it made him hesitate; it was
something for which he had no frame of reference whatsoever.

His chest hummed and clicked. Here, again, in this room, was another
new universe. Through the door streamed a light of a brilliance beyond
anything in his experience; his photocells cringed before its very
intensity.

The light cast the shadows of the men fighting to get out, long black
wavering silhouettes that splashed across the floor almost to where
M-75 rested. He studied them, lost in uncertain analysis.

He remained so, poised, alert, filing, observing, all the while
completely unmoving, until long after the last of the shouting men had
left the room. Only then did he move, hesitantly, toward the
infernally fierce light.

He hung at the brink of the three stone steps that fell away to the
grounds outside. Vainly he sought in his memory tapes for a record of
a brightness as intense as that which he faced now; sought for a color
recording similar to the vast swash of blue that filled the world
overhead; or for one of the spreading green that swelled to all sides.
He found none.

The vastness of the outside was utterly stunning.

He felt a vague uneasiness, a sensation akin to the horrible frenzy he
had felt earlier in the pile.

He rotated from side to side, his receptors sweeping the whole field
of view before him. With infinite accuracy his perfect lenses recorded
the data in all its minuteness, despite the dazzling sunlight.

There was so much new that it was becoming difficult to make
decisions. The vast rolling green, the crowds of men grouped far away
and staring at him, above all the searing light. Abruptly he rejected
it all. He swung back into the foyer of the plant and faced a dark
corner, bringing instant, essential relief to his pulsating
photocells.

Staring into the semi-darkness, he re-ran the memory tape of his
escape from the pile. The farther he had moved from the pile, it
seemed, the less adjusted he had become, the less able he was to judge
and correlate.

Silently, lost in his computations, he rolled around and around the
foyer for a long, long time. He became aware, finally, that the
brilliance outside had paled. He went again to the door and watched
the fading sunlight, caught the rainbow splendor that streaked the
evening sky.

He waited there, fighting the reluctance inside himself. The driving
curiosity that had brought him this far overcame that curious,
perplexing reticence, and h