"Who shall I say it's for?" asked the janitor, who did not fully understand that the library was public, never having been in it before, and felt he needed a recommendation or a slip of approval. "Just say it's for Pyet, the astrologer," said the machine. "And what are you doing inside Dr. Henderson's machine?" asked the night watchman. "I wouldn't care to be quoted on this," replied the machine, "but actually any system of communicating inter-related events with a high degree of complexity, such as the brain, or this machine, and with some number of critical processes at the quantum statistical level, can support consciousness." The janitor and the night watchman looked blankly at each other and the machine, slightly embarrassed, added by way of explanation. "I like to read a little physics now and then. A harmless superstition containing many pleasant diversions. "Before this I lived in a star, a puff of expanding gas. Before that in a haunted house ... dreadful. And before that in the lopsided blob of protoplasm that was the last of Pyet, the astrologer. "As for Dr. Henderson's mousecatcher," chuckled the machine, "any port in a storm. Mars and Uranus you know." The janitor was somewhat impatient with the machine. It had detained him already and probably would soon be giving him orders. "I still have three floors to clean," said the janitor. "After that I will see if the library downstairs has a ... what was it?" "Ephemeris," said the machine. "E-P-H-E M-E-R-I-S. Thank you." * * * * * And so the night watchman and the janitor both said good night to the machine. Later, in the very early morning, the janitor stole back into the laboratory with a book and read some strange, strange things out loud and then stole out of the room again and locked the door behind him. Shortly after, Samuel, the night watchman, passed by. He was surprised at an unearthly glow coming from within and a peculiar grating noise as if someone were stepping on a radio. Then the unearthly glow appeared on the fire escape and Samuel, rushing out to observe, thought the glow seemed to fly up through a hole in the low clouds where a thousand stars still blazed brightly. In its wake there was a sound like laughing. A few hours later Dr. Henderson unlocked the door of his laboratory and pushed a cart full of mice in before him. During the morning he dissected three hundred mice, popping out liver, spleen and kidneys as if he were shelling peas. In the afternoon he made sections of the organs, stained them with hematoxylin and eosin, mounted them on slides and looked at them under his new stereoscopic microscope. Five minutes before five, Dr. Henderson's friend, Colonel Smith, came in and watched as Henderson somewhat dubiously fed the three hundred mice, now in statistical form, into the machine. The machine whirred efficiently and shot out the answer in seconds. "Statistically significant," said the machine.