He must take an awful chance and a terrific responsibility. For this he had to be morally certain that The Brain was a liar, that Scriven was a liar and that war was being provoked by The Brain despite all its assertions to the contrary because The Brain could assume power only over the dead bodies of millions of men like Gus; Gus whom The Brain had butchered like a guinea pig because he had refused to obey the Gogs and Magogs of the Machine God. Now that he had this moral certainty Lee felt that strange and mystical elation which comes to the soldier at the zero hour in war. The worst was really over; the terrible waiting, the uncertainty, the struggle of morale in "sweating it out." Now his nerves were steady, exhaustion and fatigue had vanished; in its place was that wonderful feeling of full mastery over all faculties which comes to fighting men as the battle is joined. There was that upsurge of the blood from fighting ancestors which obliterates the cowardice of the intellect, that inspired intoxication which sharpens the intellect into a battle axe. By his quick-witted postponement of the fateful appointment with the psychiatrists he had gained thirty hours. Whether this would be enough he didn't know, but he felt in himself the strength to fight on endlessly. The elevator stopped at Apperception 36 and Lee stood for a moment at the door of his lab for a last breath, a briefing addressed to himself: "This is like walking into a mine field," he thought; "one false step and things go Boom. All the sensory organs of The Brain are in action behind this door and some of them are pretty near extrasensory in their mind-reading capacities. I've got to walk back and forth amongst those observation screens; there may be other radiations too, following me, penetrating into the recesses of my mind without my knowing it. That means I must make my mind a blank. It's like being quizzed by a lie-detector, only more so. I must not only seem normal and at ease, I actually must be so and harbor only friendly, innocuous thoughts toward The Brain. My actions will seem innocent enough; it is my thoughts wherein my danger lies. Whatever I do; I've got to direct that from the subconscious: act as by instinct and keep the mind a blank." He opened the door and looked around--as usual--in this vault as silent as the grave of a Pharaoh. There was a little dust on the glass cubicles of "_Ant-termes-pacificus_" and there were a few lines scribbled on the yellow memo-pad on his desk: "Thanks for the weekend, boss. Everything normal and under control. Next feeding time at 8 p.m. the 27th. So long, Harris." Of course; he had given Harris, his assistant, the weekend off. That had escaped his mind in the excitement when The Brain's mutiny began.... And now it was the 29th. "They must be ravenously hungry by this time," he thought, and that thought was in order because it was a normal thought.