ressive to
have created with hand tools and never to have made machines nor the
things that machines made.

So Gud resolved straightway to make a creating machine. He gathered the
wheels together and filled them with substance from the heap of matter
that he had made. And then he took squares and triangles and curves and
cones and rhomboids and tetrahedrons and a great many other things that
were in space; and he worked very fast and furiously, and presently he
had made a machine which ground with a deafening roar, for it was a
high-speed, self-acting, creating machine, the like of which had never
been.

And the machine began to create and to grind out things. But there was
nothing alive in the things which the creating machine ground out, for
it had not in it the breath of life, but only the spirit of the machine.
Those things which the machine made were other machines; and they came
out of the creating machine endowed with the spirit of the machine, and
straightway they began also to turn and grind with a great and
discordant roar.

The machines of transportation began to distribute the other machines
through space. They roared and shrieked and whistled as they hurtled
thither and yon, and Gud fled before them.

Then came also great lighting machines and filled all the center of
space with light, and drove the darkness into the outer edges of space,
toward which Gud had fled.

There were many myriads of machines that Gud did not know, and he had no
time in which to name them. But there were some machines that were very
dreadful, and of these Gud knew the names and the uses, for he had seen
the like of them in the little world of machines he had once visited,
for these were killing machines.

But the killing machines could find nothing to kill for there was not
any life, but only the machines that were fast filling all space. The
spirit of the killing machines was not to create but to destroy and they
boomed and shrieked mightily for their prey. Gud was sore afraid, and
because of the great noise of the machines, he could not remember that
he was immortal and need not fear even the killing machines.

So Gud reached the outer edges of space and stood there in the dark
panting and trembling. And Gud regretted that he had made the creating
machine which had made all of the other machines, and he wondered what
he might do to undo what he had done. Then Gud bolstered his courage,
and walked back into the midst of t