Crouched over the small receiver in Freeman's restored shelter during that still-ominous afternoon, Ed and Barbara listened and waited. Around them they found both humor and pathos. In another shelter, dug into the rocks and soil, they located Les Payten, whose misfortunes with the Phonies had been many. His bitter frankness had won him dislike here. He had been put under restraint. There was the bearish tenderness and nursing of the gorgeous and powerful Nancy, Freeman's daughter, who stood beside him now, her big blue eyes expressing a mixture of soulful devotion and hunger about as rapacious as that of a starved hound-dog six inches from a fat rabbit. Les didn't seem to appreciate it at all. But he still tried to be a friend to his companions of a lost youth. "Babs! Ed!" he exclaimed at sight of them. "So you got back--to size, anyhow! But you could go back to where you began, as natural creatures! Damn, once we were young idiots, dazzled by a sense of wonder into too much tolerance. I don't want to be something synthetic! Can't you two realize the fundamental truth of that--for yourselves? Good Glory! Wake up!" Ed's grin was one-sided. "For one thing, I suspect that going back all the way wouldn't quite work, Les," he said mildly. "We are what we are now, that's all. There's a cloudy sort of limit on switching bodies. There can never truly be two of anyone. Besides, we like being what we are. And should I remind you that, in common with all animals, man is a natural machine? As for being synthetic, I assure you that both love and poetry are there as well. So what do you imagine that we lack that the old timers always had? A taste for turkey or cake? Just lead us to it! We're human, Les--our forms and ideals and feelings are as they always were. We're not devils. We're not truly separated from the old race in any part of sympathy. We're just people gone on--I hope!--a little further." Ed spoke gently, as he must to a tired, confused friend. Or was it to a whole, vast section of humanity, dumfounded by hurtling technology, proud and stubborn about what had seemed its eternal self, and dreading any change which could seem so darkly drastic? Barbara tried, too. "Why don't _you_ join _us_, Les?" she urged. "If you became like us, you would know! Besides, even if all the androids leave the Earth, the knowledge of how to mold vitaplasm won't be taken away with us. People here will continue to be destroyed in accidents, as has always happened. So that knowledge will be needed and used. Besides, some persons will change willingly. Some people may want to shut themselves away from such realities. But I don't think that they can. They'll have to learn to accept facts." Les Payten looked at his old companions oddly, as if tempted by an old soaring of the fancy. Then the light died in his eyes. "Nice logic," he said coldly. "I could almost trust it if I didn't remind myself. A mechanical treachery. My Ed Dukas and Barbara Day are dead."