"He has no use for it, no taste for a glass of beer, I suppose." "What do you feed him, Dr. Scriven; a glass of electric juice for breakfast? Is he AC or DC or both?" Scriven's leonine face beamed; the stunt had come off. Lee on the other hand had paled. He hadn't said a word ever since Gog and Magog had trotted in. Now he took a silver dollar out of his pocket and beckoning to Magog he handed it to him. "Magog, will you please break this in two for me?" For a second the Robot stood without motion as if undecided what to do. Then he took the piece between two steely fingers. Inside his breast one could hear the soft swoosh of the hydraulic pump; there was a sharp report as of a small calibre gun; two bent and broken pieces were politely handed back to Lee. "Thank you, Magog," Lee said. "That's what I wanted to know." From a corner of his eye he saw Oona and Scriven watching him with uneasy looks. * * * * * Into the sudden and shocked silence of the table, there fell the tinkling of a glass. On the other end of the table the great Scriven had arisen to deliver the little speech he had prepared. "... I wished you would think of The Brain, not in terms of electronics, not in terms of dollars, but in terms of American lives.... Just think of what it would mean to American mothers if in the event of another war the mighty armour of our National Defense would go into battle without exposing the life of one of their boys. Give us the funds and we'll finish the job so that under the central control of The Brain our every plane, every ship, every tank will roar into action unmanned and fully automatic. "And just as The Brain would be our impregnable shield in war, so it is destined to carry the torch of progress in times of peace. Consider what it would mean to every citizen if we had automatic functioning and unerring direction by the Brain. "Never again would there be cities without water, without electricity, without transportation due to crippling strikes, because The Brain would come to the rescue through its control over the essential services, and if necessary with an industrial reserve army of perfected Gogs and Magogs, kept for just such emergencies.