hout shock that he realized that he himself could still be killed
to gain possession of his fabulous machine. For only with all _three_
Holdens dead could Paul Brennan take full and unquestioned possession.

* * * * *

With daylight clarity he knew what he had to do. In a single act of
destruction he could simultaneously foil Paul Brennan's plan and ensure
his own life.

Permanently installed in Jimmy Holden's brain by the machine itself were
the full details of how to recreate it. Indelibly he knew each wire and
link, lever and coil, section by section and piece by piece. It was
incomprehensible information, about in the same way that the printing
press "knows" the context of its metal plate. Step by step he could
rebuild it once he had the means of procuring the parts, and it would
work even though he had not the foggiest notion (now) of what the various
parts did.

So if the delicate heart of his father's machine were utterly destroyed,
Paul Brennan would be extremely careful about preserving the life of
James Quincy Holden.

He considered his position and what he knew:

Physically, he was a five-year-old. He stood forty-one inches tall and
weighed thirty-nine pounds. A machinist's hammer was a two-handed tool
and a five-pound sack of sugar was a burden. Doorknobs and latches were a
problem in manipulation. The negotiation of a swinging door was a feat of
muscular engineering. Electric light switches were placed at a tiptoe
reach because, naturally, everything in the adult world is designed by
the adults for the convenience of adults. This makes it difficult for the
child who has no adult to do his bidding.

Intellectually, Jimmy Holden was something else.

Reverting to a curriculum considered sound prior to Mr. Dewey's
often-questionable and more often misused programs of schooling, Jimmy's
parents had trained and educated their young man quite well in the
primary informations of fact. He read with facility and spoke with a fine
vocabulary--although no amount of intellectual training could make his
voice change until his glands did. His knowledge of history, geography
and literature were good, because he'd used them to study reading. He was
well into plane geometry and had a smattering of algebra, and there had
been a pause due to a parental argument as to the advisability of his
memorizing a table of six-place logarithms via the Holden machine.

Extra-curricularly, Jimmy Hol