"... I've never liked cheap, showy gadgets, performing some small function that a person might do as well, and as easily, and with less affectation, with his own head and hands. There, perhaps Mr. Cope and I agree, as, no doubt we do about a pastoral simplicity when it is possible--the smells of rain and woods and gardens. But Cope forgets that, crowded as the Earth is, with its billions of mouths to feed, such beautiful, rustic inefficiency is no longer possible, and hence beyond being argued for, reasonably, unless the starship brings us to other habitable worlds. "Which presents the subject of inventions--natural products of natural minds which are too sublime to be called gadgets. The starship, for one. The android process, for another. Does Mr. Cope suppose that the benefits the latter represents, would ever encourage mankind as a whole to suppress it? It couldn't be suppressed, by law or by anyone, as long as there are people left to dream of vigor going on and on. "Mr. Cope says further that his nerves crawl. This is nothing more than the mistrust of the new and unknown, which time will take away. Yet, worst of all, he speaks of fighting and falling. I hope that he does not mean it. For today, that can truly be a thing of horror, and final silence. Therefore, I plead that he, and all those who have been tempted to think in this manner, review their reasoning, and correct its defects." I visited Cope at his home. "Look, Cope," I said, "we used to be friendly enough to live and let each other live. Don't you see that what you're doing now can end all that has been built, and finish the human race--natural and android--entirely? You're bucking a logic and a need for betterment that's far too big for anyone--the death of death, you might say. What do you want in its place? The death of everyone? You've got to stop talking as you do, Cope, pounding on the detonator of a world!" His intellectual face went white with rage at what I had said. "_You_--Harver!" he growled softly. "You dare to talk to me like that! When you helped to turn this hellish development loose on Earth! Make every human being a snake, and it would not be half as bad. Yes, I was half your friend. But now get out of my house--out before I kill you!" * * * * * Further signs of danger were soon more definite, after that. Several days after Scharber's emergence from the process, I was walking with him in a Chicago street. A tactless acquaintance of his, of opposite inclinations and a dislike of him, previously entertained, ran into us in a theatre lobby. "Hi, Scharber," he greeted. "I heard. You were born a robot, so why bother to change? And why didn't you at least order yourself a better face?"