and I'm cursed with the unenviable quality of being late
to anything and for everything. He even asserts that the occasional
designs I submit are late Jacobean, but that isn't fair. They're
Post-Romanesque.

Old N. J. also objects to my penchant for ladies of the stage and
'vision screen, and periodically threatens to cut my allowance, though
that's supposed to be a salary. It's inconvenient to be so dependent,
and sometimes I regret that unfortunate market crash of 2009 that wiped
out my own money, although it did keep me from marrying Whimsy White,
and van Manderpootz, through his subjunctivisor, succeeded in proving
that that would have been a catastrophe. But it turned out nearly as
much of a disaster anyway, as far as my feelings were concerned. It took
me months to forget Joanna Caldwell and her silvery eyes. Just another
instance when I was a little late.

Van Manderpootz himself is my old Physics Professor, head of the
Department of Newer Physics at N. Y. U., and a genius, but a bit
eccentric. Judge for yourself.

"And that's the thesis," he said suddenly, interrupting my thoughts.

"Eh? Oh, of course. But what's that grinning robot got to do with it?"

He purpled. "I've just told you!" he roared. "Idiot! Imbecile! To dream
while van Manderpootz talks! Get out! Get out!"

I got. It was late anyway, so late that I overslept more than usual in
the morning, and suffered more than the usual lecture on promptness from
my father at the office.

* * * * *

Van Manderpootz had forgotten his anger by the next time I dropped in
for an evening. The robot still stood in the corner near the window,
and I lost no time asking its purpose.

"It's just a toy I had some of the students construct," he explained.
"There's a screen of photoelectric cells behind the right eye, so
connected that when a certain pattern is thrown on them, it activates
the mechanism. The thing's plugged into the light-circuit, but it really
ought to run on gasoline."

"Why?"

"Well, the pattern it's set for is the shape of an automobile. See
here." He picked up a card from his desk, and cut in the outlines of a
streamlined car like those of that year. "Since only one eye is used,"
he continued, "The thing can't tell the difference between a full-sized
vehicle at a distance and this small outline nearby. It has no sense of
perspective."

He held the bit of cardboard before the eye of the mechanism. Instantly