"One of the workmen making adjustments on Edith's outer casing must have left it. I saw it sitting up there on top of her late yesterday afternoon," I told him. "You'd better go call Mr. Thompson and--the FBI." With Ballard gone, I was in charge. Maybe someone would think that was reason enough for me to kill him. I didn't care, I was just glad he was gone. Now he couldn't mistreat Edith anymore. I turned Edith on just as MacKinney returned. "What are you doing?" he asked. "Why I'm going to wake Edith up and feed these tapes into her. After all these are more important than any one man's life." "You didn't care much for Ballard, did you Bill?" I gave him look for look as I replied. "Can you name anyone around here that did?" He shook his head. "No--I guess not. But maybe it wasn't one of us. It might have been an outside job, you know. Edith was working on that space station stuff and the iron curtain people would give a lot to know about it." "Hell," I said pressing the studs and levers that would arouse Edith and put her to work. "You don't really think anyone could get past those security guards, do you?" Happily I went about the business of waking Edith, my sleeping beauty, from her slumbers. In a very few seconds, her hundreds of tiny red eyes were gleaming with intelligence. _Good morning, Edith_, I punched out the tape and fed it into her. There was the faintest pause, while Edith's photo-electric cells surveyed the room, pausing for a moment on the sprawled body of Ballard. _Good morning, Bill Green_, she typed back. I knew she was happy to see me by the cheerful little clicks she emitted. _I have some interesting work for you this morning, Edith. And I think you'll be glad to know that we will be working together from now on instead of...._ "Hey! What's the idea of starting that machine?" a gray haired, gray suited security agent demanded, striding into the room with MacKinney, Mr. Thompson and several other officers at his heels. "Don't you know enough not to touch anything in here?" "This work is too important to be stopped--even for a murder," I said, and Mr. Thompson nodded in agreement. "That's right," he said mopping his perpetually perspiring forehead, "this work has top priority from Washington." He looked nervous and I couldn't help wondering what he was thinking. There had been stories circulating about Ballard and Thompson's wife and the dome-headed little man must have heard them too. Ballard just couldn't keep his hands off any female within reach. That was one of the reasons he was so thoroughly hated. The youngest of the security agents rose from where he had been kneeling beside Ballard and crossed to me. "You're Green, aren't you?" I nodded and he continued, "How did you know it was murder?" I laughed at him. "How the hell could a man bash in his own brains that way?"