lerant of his views and the world saw no menace in him
and took him in stride. He created no problem.

Between interviews and during the long nights, George read all the books
in the Tomlin library, the public library, the university library and
the books sent to him from the state and Congressional libraries. He was
an object of interest to watch while reading: he merely leafed through a
book and absorbed all that was in it.

He received letters from old and young. Clubs were named for him.
Novelty companies put out statue likenesses of him. He was, in two
weeks, a national symbol as American as corn. He was liked by most,
feared by a few, and his habits were daily news stories.

Interest in him had begun to wane in the middle of the third week when
some thing put him in the headlines again--he killed a man.

It happened one sunny afternoon when Prof. Tomlin had returned from the
university and he and George sat on the front porch for their afternoon
chat. It was far from the informal chat of the first day, however. The
talk was being recorded for radio release later in the day. A television
camera had been set up, focused on the two and nearly a dozen newsmen
lounged around, notebooks in hand.

"You have repeatedly mentioned, George, that some of your kind may leave
Zanthar for Earth. Why should any like you--why did you, in fact leave
your planet? Aren't you robots happy there?"

"Of course," George said, making certain the TV camera was trained on
him before continuing. "It's just that we've outgrown the place. We've
used up all our raw materials. By now everyone on Earth must be familiar
with the fact that we intend to set up a station here as we have on many
other planets, a station to manufacture more of _us_.

"Every inhabitant will work for the perpetuation of the Seventh Order,
mining metals needed, fabricating parts, performing thousands of useful
tasks in order to create humanoids like me. From what I have learned
about Earth, you ought to produce more than a million of us a year."

"But you'll never get people to do that," the professor said. "Don't you
understand that?"

"Once the people learn that we are the consummation of all creative
thinking, that we are all that man could ever hope to be, that we are
the apotheosis, they will be glad to create more of us."

"Apotheosis?" Prof. Tomlin repeated. "Sounds like megalomania to me."

The reporters' pencils scribbled. The tape cut soundlessly acro