The Project Gutenberg EBook of We're Friends, Now, by Henry Hasse

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Title: We're Friends, Now

Author: Henry Hasse

Illustrator: Varga

Release Date: July 22, 2009 [EBook #29488]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WE'RE FRIENDS, NOW ***

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Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from Amazing Science Fiction Stories April 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright
on this publication was renewed.

_The little man stood in front of the
monstrous machine as the synaptic
drone heightened to a scream. No ...
no, he whispered. Don't you
understand...._

WE'RE FRIENDS, NOW

By HENRY HASSE

ILLUSTRATED by VARGA

* * * * *

Today more than other days Raoul Beardsley felt the burden, the dragging
sense of inevitability. He frowned; he glanced at his watch; he leaned
forward to speak to the copter pilot and then changed his mind. He
settled back, and from idle habit adjusted his chair-scope to the
familiar broad-spoked area of Washington just below.

"I'll _not_ have it happening again today!" he told himself grimly ...
and at once his thoughts quavered off into many tangles of
self-reproach. "Blasted nonsense the way I've been acting. A _machine_,
a damned gutless machine like that! Why do I persist in letting it get
to me?"

He pondered that and found no solace. "Delusion," he snorted. "Hyper
synapse-disorder ... that's how Jeff Arnold would explain _me_. I wish
he'd confine his diagnostics to the Mechanical Division where it
belongs! He's amused, they're all amused at me--but damn it they just
don't know!"

Beardsley's rotund body sagged at the thought. Adjusting the
chair-scope, he fixed his gaze on the broad facade of Crime-Central
Building far across the city; again he felt the bu