath of The Brain."

They had assembled in that vast subterranean dome of the luminous murals
at the feet of the giant statue of The Thinker, looking almost forlorn
in the expanse, though there had been several hundred of them. The
atmosphere had been solemn, the silence hushed, as Scriven mounted the
statue's pedestal. The address by that mighty voice resounding from the
cupola had been worthy of the majestic scene:

"As we stand gathered here, the eons in evolution of our human race are
looking down upon us...."

The speech had been followed by the taking of the oath, deeply stirring
to the emotions of the young neophytes who formed the large majority of
the new group. The chorus of their voices had resounded in awed and
solemn tones as they repeated the formula; even now after six months
some of it echoed in Lee's ears:

"I herewith