Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net [Illustration] THE ULTIMATE EXPERIMENT by THORNTON DeKY _No living soul breathed upon the earth. Only robots, carrying on the last great order._ "They were all gone now, The Masters, all dead and their atoms scattered to the never ceasing winds that swept the great crysolite city towers in ever increasing fury. That had been the last wish of each as he had passed away, dying from sheer old age. True they had fought on as long as they could to save their kind from utter extinction but the comet that had trailed its poisoning wake across space to leave behind it, upon Earth, a noxious, lethal gas vapor, had done its work too well." No living soul breathed upon the Earth. No one lived here now, but Kiron and his kind. "And," so thought Kiron to himself, "he might as well be a great unthinking robot able to do only one thing instead of the mental giant he was, so obsessed had he become with the task he had set himself to do." Yet, in spite of a great loneliness and a strong fear of a final frustration, he worked on with the others of his people, hardly stopping for anything except the very necessities needed to keep his big body working in perfect coordination. Tirelessly he worked, for The Masters had bred, if that is the word to use, fatigue and the need for restoration out of his race long decades ago. Sometimes, though, he would stop his work when the great red dying sun began to fade into the west and his round eyes would grow wistful as he looked out over the great city that stretched in towering minarets and lofty spires of purest crystal blue for miles on every side. A fairy city of rarest hue and beauty. A city for the Gods and the Gods were dead. Kiron felt, at such times, the great loneliness that the last Master must have known. They had been kind, The Masters, and Kiron knew that his people, as they went about their eternal tasks of keeping the great city in perfect shape for The Masters who no longer needed it, must miss them as he did. Never to hear their voices ringing, never to see them again gathered in groups to witness some game or to play amid the silver fountains and flowery gardens of the wondrous city, made him infinitely saddened. It would always be like this, unless.... But thinking, dreaming, reminiscing would not bring it all back for there was only one answer to still the longing: work. The others worked and did not dream, but instead kept busy tending to the thousand and one tasks The Masters had set them to do--had left them doing when the last Master perished. He too must remember the trust they had placed in his hands and fulfill it as best he could.