Ed had only part of an energy cartridge left for his Midas Touch. But this was more than enough to jet him across the mountains to the camp of the quaint android chieftain with whom he must now admit a kinship of flesh. Freeman was certainly a local leader now among those of the same mark who had fled from the City, where the population was predominantly of the old kind. Technicians, craftsmen, specialists of every sort, would be among Freeman's following. Just as first daylight began, Ed drifted over the vast, hodge-podge encampment hidden in the woods and the marshes. Part of the ground it covered had been fused to hot, glassy consistency, perhaps by a small aerial bomb. Maybe a hundred Phonies had died there--which fact added nothing to the cause of peace. Abel Freeman himself was not too hard to find, for he occupied a central, commanding position among various equipment housed in great trailers carefully concealed from any observer in an aircraft. But Abel Freeman, true to his legend, was sitting inside a rude shelter of boughs, which effectively concealed the light of his ato lamp. Before him was a sensipsych training device and a vast pile of books on many subjects, ranging from military tactics to atomics, on which he was obviously endeavoring to get caught up. He was savagely intent upon book learning, for which he had little aptitude. But Ed, seeing him in mountainous proportions, was perhaps better able than others to understand why androids in need of leadership flocked to his stamping grounds. Abel Freeman looked like the essence of rough and ready ability. Among android leaders, he was certainly the greatest. Freeman had a small radio receiver beside him. Ed Dukas did not try to read the meaning of its blaring vibrations, for he was aware of their general tone. To him the instrument was chiefly a possible bridge of communication between himself and Freeman. But Ed was not now given the chance to make such contact. For something else happened. From the pages of an opened book in Abel Freeman's hands coiled a thread of smoke, as charred words were written rapidly across the paper. Ed was close enough in the air to read them, too: "_I am Mitchell Prell, who helped make your kind possible. I am one of you now--though undersize. Help keep the peace. Make no moves to start trouble._" Ed himself was startled. His uncle was here, then! They had arrived at almost the same time. And Prell had chosen a more dramatic means of communication--not ink, not an amplified voice, but the spiderweb-thin beam of his Midas Touch used as a long stylus, while he clung, perhaps, to a hair on the back of Freeman's hand! For an instant, Abel Freeman was gripped by surprise. But then, with rattlesnake-swift movement, his own Midas Touch was in his hand. His whole self seemed to take on the smooth flow of perfect alertness which nothing but an utterly refined machine could have equaled.