o, and yet I recognized the subspecies at
once, for they are common on Earth. It was a she.

It was in the process of removing certain outer sheaths, and I noted
that, while quite symmetrical, bilaterally, it was otherwise oddly
formed, being disproportionately large and lumpy in the anterior
ventral region.

I had watched for some two or three minutes, entirely forgetting my
own safety, when then she saw me. Its eyes widened and it snatched up
the alarm clock which was, as I have hinted, near at hand.

"Get out of here, you nosey old tin can!" it screamed, and threw the
clock, which caromed off my headpiece, damaging one earphone. I ran.

If you still do not see what I mean about racial prejudice, you will,
when you hear what happened later.

I continued on until I came to Benny's Place, entering through the
back door. Benny met me there, and quickly shushed me into a side
room. His fluorescent eyes were glowing with excitement.

Benny's real name is BNE-96, and when on Earth he had been only a
Servitor, not a General Purpose like myself.

But perhaps I should explain.

We metal people are the children of the Builders of Earth, and later
of Mars and Venus. We were not born of two parents, as they are. That
is a function far too complex to explain here; in fact I do not even
understand it myself. No, we were born of the hands and intellects of
the greatest of their scientists, and for this reason it might be
natural to suppose that we, and not they, would be considered a
superior race. It is not so.

Many of us were fashioned in those days, a metal person for every kind
of task that they could devise, and some, like myself, who could do
almost anything. We were contented enough, for the greater part, but
the scientists kept creating, always striving to better their former
efforts.

And one day the situation which the Builders had always regarded as
inevitable, but we, somehow, had supposed would never come, was upon
us. The first generation of the metal people--more than fifty thousand
of us--were obsolete. The things that we had been designed to do, the
new ones, with their crystalline brains, fresh, untarnished,
accomplished better.

We were banished to Phobos, dreary, lifeless moon of Mars. It had long
been a sort of interplanetary junkyard; now it became a graveyard.

* * * * *

Upon the barren face of this little world there was no life except for
the handful of hardy