* * * * * He folded his arms and chuckled once more, icily, hideously. "Quite soon now, we will come into this dimension in one great wave that will obliterate your race as though the stars had never shone upon it at all! Every birth in the world shall be one of our robots--and then, no matter how you struggle and fume and plot, your people are doomed! Then, no matter how hard you fight, you will lose, for your species will ultimately die of old age!" In the silence that followed this burst of ghoulish amusement, I heard someone who was going by in Baker Street whistling the Bronze Horse Overture, one of my favorites ... oddly, irrelevantly, I considered it a good omen, and was cheered. Then Geoff spoke. "Just put my hands on his throat, somebody, will you?" "Not yet, son. Go on, ogre. Why will you murder a whole race? Just for amusement? Just so you can see colors and pretty forms?" "Yes. That simple a reason. And because we hate you, for that you have inherited a world of such perfections and do not appreciate it. To see colors, to revel in sounds and scents and tastes we had never imagined; to feel the vicarious ecstasy of these robots in acts you take for granted--acts of feeding, of drinking, of viewing and touching, of sex, which we do not have in our proper forms in any fashion whatever. We envy you, and hate you. We want your world, even if we must take its tactile delights vicariously--which is not so second-best as it sounds, for these robots are in a sense ourselves as much as our own bodies are. You who are born to this wondrousness--can you claim you properly appreciate it? Or will you admit that you have held it lightly and unthinkingly for as many generations as you can count?" "Well, I'll be a devaluated pound," gasped Alec. "Will you listen to the conceited son-of-a-bitch!" "Another question," I said to the beast. "How do--" It was done almost before I could blink. He made a sudden break for the windows, one arm raised to smash the glass so that he could shout down to the street. Two feet short of his goal he ran into Alec's good right hand, swung round like the head of a short-hafted axe. He dropped with a crash. "No use inspecting the body," I said. "His real shape blew up like a paper bag and went blam. I guess you broke his neck. He's dead." Geoff stood up and said matter-of-factly, "Well, we'd best be going, what? If someone will just find my pipe for me, I'm ready." "Wail till I toss a few things into my purse," said Marion. "Can't expect a gal to flee without a lipstick, can you?" I stared at Alec, who nodded. It was time for us to be on the wing. CHAPTER XVII