is here, and I am here to guard it as my forefathers
did," Merrick said. Once again he was conscious of a strange
ambivalence in his attitude. He must guard something he considered
wrong against the intrusion of a danger even more wrong. His hand
sought the scored grip of the old automatic in his pocket. Could he
actually kill?

"You speak of Human Supremacy as a chimera," Sweyn Erikson said, "It
is no such thing. It is the only vital force left in the world.
Robotism is a menace more deadly, a blasphemy more foul than any Black
Mass of history. You are making Man into an anachronism on the face of
his own planet. This cannot be! _I_ will not let it be...."

Merrick stared. Could it be that the man actually believed that the
poison he peddled was the food of the gods?

"I will try one last attempt at reason, Erikson," Merrick said
deliberately. "Look back with an unprejudiced mind, if you can, over
the centuries since the Atom War. What do you see?"

"I see Man emasculated by the robot!"

"No! You see atomic power harnessed and in use for the first time
after almost a millenium of muddling. You see Man standing on the Moon
and the habitable planets--and soon to reach out for the stars! A new
Golden Age is dawning, Prophet! And why? Whence have come the
techniques?" Even as he spoke, Merrick knew he was ignoring the
obvious, the all-too-apparent cracks in the social structure that no
scientific miracles could cure. But were those cracks the fault of
robotism or were they in fact a failing inherent in Man himself? He
was not prepared to answer that. "From where are the techniques
drawn?" he asked again.

Erikson met his glance squarely. "Not from the mindless horrors you
spawn here!"

"Emotionless, Prophet," corrected Merrick pointedly, "Not mindless."

"Soulless! Soulless and mindless, too. Never have these zombies been
able to think as men!"

"They are not men."

"Nor are they the architects of the future!"

"I think you are wrong, Prophet," Merrick said softly.

"Man is the ultimate," Erikson said.

"You talk like a fool," snapped Merrick.

"_Han!_" There was naked terror in his wife's voice, but he rushed on,
ignoring it.

"How dare you say that Man is the ultimate? What right have you to
assume that nature has stopped experimenting?"

Sweyn Erikson's lip curled scornfully. "Can you be implying that the
robots--"

Merrick leaned across the desk to shout full in the Prophet's face:
"_You fool!