The metal man was too heavy to lift, but Gascon's hours of work had provided his joints with beautiful balance. An arm around the tanklike waist was enough to support and guide. The weight shifted from one big shovel-foot to the other and the massive bulk actually walked to the table-like slab in the midst of the wheels and tubes, and Gascon eased it down at full length. Now Tom-Tom approached, bringing a spongy-looking object on a metal tray, an amorphous roundness that sprouted copper wires in all directions. He slid it into the open top of the robot's bucketlike head. "That's a brain for Friday," explained Tom-Tom. "Not as complex as mine, but made the same way. He'll have simple reactions and impulses. A model servant." _Simple reactions_--and Tom-Tom had sprung up from his birthcouch to kill the man who brought him to life. Gascon's hands trembled ever so slightly as he connected the brain wires to terminals that did duty as nerves. Tom-Tom himself laid a plate over the orifice and stuck it down with a soldering iron. "My own brain's armored inside this wooden skull," he commented. "No bullet or axe could reach it. And nobody can hurt the brain of Friday here unless they get at him from above. He's pretty tall to get at from above, eh, Gaspipe?" "That's right," nodded Gascon, and in his mind rose a picture of the big metal thing bending down, exposing that vulnerable soldered patch. Tom-Tom and he clamped the leads to wrists, ankles and neck. "Get back to the wall, Gaspipe," commanded Tom-Tom bleakly, and Gascon obeyed. "Now watch. And don't move, or I'll set Friday on you when he wakes up." Gascon sat down on a long, low bench next to the open door. Tom-Tom noticed his position, and lifted the gun he had carried into the chamber. "Don't try to run," he warned, "or I'll drill you--maybe in the stomach. And you can lie there and die slowly. When you die there'll be nobody to help Shanny yonder in her little hole in the wall." "I won't run," promised Gascon. And Tom-Tom switched on more power. Sparks, a shuddering roar, a quickening of all parts of the machine. The shining hulk on the slab stirred and quivered, like a man troubled by dreams. Tom-Tom gave a brief barking laugh of triumph, brought the mechanism to a howling crescendo of sound and motion, then abruptly shut it down to a murmur. "Friday! Friday!" he called. Slowly the metal giant sat up in its bonds. The bucket-head, with its vacant eyes now gleaming as yellow as Tom-Tom's, turned in that direction. Then, with unthinkable swiftness, the big metal body heaved itself erect, ripping free of the clamps that had been fastened upon it. Up rose two monstrous hands, like baseball gloves of jointed iron. There was a clashing, heavy-footed charge. Sitting still as death, Gascon again recalled to mind what Tom-Tom had said, what he had heard at medical school.