Benton stopped and forced a smile which wasn't hard coming. "I just thought of something I forgot to tell the men. Be back shortly. This will require some talking over, but right now there's a job to be done." The master physicist watched him leave the control room, his jaw slack. "And I thought I was the reserved one," he muttered. * * * * * Safely out of the control room and out of sight of any of the technicians, Benton sat down. There was no chair, so he sat on the floor; his knees, it seemed, had become a bit wobbly again. "So now you're convinced," Urei said. "You ignore all the sensible, logical reasons which exist to prove I'm not inimical. And for a reason which is really no reason at all, you decide to believe me. I merely manipulated a few Russians and Bulgarians to prevent a war which would have wrecked my body. Purely a matter of self-preservation. I'm not so sure I'd have bothered if my person hadn't been threatened; after all, it's no business of mine if man wants to annihilate himself." Benton was grinning. "You're a fraud," he said. "You already know more than all mankind put together; and I'll bet you didn't use any of our material to solve the problem of converting sub-cosmic energy to a usable form." "Some, some. But not much, I'll admit." "So what do you want with the knowledge stored in the mechanical bank of memory cells we've provided you? You need it like I need a hole in the head. I can only conclude that you've stopped the impending war because you don't want mankind destroyed. You can do things for yourself without those cells and all this machinery; all you use it for is to solve the problems we pose for you. Incidentally, I suspect that your motivations are still the ones which humans originally built into you, whether you like it or not." "Could be. Or maybe I retain them because they agree with me. I might change my mind, you know; I might get tired of nursemaiding and decide to annihilate your entire race. Heh, Heh. Seems like a good idea, now that I think of it." Benton laughed. "You won't; you're in a rut. And even if you did get tired, you'd merely let us shift for ourselves, which we're used to doing anyway." "Nonsense. I'd probably reason that since the ape animal has made such a botch of his head start in the evolutionary race for rational thinking, it might not be a bad idea to give some other animal a start. _Ursus Proper_ might be a good place to begin." "Bears are foolish by nature," Benton countered.... "It wouldn't matter what form of life you chose anyway; they'd all have to go through the same stages, being without exception governed by thalamic reactions. That's the thing you object to in man, and since your new candidate would have to go through the same lengthy business of developing cortical ascendancy, you'll have none of it. So quit kidding around; I've reached a nonthalamic conclusion."