a race are better than the Masters were, and that is obvious. Everything else was impli-
cation, logic and bluff.”
“That’s right, at that. And they were neurotic and decadent. No question about that.”
“But listen, boss.” This was Stella Wing. “About this mind reading business. If Laro
could read your mind, he’d know you were bluffing and . . . Oh, that ‘Omans can read
only what Masters wish Omans to read,’ eh? But d’you think that applies to us?”
“I’m sure it does, and I was thinking some pretty savage thoughts. And I want to
caution all of you: whenever you’re near any Oman, start thinking that you’re beginning
to agree with me that they’re useless to us, and let them know it. Now get out on the
job, all of you. Scat!”
“Just a minute,” Poynter said. “We’re going to have to keep on using the Omans and
their cars, aren’t we?”
“Of course. Just be superior and distant. They’re on probation-we haven’t decided yet
what to do about them. Since that happens to be true, it’ll be easy.”
Hilton and Sandra went to their tiny office. There wasn’t room to pace the floor, but
Hilton tried to pace it anyway. “Now don’t say again that you want to do something,”
Sandra said brightly. “Look what happened when you said that yesterday.”
“I’ve got a job, but I don’t know enough to do it. The creche-there’s probably only one
on the planet. So I want you to help me think. The Masters were very sensitive to ra-
diation. Right?”
“Right. That city on Fuel Bin was kept deconned to zero, just in case some Master
wanted to visit it.”
“And the Masters had to work in the creche whenever anything really new had to be
put into the prototype brain.”
“I’d say so, yes.”
“So they had armor. Probably as much better than our radiation suits as the rest of
their stuff is. Did they or did they not have thought screens?”
“Ouch! You think of the damnedest things, chief.” She caught her lower lip between her
teeth and concentrated. “. . . I don’t know. There are at least fifty vectors, all pointing in
different directions.”
“I know it. The key one in my opinion is that the Masters gave ’em both telepathy and
speech.”
“I considered that and weighed it. Even so, the probability is only about point sixty-five.
Can you take that much of a chance?”
“Yes. I can make one or two mistakes. Next, about finding that creche. Any spot of
radiation on the planet would be it, but the search might take . . .
“Hold on. They’d have it heavily shielded-there’ll be no leakage at all. Laro will have to
take you.”
“That’s right. Want to come along? Nothing much will happen here today.”
“Uh-uh, not me.” Sandra shivered in distaste. “I never want to see brains and livers and
things swimming around in nutrient solution if I can help it.”
“Okay. It’s all yours. I’ll be back sometime,” and Hilton went out onto the dock, where
the dejected Laro was waiting for him.
“Hi, Laro. Get the car and take me to the Hall of Records.” The android brightened up
immediately and hurried to obey. At the Hall, Hilton’s first care was to see how the work
was going on. Eight of the huge rooms were now open and brightly lighted-operating
the lamps had been one of the first items on the first spool of instructions-with a cold,
pure-white, sourceless light.
“You know what we’ve got to do, Jarve?” Karns, the team captain exploded. “Go back
to being college freshmen-or maybe grade school or kindergarten, we don’t know
yet-and learn a whole new system of mathematics before we can even begin to touch
this stuff!”
“And you’re bellyaching about that?” Hilton marveled. “I wish I could join you. That’d be
fun.” Then, as Karns started a snappy rejoinder:
“But I got troubles of my own,” he added hastily “‘Bye now,” and beat a retreat.
Out in the hall again, Hilton took his chance. After all, the odds were about two to one
that he would win.
“I want a couple of things, Laro. Fast, a thought screen.” He won!
“Very well, Master. They are in a distant room, Department Four Six Nine. Will you wait
here on this cushioned bench, Master?”
“No, we don’t like to rest too much. IT go with you.” Then, walking along, he went on,
thoughtfully. “I’ve been thinking since last night, Laro. There are tremendous advan-
tages in having Omans . . .
“I am very glad you think so, Master. I want to serve you. It is my greatest need.”
“. . . if they could be kept from smothering us to death. Thus, if our ancestors had kept
their Omans, I would have known all about life on this world and about this Hall of Re-
cords, instead of having the fragmentary, confusing and sometimes false information I
now have . . . oh, we’re here?”
Every team had found its objective and was working on it. Some of them were doing
nicely, but the First Team could not even get started. Its primary record would advance
a fraction of an inch and stop; while Omans and humans sought out other records and
other projectors in an attempt to elucidate some concept that simply could not be
translated into any words or symbols known to Terran science. At the moment there
were seventeen of those peculiar-projectors? Viewers? Playbacks-in use, and all of
them were stopped.
Laro had stopped and was opening a door. He stood aside. Hilton went in, touched
with one finger a crystalline cube set conveniently into a wall, gave a mental command,
and the lights went on.
Laro opened a cabinet and took out a disk about the size of a dime, pendant from a
neck-chain. While Hilton had not known what to expect, he certainly had not expected
anything as simple as that. Nevertheless, he kept his face straight and his thoughts
unmoved as Laro hung the tiny thing around his neck and adjusted the chain to a loose
fit.
“Thanks, Laro.” Hilton removed it and put it into his pocket. “It won’t work from there,
will it?”
“No, Master. To function, it must be within eighteen inches of the brain. The second
thing, Master?”
“A radiation-proof suit. Then you will please take me to the creche.”
The android almost missed a step, but said nothing.
The radiation-proof suit-how glad Hilton was that he had not called it “armor”!-was as
much of a surprise as the thought-screen generator had been. It was a coverall, made
of something that looked like thin plastic, weighing less than one pound. It had one
sealed box, about the size and weight of a cigarette ease. No wires or apparatus could
be seen. Air entered through two filters, one at each heel, flowed upward for no reason
at all that Hilton could see-and out through a filter above the top of his head. The suit
neither flopped nor clung, but stood out, comfortably out of the way, all by itself.
Hilton, just barely, accepted the suit, too, without showing surprise.
The creche, it turned out, while not in the city of Omlu itself, was not too far out to
reach easily by ear.
En route, Laro said-stiffly? Tentatively? Hilton could not fit an adverb to the
tone-“Master, have you then decided to destroy me? That is of course your right.”
“Not this time, at least.” Laro drew an entirely human breath of relief and Hilton went
on: “I don’t want to destroy you at all, and won’t, unless I have to. But, some way or
other, my silicon-fluoride friend, you are either going to learn how to cooperate or you
won’t last much longer.”
“But, Master, that is exactly . . .”
“Oh, hell! Do we have to go over that again?” At the blaze of frustrated fury in Hilton’s
mind Laro flinched away. “If you can’t talk sense keep still.”
In half an hour the car stopped in front of a small building which looked something like
a subway kiosk-except for the door, which, built of steel-reinforced lead, swung on a
piano hinge having a pin a good eight inches in diameter. Laro opened that door. They
went in. As the tremendously massive portal clanged shut, lights flashed on.
Hilton glanced at his telltales, one inside, one outside, his suit. Both showed zero.
Down twenty steps, another door. Twenty more; another. And a fourth. Hilton’s inside
meter still read zero. The outside one was beginning to climb.
Into an elevator and straight down for what must have been four or five hundred feet.
Another door. Hilton went through this final barrier gingerly, eyes nailed to his gauges.
The outside needle was high in the red, almost against the pin, but the inside one still
sat reassuringly on zero.
He stared at the android. “How can any possible brain take so much of this stuff