The atomic structure views were replaced at last by pictures of machines and apparatus--and that was a little better. Before his eyes Sam saw complicated pieces of apparatus taken apart and reassembled. He saw complicated processes actually carried out step by step. Sam Conway's concentration was like a frozen hypnosis, and his brain was quick. But in the corners of the room there were faint shadows, and he was conscious of them. Still he took notes, and made drawings feverishly until the strain began to tell. Of course he could always refer back to the machine, repeating the views if necessary. It was a month before he began to build. And then his first effort was only to produce a furnace and an alloy; the latter a product of the former. It was harder and more flexible than any steel yet produced. And it was worth money, providing the means to carry on his study and his work. Work.... Sam seldom saw Ellen Varney now. He saw little of anybody. He told lies to be alone, and to continue his solitary efforts. His sense of struggle was like being on Mars again fighting for life, plodding through a thin feathery fall of snow there, in the dazing cold, close to the polar regions. And he dreamed of gigantic altruisms--the remaking of civilization. In four months after his beginning, he had achieved things. Under a beam of specialized vibrations he saw a mouse do amazing tricks, its brain stimulated temporarily to an intelligence far beyond normal. It was awesome, and frightening too, watching that tiny animal turn--without error, and after it had been shown how only once--the complicated combination lock of a small door beyond which lay food. Sam thrilled to the spectacle of the rodent laboring so keenly with its teeth and forepaws. What if the same waves were applied to the brain of a man? He would have tried those waves on himself, but his enthusiasm changed to dread when, with the removal of the beam, the mouse shuddered into a convulsion and died, its nervous system exhausted. Biology revealed further mysteries and possibilities. In a glass flask, packed in a radioactive compound, and filled with water to which food substances had been added, Sam grew huge amoebae, whose ancestors had been microscopic. But these creatures were translucent globules, almost a quarter-inch in diameter. Somewhere here, perhaps, lay hidden the secret of life itself. But the amoebae died of a strange disease, the germs of which were perhaps generated out of those same life processes.... To be sure of safety, Sam poured sulphuric acid into the culture flask. He changed his direction now, back to the atom. Eight weeks more, and he was ready for another test. The main room of the old garage was crowded with apparatus. Then, one night, Sam closed a switch cautiously.