* * * * * The report from Aliencon was finished at the end of the fifth week. Lieutenant Ball brought it in to Steffens in his cabin, laid it on the desk before him. "Get set," Ball advised stiffly, indicating the paper. There was a strained, brittle expression on his face. "I sort of figured it, but I didn't know it was this bad." When Steffens looked up in surprise, Ball said: "You don't know. Read it. Go ahead." The exec turned tautly and left the room. Steffens stared after him, then looked down at the paper. The hint he had of the robots' history came back into his mind. Nervously, he picked up the report and started to read. The story unfolded objectively. It was clear and cold, the way formal reports must always be. Yet there was a great deal of emotion in it. Even Aliencon couldn't help that. What it told was this: The Makers had been almost humanoid. Almost, but with certain notable exceptions. They were telepaths--no doubt an important factor in their remarkable technological progress--and were equipped with a secondary pair of arms. The robot-doctors were able to give flawless accounts of their body chemistry, which was similar to Earth-type, and the rubble of the cities had given a certain amount of information concerning their society and habits. An attached paper described the sociology, but Steffens put it aside until sometime later. There had been other Factories. The remains of them had been found in several places, on each of the other continents. They had been built sometime prior to the war, and all but one of the Factories had subsequently been destroyed. Yet the Makers were not, as Steffens had supposed, a warlike people. Telepathy had given them the power to know each other's minds and to interchange ideas, and their record of peace was favorable, especially when compared with Earth's. Nevertheless, a war had begun, for some reason Aliencon could not find, and it had obviously gotten out of hand. Radiation and bacteria eventually destroyed the Makers; the last abortive efforts created enough radiation to destroy life entirely. There were the germs and the bombs and the burning rays, and in the end everything was blasted and died--everything, that is, but the one lone Factory. By a pure, blind freak, it survived. And, naturally, it kept turning out robots. It was powered by an atomic pile, stocked with materials which, when combined with the returning, worn-out robots, enabled it to keep producing indefinitely. The process, even of repair, was entirely automatic. Year after year, the robots came out in a slow, steady stream. Ungoverned, uninstructed, they gathered around the Factory and waited, communicated only rarely among themselves. Gradually the memory of war, of life--of everything but that which was imprisoned in their minds at birth--was lost. The robots kept coming, and they stood outside the Factory.