With abrupt decision Lin stepped around so he could see the man's face. He caught an impression of a lean face, intellectual and relaxed, with firm lips and thin high bridged nose. But these were only vaguely noticed, because his attention was immediately dominated by the man's eyes. Or lack of eyes, that is. For where his eyes should have been was nothing but tightly closed lids that, from their sunken contours, covered no eyes at all, but only empty sockets. * * * * * Experimentally Lin reached out and touched the face. The pale skin was as unyielding as rock. He pressed his finger against the right cheek until his nail bent over. It should have left a mark on any living skin and brought an exclamation of pain from any living person. But it left no perceptible mark, and the man gave no sign of having noticed. And the fingers continued their rapid movement over the typewriter keyboard. Incredulously Lin reached out and tried to remove the skullcap. It wouldn't budge, and was as unyieldingly hard as the face. "A robot!" The exclamation escaped Lin's lips in a hoarse whisper. "Or--a statue?" In desperation he seized one of the man's arms at the elbow and tried to interrupt the smooth flow of movement. All his strength couldn't vary the motion of that arm enough to cause a finger to miss a key on the typewriter. "Not a millionth of an inch of play in the joints!" he said, marvelling. For the first time he turned his attention from the figure before him and examined his surroundings. The robot or statue or whatever it was was seated at a spot practically perched on the edge of a cliff that went down much farther than the stairs on the other side. Here there was a sheer drop of at least a thousand feet, and probably more nearly two thousand. Below, an immense valley stretched out toward the far horizon. Lin looked out over the valley with a puzzled frown, trying to recall if there were any high mountains in this section of the country. There were hills, but no real mountains. Nothing to compare with this. "How long have I been unconscious?" he muttered. His attention jerked back to the typist in time to see another sheet of paper go into the flames. He watched it burn. The flame itself seemed to come out of a round hole in the rock inside the area of the bottom of the wire basket. From its color it was a gas flame. In the dark it would be a bright blue. His attention turned to the typewriter and the stone table on which it rested. An inscription was embossed on the smooth face of the front of the table. Lin nodded in grim understanding. This was a statue. But a statue such as never had existed on the Earth he lived in, or it would have been considered the eighth wonder of the world and known to every school child.