ing out anything. A knife he
discarded as too clumsy for his means of control. He then carefully
considered steel darts shot from a tube by compressed air or carbon
dioxide but reluctantly abandoned that idea also. Since he had a
machine's limitations as well as advantages, he'd have to begin thinking
less like a human. So, the first thing to base a weapon on would be the
material most plentiful in the lab. That was--electricity.

* * * * *

Once determined on the line of his endeavors, he briefly marvelled again
on the still unexplored potentialities of his brain. The weapon would be
mounted on his own cart and electricity could either be broadcast or
self-contained. For mobility, he decided on a power pack. The weapon
itself evolved so easily that he wondered why no one had thought of it
before now. Special type condensers built a battery charge up to over a
million volts for a split second. This charge, invisible until it hit an
object more solid than air, was contained in a very narrow beam by
strong screens of opposite polarity. The entire sequence of operation
was almost instantaneous, and the bolt was more in the nature of an
electrical projectile than a continuous beam.

He decided that the unit, resembling a flashlight, could be mounted in a
concealed spot under his "eye" so that it could be fired at whatever he
might be looking at.

Now that he had a means of defending himself, Mel felt more at ease but
at a loss for his next step. Merely eliminating both Jenkins and Neil
would gain his revenge but what then? He could always notify the
authorities but mentally flinched at exposing himself to the world as a
freak and being at the mercy of the morbid curiosity of millions.

He had hardly begun to lay his plans before disaster struck. Neil came
in early one morning and had Mel begin working on a problem concerning a
new type of steel that would combine structural strength with the
lightweight qualities of aluminum. Mel energized his calculators that
were, electrically, practically part of his brain. He briefly wondered
why Neil appeared so restless, wandering around the room with his hands
behind his back, studying everything. Then the problem became so
intriguing that he completely forgot that anyone was in the room.

His first inkling that anything was wrong was when Neil straightened up
from the cart with a twisted smile on his face and exclaimed:

"Ha!"

Mel's first, st