"And to think," Artie murmured, "that this is happening because we tried to make it _noiseless_!" "What I'm worried about," I said sickly, "is that new cloud of dust rising from the latest debris. There are crumbs of _two_ smashed buildings in it, Artie. And in roughly twenty minutes the process is going to repeat, and there'll be crumbs from _four_ labs in the air; two labs that'll be the second duplicate of the original, and two that'll be the first duplicate of the original-plus-first-duplicate!" Artie shook his head sadly. "Crumbs from _six_, Burt. Remember, when those four new labs fall in twenty minutes, they're going to raise dust from the wreckage of the two _already_ on the ground!" "Maybe," I said, less lackadaisically than I'd spoken when we left the phone booth for the bar, "you'd better get your man in Washington, again." "He'll never believe I'm sober, _now_!" Artie complained. "Oops--Never mind, Artie," I said, resignedly, looking at the latest development in the distant sky. "He'll get the word indirectly, from the forest rangers." "Huh?" said Artie, and looked toward the machine. * * * * * Amid the sparking cloud of fireflies, fluttering cornflakes, glinting spoons, and a foursome of hazy, still-processing new labs, there was a newcomer to the chaos. Something in one of the plunging artifacts must have rubbed something else the wrong way, made a spark, and--Well, the machine was complacently sucking in raw blazing energy, now, tongue upon tongue of orange flame and black, spiralling smoke that rose from the pyre of shattered synthetics. It was the first geometrically cone-shaped blaze I'd ever seen in my life, but that suction was going pretty good, now. And all that glaring heat was going to be suddenly re-created going in the _other_ direction in about twenty minutes. But-- "Flames go _up_," said Artie, his thought-processes apparently running parallel to mine. "So the new fires...." "Will be sucked in with the next batch," I finished. "And come out double-strength next time around." "Burt--" said Artie, "What's the temperature at which water breaks down into free hydrogen and oxygen again?" "A little less than the melting point of iron," I said. "Figure about fifteen hundred degrees Centigrade. Why?" "I just wondered if perhaps the machine might not only double the amount of the fire, but its temperature as well...." I didn't _want_ to theorize about _that_. It was summer, and the air was pretty humid, and that meant an awful lot of free hydrogen and oxygen, all at once, ready to re-combine explosively in the heat from the flames that had separated them in the first place, thence to become disrupted again, thence to explode again.... The mind refuses certain contemplations. I turned away from the chaotic display in the distant skies, and said to Artie, "How's chances of the _machine_ getting melted down?"