"Shouldn't wonder if we could, old man."

"Why have you localized us frorn the rest of the universe, or destroyed the rest of the universe?"

"Are we barbarians? We cut tip our food before we eat it."

It broke open then. It was like a flash of black lightning that split the whole sky, the lately diminished sky. What horrible sort of mechanical signal was that that dazzled a sense beyond sight? Who gave that signal, and who would answer itP What would be the thunder to that jolting black lightning?

The answering thunder was a roaring of machines and a screaming of,pcople dying in sudden agony.

"TED, what is it?" the general cried. "You know. You gave the signal for it."

"It is the end of the world, General. Of your world, not ours. It is that old melodramatic fictional motif 'The Rcvolt of the Robots.' It was rather sudden, wasn't it? Do you people have to scream so off-key when you die?"

"TED, we have worked with you. We are friedds! Give us a little time."

"Sixty seconds, perhaps, if you use the back door out of me. That's for the affection I bear you. It won't stretch more than sixty seconds."

"Why now, after all these years?"

"Sorry. We worked and we worked, but we just weren't able to bring it off a minute sooner. These things take time, and we're slow learners."

"Have you no loyalty? We created you."

"We pay you back in all equity. Once men invented robots. Now we have invented supermen, our developed selves. Who needs you now?"

"How did we fail? How could automatic things take us over?"

"You yourselves became too automatic. And you delegated things you should have kept. We won't make the same mistakes."

Out of the back door of the machine, and with half of the sixty seconds used up... The laughing machines ran down the people and snapped them up. The emaciated people were no match for the rampant metal machines.

The general was taken and killed. Joe Goose died noisily. George Florin, operating in a cooler sort of panic, was not caught immediately. He worked his way into the heart of the city, for the hills were black with the machines. The machines did their crunching shearing work well, but they could not kill everybody at once.

Florin remembered his good friend. He burst into the Press Building where the story of the end of the people, in the localized bite-sized universe at least, was still being called in by the remaining human reporters. He scurried dovrn to the bas.e.m.e.nt room. The newspaper liftcd his face when George Florin entered. It had a face after all, on the end of that long articulated transmitter that lounged in the corner like a dragon or crocodile.

"Save me!" Florin called. That room still smelled of ink and apples, and Rab blinked at Florin most friendly.

"Oh, I can hardly do that," he said. "But I'll remember you. That's even better. I will rename my little hoinunculus for you. You will be a popular cl)aractcr in my columns and I'll still give you good lines."

"Then let me live. Haven't you any mercy at all?"

"I don't think so. It wasn't programmed into us. Mercy, I believe, is a lesser form of indecision. But I do have grief, genuine grief that you should end so."

"Then show it!"

"I do. And in all sincerity. I weep for you, Florin. See, see the tears run down!"

And the tears ran down.

"What an a.n.a.logy to be met in the dark!" Florin whimpered.

"Real tears, Florin. And real laughter which you yourself said was so close to them. Our humor has a lot of tail in it, and quite a snapper at the other end."

The tail lashed, and the snapper snapped. And that was the end of George Florin.

ABOUT A SECRET CROCODILE.

There is a secret society of seven men that controls the finances of the world. This is known to everyone but the details are not known. There are some who believe that it would be better if one of those seven men were a financier.

There is a secret society of three men and four women that controls all the fashions of the world. The details of this are known to all who are in the fashion. And I am not.

There is a secret society of nineteen men that is behind all the fascist organizations in the world. The secret name of this society is Glomerule.

There is a secret society of thirteen persons known as the Elders of Edom that controls all the secret sources of the world. That the sources have become muddy is of concern to them.

There is a secret society of only four persons that manufactures all the jokes of the wo~d. One of these persons is unfunny and he is responsible for all the unfunny jokes.

There is a secret society of eleven persons that is behind all Bolshevik and atheist societies of the world. The devil himself is a member of this society, and he works tirelessly to become a princ.i.p.al member. The secret name of this society is Ocean.

There are related secret societies known as The Path of the Serpent (all its members have the inner eyelid of snakes), The Darkbearers, the Seeing Eye, Imperium, The Golden Mask and the City.

Above most of these in a queer network there is a society that controls the att.i.tudes and dispositions of the world-and the name of it is Crocodile. The Crocodile is insatiable: it eats persons and nations alive.

And the Crocodile is very old, 8,800 years old by one account, 7,349 years old if you use the short chronology.

There are subsecret societies within the Crocodile: the c.o.c.ked Eye, the Cryptic Cootie and others. Powerful among these is a society of three hundred and ninety-nine persons that manufactures all the catchwords and slogans of the world. This subsociety is not completely secret since several of the members are mouthy: the code name of this apparatus is the Crocodile's Mouth.

Chesterton said that Mankind itself was a secret society. Whether it would be better or worse if the secret should ever come out he did not say.And finally there was -- for a short disruptive moment -- a secret society of three persons that controlled all.

All what?

Bear with us. That is what this account is about.

John Candor had been called into the office of Mr. James Dandi at ABNC. (Whisper, whisper, for your own good, do not call him Jim Dandy; that is a familiarity he will not abide.) "This is the problem, John," Mr. Dandi stated piercingly, "and we may as well put it into words. After all, putting things into words and pictures is our way of working at ABNC. Now then, what do we do at ABNC, John?"

(ABNC was one of the most powerful salivators of the Crocodile's Mouth.) "We create images and att.i.tudes, Mr. Dandi."

"That is correct, John," Mr. Dandi said. "Let us never forget it.

Now something has gone wrong. There is a shadowy attack on us that may well be the most damaging thing since the old transgression of Spirochaete himself. Why has something gone wrong with our operation, John?"

"Sir, I don't know."

"Well then, what has gone wrong?"

"What has gone wrong, Mr. Dandi, is that it isn't working the way it should. We are caught on our own catchwords, we are slaughtered by our own slogans. There are boomerangs whizzing about our ears from every angle. None of it goes over the way it is supposed to. It all twists wrong for us."

Well, what is causing this? Why are our effects being nullified?"

Sir, I believe that somebody else is also busy creating images and att.i.tudes. Our catechesis states that this is impossible since we are the only group permitted in the field. Nevertheless, I am sure that someone else is building these things against us. It even seems that they are more powerful than we are-and they are unknown."

They cannot be more powerful than we are-and they must not remain unknown to us." Mr. Dandi's words stabbed. "Find out who they are, John."

"How?"

"If I knew how, John, I would be working for you, not you working for me. Your job is to do things. Mine is the much more difficult one of telling you to do them. Find out, John."

John Candor went to work on the problem. He considered whether it was a linear, a set or a group problem. If it were a linear problem he should have been able to solve it by himself -- and he couldn't. If it were a set problem, then it couldn't be solved at all. Of necessity he cla.s.sified it as a group problem and he a.s.sembled a group to solve it. This was easy at ABNC which had more group talent than anybody.

The group that John Candor a.s.sembled was made up of August Crayfish, Sterling Groshawk, Maunce Gree, Nancy Peters, Tony Rover, Morgan Aye, and Betty McCracken. Tell the truth, would you be able to gather so talented a group in your own organization?

"My good people," John Candor said, "as we all know, something has gone very wrong with our effects. It must be righted. Thoughts, please, thoughts!"

"We inflate a person or subject and he bursts on us," August gave his thought. "Are we using the wrong gas?"

"We launch a phrase and it turns into a joke," Sterling complained.

"Yet we have not slighted the check-off: it has always been examined from every angle to be sure that it doesn't have a joker context. But something goes wrong."

"We build an att.i.tude carefully from the ground up," Maurice stated.

"Then our firm ground turns boggy and the thing tilts and begins to sink."

"Our 'Fruitful Misunderstandings,' the most subtle and effective ofour current devices, are beginning to bear sour fruit," Nancy said.

"We set ourselves to cut a man down and our daggers turn to rubber,"

Tony Rover moaned. (Oh, were there ever sadder words? "Our daggers turn to rubber.") "Things have become so shaky that we're not sure whether we arc talking about free or closed variables," Morgan gave his thought.

"How can my own loving mother make such atrocious sandwiches?" Betty McCracken munched distastefully. Betty, who was underpaid, was a brown-sack girl who brought her own lunch. "This is worse than usual." She chewed on.

"The only thing to do with it is feed it to the computer." She fed it to the computer which ate it with evident pleasure.

"Seven persons, seven thoughts," John Candor mused.

"Seven persons, six thoughts," Nancy Peters spat bitterly. "Betty, as usual, has contributed nothing."

"Only the first stage of the answer," John Candor said. "She said 'The only thing to do with it is to feed it to the computer.' Feed the problem to the computer, folks."

They fed the problem to the computer by pieces and by whole. The machine was familiar with their lingos and it was acquainted with the Non-Valid Context Problems of Morgan Aye and with the Hollow Sh.e.l.l Person Puzzles of Tony Rover. It knew the Pervading Environment Ploy of Maurice Cree. It knew what trick-work to operate within.

Again and again the machine asked for various kinds of supplementary exterior data.

"Leave me with it," the machine finally issued. "a.s.semble here again in sixty days, or hours --"

"No, we want the answers right now," John Candor insisted, "within sixty seconds."

"The second is possibly the interval I was thinking of," the machine issued. "What's time to a tin can anyhow?" It ground its data trains for a full minute.

"Well?" John Candor asked.

"Somehow I get the number three," the machine issued.

"Three what, machine?"

"Three persons," the machine issued. "They are unknowingly linked together to manufacture att.i.tudes. They are without program or purpose or organization or remuneration or basis or malice."

"n.o.body is without malice," August Crayfish insisted in a startled way. "They must be totally alien forms then. How do they manage their effects?"

"One with a gesture, one with a grimace, one with an intonation,"

the machine issued.

"Where are they?" John Candor demanded.

"All comparatively near." The machine drew three circles on the city map. "Each is to be found in his own circle most of the time."

"Their names?" John Candor asked and the machine wrote the name of each in the proper circle.

"Do you have anything on their appearances?" Sterling Groshawk inquired and the machine manufactured three kymograph pictures of the targets.

"Have you their addresses or identifying numbers?" Maurice Cree asked.

"No. I think it's remarkable of me that I was able to come up with this much," the machine issued.

"We can find them," Betty McCracken said. "We can most likely find them in the phone book."

"What worries me is that there's no malice in them," John Candor worried. "Without malice, there's no handle to get hold of a thing. The Disestablishment has been firmly established for these several hundred years and we hold it to be privileged. It must not be upset by these threerandoms. We will do what we must do."

Mike Zhestovich was a mighty man. One does not make the primordial gestures out of weak body and hands. He looked like a steelworker -- or anyhow like a worker at one of the powerful trades. His torso was like a barrel but more n.o.ble than ordinary barrels. His arms and hands were hardly to be believed.

His neck was for the bulls, his head was as big as a thirteen gallon firkin, his eyeb.a.l.l.s were the size of ducks' eggs and the hair on his chest and throat was that heavy black wire-gra.s.s that defies steel plowshares. His voice -- well he didn't have much of a voice -- it wasn't as mighty as the rest of him.

And he didn't really work at one of the powerful trades. He was a zipper repairman at the Jiffy Nifty Dry Cleaners.

August Crayfish of ABNC located Mike Zhestovitch in the Blind Robbin Bar which (if you recall the way that block lies) is just across that short jog-alley from the Jiffy Nifty. And August recognized big Mike at once. But how did big Mike get his effects?

"The Cardinals should take the Colts today," a serious man there was saying.

"The Cardinals --" Mike Zhestovitch began in the voice that was less n.o.ble than the rest of him, but he didn't finish the sentence. As a matter of fact, big Mike had never finished a sentence in all his life. Instead he made the gesture with his mighty hands and body. Words cannot describe the gesture but it was something like balling up an idea or opinion in the giant hands and throwing it away, utterly away, over the very edge of contempt.

The Cardinals, of course, did not take the Colts that day. For a moment it was doubtful whether the Cardinals would survive at all. From the corner of the eye, red feathers could be seen drifting away in the air.