He searched the entire lab the first two nights but discovered that Neil had taken the revolver he had kept in a drawer of his old desk. It would take too long to try and machine another one, although their machine shop had proven its capability of turning out anything. A knife he discarded as too clumsy for his means of control. He then carefully considered steel darts shot from a tube by compressed air or carbon dioxide but reluctantly abandoned that idea also. Since he had a machine's limitations as well as advantages, he'd have to begin thinking less like a human. So, the first thing to base a weapon on would be the material most plentiful in the lab. That was--electricity. * * * * * Once determined on the line of his endeavors, he briefly marvelled again on the still unexplored potentialities of his brain. The weapon would be mounted on his own cart and electricity could either be broadcast or self-contained. For mobility, he decided on a power pack. The weapon itself evolved so easily that he wondered why no one had thought of it before now. Special type condensers built a battery charge up to over a million volts for a split second. This charge, invisible until it hit an object more solid than air, was contained in a very narrow beam by strong screens of opposite polarity. The entire sequence of operation was almost instantaneous, and the bolt was more in the nature of an electrical projectile than a continuous beam. He decided that the unit, resembling a flashlight, could be mounted in a concealed spot under his "eye" so that it could be fired at whatever he might be looking at. Now that he had a means of defending himself, Mel felt more at ease but at a loss for his next step. Merely eliminating both Jenkins and Neil would gain his revenge but what then? He could always notify the authorities but mentally flinched at exposing himself to the world as a freak and being at the mercy of the morbid curiosity of millions. He had hardly begun to lay his plans before disaster struck. Neil came in early one morning and had Mel begin working on a problem concerning a new type of steel that would combine structural strength with the lightweight qualities of aluminum. Mel energized his calculators that were, electrically, practically part of his brain. He briefly wondered why Neil appeared so restless, wandering around the room with his hands behind his back, studying everything. Then the problem became so intriguing that he completely forgot that anyone was in the room. His first inkling that anything was wrong was when Neil straightened up from the cart with a twisted smile on his face and exclaimed: "Ha!"