"Idealist, eh? That's what I thought I was ten years ago. That's what I had in mind with The Brain right from the start. As it has turned out, however, the Army, Navy, Air Force, and half a dozen other government departments, besieged The Brain for the solution of their "problems", some of them as destructive as warfare, others as insipid as the trend of the popular vote in some provincial primaries. Sometimes Uncle Sam even farms out the services of the Brain to aid some friendly foreign government--without that government's knowledge as to where the solution is coming from. To cut a long story short: What these fellows utterly fail to understand is that The Brain is not a finite mechanism like any other, but a mechanism which unendingly evolves and becomes richer in its associations by the material which is being fed into its cells. In other words; the Brain _learns_; consequently it must be _taught_, it must be given the wherewithal for its own self-improvement...." Scriven halted his impatient step by the other's chair. His nervous fingers tapped Lee's shoulder: "And that is where you come in." "Me?" Lee asked, startled. "What you just told me, Dr. Scriven, it will take me weeks to comprehend. At the moment I am at a loss to see how my work could connect...." The surgeon's sensitive hand patted Lee's shoulder as if it were the neck of a shy horse. "You _will_ comprehend--in just another moment." He pressed a button; in the entrance to the cabin in the sky the girl appeared, like an apparition. She approached, her hair a golden halo, her tunic transparent against the glare of the summer day. "Yes?" "Oona, _please_" She seemed familiar with the boss' code. With a smile on her lips she walked over to one of the pillars, opened a hidden recess and brought out the Scotch and syphon using an Egyptian clay tablet for a tray. With surgical exactitude Scriven poured out a good two fingers for his guest and an exceedingly small one for himself. "Stay with us for a moment, Oona, please," he said. "I didn't tell you the idea behind my calling Dr. Lee; you might be interested." Wordlessly she slid into a seat, attentive and yet fading somehow into the background, as if trying to remain unnoticed. In that she did not succeed. Her beauty was such that its very presence changed the atmosphere; it put Lee under a strain to keep his eyes off her. As to Scriven, he seemed to address her almost as much as he did Lee.