e I'd done some work on the big tidal
turbines up in Maine, where they have to use Emmerich valves to guard
against electrical leakage from the tremendous potentials in their
condensers. So I started explaining, and van Manderpootz kept
interpolating sarcasms about his staff, and when I finally finished, I
suppose I'd been in there about half an hour. And then--I remembered
Denise!

I left van Manderpootz staring as I rushed back, and sure enough, there
was the girl with her face pressed against the barrel, and her hands
gripping the table edge. Her features were hidden, of course, but there
was something about her strained position, her white knuckles--

"Denise!" I yelled. "Are you all right? _Denise!_"

She didn't move. I stuck my face in between the mirror and the end of
the barrel and peered up the tube at her visage, and what I saw left me
all but stunned. Have you ever seen stark, mad, infinite terror on a
human face? That was what I saw in Denise's--inexpressible, unbearable
horror, worse than the fear of death could ever be. Her green eyes were
widened so that the whites showed around them; her perfect lips were
contorted, her whole face strained into a mask of sheer terror.

I rushed for the switch, but in passing I caught a single glimpse of--of
what showed in the mirror. Incredible! Obscene, terror-laden, horrifying
things--there just aren't words for them. There are no words.

Denise didn't move as the tubes darkened. I raised her face from the
barrel and when she glimpsed me she moved. She flung herself out of that
chair and away, facing me with such mad terror that I halted.

"Denise!" I cried. "It's just Dick. Look, Denise!"

But as I moved toward her, she uttered a choking scream, her eyes
dulled, her knees gave, and she fainted. Whatever she had seen, it must
have been appalling to the uttermost, for Denise was not the sort to
faint.

* * * * *

It was a week later that I sat facing van Manderpootz in his little
inner office. The grey metal figure of Isaak was missing, and the table
that had held the idealizator was empty.

"Yes," said van Manderpootz. "I've dismantled it. One of van
Manderpootz's few mistakes was to leave it around where a pair of
incompetents like you and Denise could get to it. It seems that I
continually overestimate the intelligence of others. I suppose I tend to
judge them by the brain of van Manderpootz."

I said nothing. I was thoroug