"This, Gaspipe, is what brought me to life. And look!" The jointed wooden hand flourished toward a corner. "There's the kind of thing that was tried and failed." It looked like a caricature of an armored knight--a tall, jointed, gleaming thing, half again as big as a big man, with a head shaped like a bucket. There were no features except two vacant eyes of quartz, staring through the blank metal as through a mask. Gascon walked around it, his doctor-mind and builder-hands immediately interested. The body was but loosely pinned together, and he drew aside a plate, peering into the works. "The principle's wrong," he announced at once. "The fellow didn't understand anatomical balance--" "I knew it, I knew it!" cried Tom-Tom. "You can add the right touch, Gaspipe. That's the specimen that came closest to success before me. I'll help. After all, my brain was made by the old boy who did all these things. Through it, I know what he knew." "Why didn't you save him to help you?" demanded Gascon. He picked up a pair of tapering pincers and a small wrench, and began to tinker. "I told you about that once. I was angry. My first impulse was a killing rage. The death of my life-giver was my first pleasure and triumph. I hadn't dreamed up the plan I've been describing." Anger was Tom-Tom's first emotion. Not so different from human beings as the creature imagined, mused Gascon. What had the lecturer at medical school once quoted from Emmanuel Kant: "The outcry that is heard from a child just born was not the note of lamentation, but of indignation and aroused wrath." Of course, a new-born baby has not the strength to visit its rage on mother or nurse or doctor, but a creature as organized and powerful in body and mind as Tom-Tom--or as huge and overwhelming as this metal giant he fiddled with-- Gascon decided to think such thoughts with the greatest stealth. If Tom-Tom could divine them, something terrible was due to happen. Stripping off his coat, he went to work on the robot with deadly earnestness. * * * * * Morning had probably come to the outside world. Gascon, wan and weary, stepped back and mopped his brow with a shirt sleeve. Tom-Tom spoke from where he sat cross-legged on the bench beside the controls. "Is he pretty much in shape, Gaspipe?" "As much as you ever were, Tom-Tom. If you are right, and this machine gave you life, it will give him life, too." "I can't wait for my man Friday. Get him over and lay him on the slab."