"I was not sure," he said. "But, as you said, they do appear similar to us. They are chemical automatons; I suspected, but of course could not be sure. Now, we must discover the exact power source and, more importantly, the control-centers of the things. Then--" But on these counts, Markten was doomed to disappointment. Aside from his discovery that the things he had created would not function properly without ingesting large amounts of different types of vegetable and organic materials, and that they operated independently of any outside stimulus, he was able to discover nothing more. Except, when at length he had concluded that neither of the things could be of any use to the populace of New City because they could be neither electrically or mechanically directed by any type of control yet built, he discovered that they actually resisted any attempts to dismantle them. They ran. "Peculiar," he said. "Shall I pursue them?" his apprentice asked. "They appear to be heading in the direction of the grasslands to the north." "Never mind." Markten sounded dejected. "They have a very low unit power potential. They could never do any harm to anything." "I wish we knew what those three words on the book meant. 'Advanced H-u-m-a-n A-n-a-t-o-m-y.'" "Nothing too important, really. Or we'd've known their meaning. Well, there will be other things to build, and we need energy. Let's go to Maintenance and recharge our plates." "Good thought. I guess those things wouldn't have been strong enough to build anything anyway. At any rate, they can't be dangerous...."