Steffens took one long, painful breath. Then he strode from the room without speaking to Ball, went forward to the lockers and pulled out a suit, and a moment later he was in the airlock. He had one more thing to do, and it would be at once the gladdest and most difficult job that he had ever attempted. He had to tell the robots. He had to go out into the sand and face them, tell them that all of the centuries of pain had been for nothing, that the Makers were dead and would never return, that every robot built for twenty-five thousand years had been just surplus, purposeless. And yet--and this was how he was able to do it--he was also coming to tell them that the wasted years were over, that the years of doing had begun. As he stepped from the airlock he saw Elb standing, immobile, waiting by the ship. In the last few seconds Steffens realized that it was not necessary to put this into words. When he reached the robot, he put forth a hand and touched Elb's arm, and said very softly: "Elb, my friend, you must look into my mind--" And the robot, as always, obeyed. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Orphans of the Void, by Michael Shaara