WINMX Assorted Textfiles/Ebooks.tar/Text - Sci Fi - Asimov, Isaac - Found.txt

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FOUND!

By Isaac Asimov

Computer-Two, like the other three that chased each
other's tails in orbit round the Earth, was much larger
than it had to be.

It might have been one-tenth its diameter and still
contained all the volume it needed to store the
accumulated and accumulating data to control all
space flight.

They needed the extra space, however, so that Joe and
I could get inside, if we had to. And we had to.

Computer-Two was perfectly capable of taking care
of itself. Ordinarily, that is. It was redundant. It
worked everything out three times in parallel and all
three programs had to mesh perfectly; all three
answers had to match. -If they did not, the answer
was delayed for nano-seconds while Computer-Two
checked itself, found the mal-functioning part and
replaced it.
    There was no sure way in which ordinary
people would know how many times it caught
itself. Perhaps never. Perhaps twice a day. Only
Computer-Central could measure the time-delay
induced by error and only Computer Central
knew how many of the component spares had
been used as replacements. And Computer-
Central never talked about it. The only good
public image is perfection.
    And it's been perfection. Until now, there
was never any call for Joe and me.
    We're the troubleshooters. We go up there
when something really goes wrong; when
Computer-Two or one of the others can't
correct itself. It's never happened in the five
years we've been on the job. It did happen now
and again in the early days, but that was before
our time.
    We keep in practice. Don't get me wrong.
There isn't a computer made that Joe and I
can't diagnose. Show us the error and we'll
show you the malfunction. Or Joe will, anyway.
I'm not the kind who sings one's own praises.
The record speaks for itself.
    Anyway, this time, neither of us could make
the diagnosis.
    The first thing that happened was that Com-
puter-Two lost internal pressure. That's not
unprecedented and it's certainly not fatal.
Computer-Two can work in a vacuum after all.
An internal atmosphere was established in the
old days when it was expected there would be a
steady flow of repairmen fiddling with it. And
its been kept up out of tradition. Who told you

scientists aren't chained by tradition? In their
spare time from being scientists, they're human,
too.
    From the rate of pressure loss, it was deduced
that a gravel-sized meteoroid had hit Computer-
Two. Its exact radius, mass, and energy were
reported by Computer-Two itself, using the rate
of pressure loss, and a few other irregularities,
as data.
    The second thing that happened was the
break was not sealed and the atmosphere was
not regenerated. After that came errors and
they called us in.
    It made no sense. Joe let a look of pain cross
his homely face and said, "There must be a
dozen things out of whack."
    Someone at Computer-Central said, "The
hunk of gravel ricocheted very likely."
    Joe said, "With that energy of entry, it
would have passed right through the other side.
No ricochets. Besides even with ricochets, I
figure it would have had to take some very
unlikely strikes."
    "Well, then, what do we do?"
    Joe looked uncomfortable. I think it was at
this point he realized what was coming. He had
made it sound peculiar enough to require the
trouble-shooters on the spot-and Joe had
never been up in space. If he had told me once
that his chief reason for taking the job was be-
cause it meant he would never have to go up in
space, he had told it to me 2` times, with x a
pretty high number.
    So I said it for him. I said, "We'll have to go
up there."
    Joe's only way out would have been to say he
didn't think he could handle the job, and I
watched his pride slowly come out ahead of his
cowardice. Not by much, you understand-by a
nose, let's say.
    To those of you who haven't been on a space-
ship in the last 15 years-and I suppose Joe
can't be the only one-let me emphasize that
initial acceleration is the only troublesome
thing. You can't get away from it, of course.
    After that it's nothing, unless you want to
count possible boredom. You're just a specta-
tor. The whole thing is automated and compu-
terized. The old romantic days of space pilots
are gone totally. I imagine they'll return briefly
when our space settlements make the shift to
the asteroid belt as they constantly threaten to
do-but then only until additional computers
are placed in orbit to set up the necessary
additional capacity.
    Joe held his breath through acceleration, or
at least he seemed to. (I must admit I wasn't
very comfortable myself. It was only my third
trip. I've taken a couple of vacations on Settle-
ment-Rho with my husband, but I'm not
exactly a seasoned hand.) After that, he was
relieved for a while, but only for a while. He
got despondent.
    "I hope this thing knows where it's going,"
he said, pettishly.
    I extended my arms forward, palms up, and
felt the rest of me sway backward a bit in the
zero-gravity field. "You," I said, "are a com-

puter specialist. Don't you know it knows?"
"Sure, but Computer-Two is off."
    "We're not hooked into Computer-Two," I
said. "There are three others. And even if only
one were left functional, it could handle all the
space flights undertaken on an average day."
    "All four might go off. If Computer-Two is
wrong, what's to stop the rest."
    ``Then we'll run this thing manually."
    "You'll do it, I suppose? You know how-I
think not?"
    "So they'll talk me in."
    "For the love of Eniac," he groaned.
    There was no problem, actually. We moved
out to Computer-Two as smooth as vacuum
and less than two days after take-off, we were
placed into a parking orbit not ten meters
behind it.
    What was not so smooth was that, about 20
hours out, we got the news from Earth that
Computer-Three was losing internal pressure.
Whatever had hit Computer-Two was going to
get the rest, and when all four were out, space
flight would grind to a halt. It could be re-
organized on a manual basis, surely, but that
would take months at a minimum, possibly
years, and there would be serious economic dis-
location on Earth. Worse yet, several thousand
people now out in space would surely die.
    It wouldn't bear thinking of and neither Joe
nor I talked about it, but it didn't make Joe's
disposition sweeter and, let's face it, it didn't
make me any happier.
    Earth hung over 200,000 kilometers below us,
but Joe wasn't bothered by that. He was con-
centrating on his tether and checking the
cartridge in his reaction-gun. He wanted to
make sure he could get to Computer-Two and
back again.
    You'd been surprised-if you've never tried
it-how you can get your space-legs if you
absolutely have to. I wouldn't say there was
nothing to it and we did waste half the fuel we
used, but we finally reached Computer-Two.
We hardly made any bump at all, when we
struck Computer-Two. (You hear it, of course,
even in vacuum, because the vibration travels
through the metalloid fabric of your space-
suits-but there was hardly any bump, just a
whisper.)
    Of course, our contact and the addition of
our momentum, altered the orbit of Computer-
Two slightly, but tiny expenditures of fuel
compensated for that and we didn't have to
worry about it. Computer-Two took care of it,
for nothing had gone wrong with it, as far as we
could tell, that affected any of its external
workings.
    We went over the outside first, naturally. The
chances were pretty overwhelming that a small
piece of gravel had whizzed through Computer-
Two and left an unmistakable hole. Two of
them in all probability; one going in and one
coming out.
    The chances of that happening are one in two
million on any given day--even money that it
will happen at least once in six thousand years.
It's not likely, but it can, you know. The

chances are one in not more than ten billion
that, on any one day, it will be struck by a
meteoroid large enough to demolish it.
    I didn't mention that because Joe might
realize that we were exposed to similar odds
ourselves. In fact, any given strike on us would
do far more damage to our soft and tender
bodies than to the stoical and much-enduring
machinery of the computer, and I didn't want
Joe more nervous than he was.
    The thing is, though, it wasn't a meteoroid.
    "What's this?" said Joe, finally.
    It was a small cylinder stuck to the outer wall
of Computer-Two, the first abnormality we had
found in its outward appearance. It was about
half a centimeter in diameter and perhaps six
centimeters long. Just about cigarette-size for
any of you who've been caught up in the
antique fad of smoking.
    We brought out our small flashlights.
    I said, "That's not one of the external com-
ponents."
    "It sure isn't," muttered Joe.
    There was a faint spiral marking running
round the cylinder from one end to the other.
Nothing else. For the rest, it was clearly metal,
but of an odd, grainy texture-at least to the
eye.
    Joe said, "It's not tight."
    He touched it gently with a fat and gauntleted
finger and it gave. Where it had made contact
with the surface of Computer-Two it lifted, and
our flashes shone down on a visible gap.
    "There's the reason gas pressure inside
declined to zero," I said.

Joe grunted. He pushed a little harder and the cylinder
popped away and began to drift. We managed to
snare it after a little trouble. Left behind was a
perfectly round hole in the skin of Computer-Two,
half a centimeter across.

Joe said, "This thing, whatever it is, isn't much more
than foil."

It gave easily under his fingers, thin but springy. A little
extra pressure and it dented. He put it inside his
pouch, which he snapped shut and said, "Go over the
outside and see if there are any other items like that on
it. I'll go inside."

It didn't take me very long. Then I went in. "It's
clean," I said. "That's the only thing there is. The only
hole."

"One is enough," said Joe, gloomily. He looked at the
smooth aluminum of the wall and, in the light of the
flash, the perfect circle of black was beautifully
evident.

It wasn't difficult to place a seal over the hole. It was
a little more difficult to reconstitute the atmosphere.
Computer-Two's reserve gas-forming supplies were
low and the controls required manual adjustment. The
solar generator was limping but we managed to get
the lights on.

Eventually, we removed our gauntlets and helmet, but
Joe carefully placed the gauntlets inside his helmet and
secured them both to one of his suit-loops.

"I want these handy if the air-pressure begins to
drop," he said, sourly.

So I did the same.

There was a mark on the wall just next to the hole. I
had noted in the light of my flash when I was
adjusting the seal. When the lights came on, it was
obvious.

"You notice that, Joe?" I said.

"I notice."

There was a slight, narrow depression in the wall, not
very noticeable at all, but there beyond a doubt if you
ran your finger over it. It could be noticed for nearly
a meter. It was as though someone had scooped out
a very shallow sampling of the metal so that the
surface was distinctly less smooth than elsewhere.

I said, "We'd better call Computer-Central
downstairs."

"If you mean back on Earth, say so," said Joe. "I hate
the phony space-talk. In fact, I hate everything about
space. That's why I took an Earth-side job-I mean a
job on Earth-or what was supposed to be one."

I said patiently, "We'd better call Computer Central
back on Earth."

"What for?"

"To tell them we've found the trouble."

"Oh? What did we find?"

"The hole. Remember?"

"Oddly enough, I do. And what caused the hole? It
wasn't a meteoroid.  I never saw one that would leave
a perfectly circular hole with no signs of buckling or
melting. And I never saw one that left a cylinder
behind." He took the cylinder out of his suit pocket
and smoothed the dent out of its thin metal,
thoughtfully.
"Well, what caused the hole?"

I didn't hesitate. I said, "I don't know."

"If we report to Computer-Central, they'll ask the
question and we'll say we don't know and what will
we have gained? Except hassle?"

"They'll call us, Joe, if we don't call them."

"Sure. And we won't answer, will we?"

"They'll assume something killed us, Joe, and they'll
send up a relief party."

"You know Computer-Central. It will take them two
days to decide on that. We'll have something before
then and once we have something, we'll call them."

The internal structure of Computer-Two was not
really designed for human occupancy. What was
foreseen was the occasional and temporary presence
of trouble-shooters. That meant there needed to be
room for maneuvering, and there were tools and
supplies.

There weren't any armchairs, though. For that matter,
there was no gravitational field, either, or any
centrifugal imitation of one.

We both floated in mid-air, drifting slowly this way
or that. Occasionally, one of us touched the wall and
gently rebounded. Or else part of one of us
overlapped part of the other.

"Keep your foot out of my mouth," said Joe, and
pushed it away violently. It was a mistake because we
both began to turn. Of course, that's not how it
looked to us. To us, it was the interior of Computer-
Two that was turning, which was most unpleasant,
and it took us a while to get relatively motionless
again.

We had the theory perfectly worked out in

our planet side training, but we were short on practice.
A lot short.

By the time we had steadied ourselves, I felt
unpleasantly nauseated. You can call it nausea, or
astronausea, or space-sickness, but whatever you call
it, it's the heaves and it's worse in space than anywhere
else, because there's nothing to pull the stuff down. It
floats around in a cloud of globules and you don't
want to be floating around with it. So I held it back;
so did Joe.

I said, "Joe, it's clearly the computer that's at fault.
Let's get at its insides." Anything to get my mind off
my insides and let them quiet down. Besides, things
weren't moving fast enough. I kept thinking of
Computer-Three on its way down the tube; maybe
Computer-One and Four by now, too; and
thousands of people in space with their lives hanging
on what we did.

Joe looked a little greenish, too, but he said, "First I've
got to think. Something got in. It wasn't a meteoroid,
because whatever it was chewed a neat hole out of
the hull. It wasn't cut out because I didn't find a circle
of metal anywhere inside. Did you?"

"No. But I hadn't thought to look."

"I looked, and it's nowhere in here."

"It may have fallen outside."

"With the cylinder covering the hole till I pulled it
away? A likely thing. Did you see anything come
flying out?"

"No."

Joe said, "We may still find it in here, of course, but I
doubt it. It was somehow dissolved and something got in."
"What something? Whose is it?"
    Joe's grin was remarkably ill-natured. "Why
do you bother asking questions to which there
are no answers? If this was last century, I'd say
the Russians had somehow stuck that device
onto the outside of Computer-Two-no
offense. If it was last century, you'd say it was
the Americans."
    I decided to be offended. I said, coldly,
"We're trying to say something that makes
sense this century, losif" giving it an exag-
gerated Russian pronunciation.
    "We'll have to assume some dissident group."
    "If so," I said, "we'll have to assume one
with a capacity for space flight and with the
ability to come up with an unusual device."
    Joe said, "Space-flight presents no diffi-
culties, if you can tap into the orbiting Com-
puters illegally-which has been done. As for
the cylinder, that may make more sense when it
is analyzed back on Earth-downstairs, as you
space-buffs would say."
    "It doesn't make sense," I said. "Where's
the point in trying to disable Computer-Two?"
    "As part of a program to cripple space
flight."
    "Then everyone suffers. The dissidents,
too."
    "But it get's everyone's attention, doesn't it,
and suddenly the cause of whatever-it-is makes
news. Or the plan is to just knock out Com-
puter-Two and then threaten to knock out the
other three. No real damage, but lots of po-

tential, and lots of publicity."
    He was studying all parts of the interior
closely, edging over it square centimeter by
square centimeter. "I might suppose the thing
was of nonhuman origin."
    "Don't be silly."
    "You want me to make the case? The
cylinder made contact, after which something
inside ate away a circle of metal and entered
Computer-Two. It crawled over the inside wall
eating away a thin layer of metal for some
reason. Does that sound like anything of human
construction. "
    "Not that I know of, but I don't know every-
thing. Even you don't know everything."
    Joe ignored that. "So the question is, how
did it-whatever it is-get into the computer,
which is, after all, reasonably well sealed. It did
so quickly, since it knocked out the resealing
and air-regeneration capacities almost at once."
    "Is that what you're looking for?" I said,
pointing.
    He tried to stop too quickly and somersaulted
backward, crying, "That's it!"
    In his excitement, he was thrashing his arms
and legs which got him nowhere, of course. I
grabbed him and, for a while, we were both
trying to exert pushes in uncoordinated direc-
tions, which got us nowhere either. Joe called
me a few names, but I called him some back
and there I had the advantage. I understand
English perfectly, better than he does in fact;
but his knowledge of Russian is-well,
fragmentary would be a kind way of putting it.
Bad language in an ununderstood language
always sounds very dramatic.
    "Here it is," he said, when we finally had
sorted ourselves out.
    "Where the computer-shielding met the wall,
a small circular hole appeared when Joe
brushed aside a small cylinder. It was just like
the one on the outer hull, but it seemed even
thinner. In fact, it seemed to disintegrate when
Joe touched it.
    "We'd better get into the computer," said
Joe.
    The computer was a shambles.
    Not obviously. I don't mean to say it was like
a beam of wood that had been riddled by
termites.
    In fact, if you looked at the computer
casually, you might swear it was intact.
    Look closely, though, and some of the chips
would be gone. The more closely you looked,
the more you realized were gone. Worse, the
stores that Computer-Two used in self-repair
had dwindled to almost nothing. We kept
looking and would discover something else
missing.
    Joe took the cylinder out of his pouch again
and turned it end for end. He said, "I suspect
it's after high-grade silicon in particular. I can't
say for sure, of course, but my guess is that the
sides are mostly aluminum and the flat end is
mostly silicon."
    I said, "Do you mean the thing is a solar
battery?"
    "Part of it is. That's how it gets it energy in

space; energy to get to Computer-Two, energy
to eat a hole into it, energy to-to-I don't
know how else to put it. Energy to stay alive."
"You call it alive?"
    "Why not? Look, Computer-Two can repair
itself. It can reject faulty bits of equipment and
replace it with working ones, but it needs a
supply of spares to work with. Given enough
spares of all kinds, it could build a Computer
just like itself, when properly pro-
grammed-but it needs the supply, so we don't
think of it as alive. This object that entered
Computer-Two is apparently collecting its own
supplies. That's suspiciously lifelike."
    "What you're saying," I said, "is that we
have here a micro-computer advanced enough
to be considered alive."
    "I don't honestly know what I'm saying."
    "Who on Earth could make such a thing?"
    "Who on Earth?"
    I made the next discovery. It looked like a
stubby pen drifting through the air. I just
caught it out of the corner of my eye and it
registered as a pen.
    In zero-gravity, things will drift out of
pockets and float off. There's no way of
keeping anything in place unless it is physically
confined. You expect pens and coins and any-
thing else that finds an opening to drift
wherever the air currents and inertia lead it.
    So my mind registered "Pen" and I groped
for it absently and, of course, my fingers didn't
close on it. Just reaching for something sets up
an air current that pushes it away. You have to
reach over and sneak behind it with one hand, and
then reach for it with the other. Picking up any small
object in mid-air is a two-hand operation.

I turned to look at the object and pay a little more
attention to retrieval, then realized that my pen was
safely in its pouch. I felt for it and it was there.

"Did you lose a pen, Joe?" I called out.

"No."

"Anything like that? Key? Cigarette?"

"I don't smoke. You know that."

A stupid answer. "Anything?" I said in exasperation.
"I'm seeing things here."

"No one ever said you were stable."

"Look, Joe. Over there. Over there.''

He lunged for it. I could have told him it would do
no good.

By now, though, our poking around in the computer
seemed to have stirred things up. We were seeing
them wherever we looked. They were floating in the
air-currents.

I stopped one at last. Or, rather, it stopped itself for it
was on the elbow of Joe's suit. I snatched it off and
shouted. Joe jumped in terror and nearly knocked it
out of my hand.

I said, "Look!"

There was a shiny circle on Joe's suit, where I had
taken the thing off. It had begun to eat its way
through.

"Give it to me," said Joe. He took it gingerly and put
it against the wall to hold it steady. Then he shelled it,
gently lifting the paper-thin metal.

There was something inside that looked like a line of
cigarette ash. It caught the light and glinted, though,
like lightly woven metal.

There was a moistness about it, too. It wriggled
slowly, one end seeming to seek blindly.

The end made contact with the wall and stuck. Joe's
finger pushed it away. It seemed to require a small
effort to do so. Joe rubbed his finger and thumb and
said, "Feels oily."

The metal worm-I don't know what else to call it-
seemed limp now after Joe had touched it. It didn't
move again.

I was twisting and turning, trying to look at myself.

"Joe," I said, "for Heaven's sake, have I got one of
them on me anywhere?"

"I don't see one," he said.

"Well, look at me. You've got to watch me, Joe, and
I'll watch you. If our suits are wrecked we might not
be able to get back to the ship."

Joe said, "Keep moving, then."

It was a grisly feeling, being surrounded by things
hungry to dissolve your suit wherever they could
touch it. When any showed up, we tried to catch them
and stay out of their way at the same time, which
made things almost impossible. A rather long one
drifted close to my leg and I kicked at it, which was
stupid, for if I had hit it, it might have stuck. As it was,
the air-current I set up brought it against the wall,
where it stayed.

Joe reached hastily for it-too hastily. The rest of his
body rebounded as he somersaulted, one booted foot
struck the wall near the
cylinder lightly. When he finally righted
himself, it was still there.
"I didn't smash it, did 1?"
    "No, you didn't," I said. "You missed it by
a decimeter. It won't get away."
    I had a hand on either side of it. It was twice
as long as the other cylinder had been. In fact,
it was like two cylinders stuck together long-
ways, with a construction at the point of
joining.
    "Act of reproducing," said Joe as he peeled
away the metal. This time what was inside was a
line of dust. Two lines. One on either side of the
constriction.
    "It doesn't take much to kill them," said
Joe. He relaxed visiby. "I think we're safe."
    "They do seem alive," I said reluctantly.
    "I think they seem more than that. They're
viruses-or the equivalent."
    "What are you talking about?"
    Joe said, "Granted I'm a computer-
technologist and not a virologist-but it's my
understanding that viruses on Earth, or `down-
stairs' as you would say, consist of a nucleic
acid molecule coated in a protein shell.
    "When a virus invades a cell, it manages to
dissolve a hole in the cell wall or membrane by
the use of some appropriate enzyme and the
nucleic acid slips inside, leaving the protein coat
outside. Inside the cell it finds the material to
make a new protein coat for itself. In fact, it
manages to form replicas of itself and produces
a new protein coat for each replica. Once it has
stripped the cell of all it has, the cell dissolves

and in place of the one invading virus there are
several hundred daughter-viruses. Sound
familiar?"
    "Yes. Very familiar. It's what's happening
here. But where did it come from, Joe?"
    "Not from Earth, obviously, or any Earth
settlement. From somewhere else, I suppose.
They drift through space till they find some-
thing appropriate in which they can multiply.
They look for sizable objects ready-made of
metal. I don't imagine they can smelt ores."
    "But large metal objects with pure silicon
components and a few other succulent matters
like that are the products of intelligent life
only," I said.
    "Right," said Joe, "which means we have
the best evidence yet that intelligent life is
common in the universe, since objects like the
one we're on must be quite common or it
couldn't support these viruses. And it means
that intelligent life is old, too, perhaps ten
billion years old-long enough for a kind of
metal evolution, forming a metal/silicon/oil life
as we have formed a nucleic/protein/water life.
Time to evolve a parasite on space-age
artifacts."
    I said, "You make it sound that every time
some intelligent life-form develops a space-cul-
ture, it is subjected before long to parasitic in-
festation."
    "Right. And it must be controlled. Fortu-
nately, these things are easy to kill, especially
now when they're forming. Later on, when
ready to burrow out of Computer-Two, I sup-
pose they will grow, thicken their shells, stabilize their
interior and prepare, as the equivalent of spores, to
drift a million years before they find another home.
They might not be so easy to kill then."

"How are you going to kill them?"

"I already have. I just touched that first one when it
instinctively sought out metal to begin manufacturing a
new shell after I had broken open the first one-and
that touch finished it. I didn't touch the second, but I
kicked the wall near it and the sound vibration in the
metal shook its interior apart into metal dust. So they
can't get us-or any more of the computer-if we just
shake them apart, now!"

He didn't have to explain further-or as much. He put
on his gauntlets slowly, and banged at the wall with
one. It pushed him away and he kicked at the wall
where he next approached it.

"You do the same," he shouted.

I tried to, and for a while we both kept at it. You
don't know how hard it is to hit a wall at zero-gravity;
at least on purpose; and do it hard enough to make it
clang. We missed as often as not or just struck a
glancing blow that sent us whirling but made virtually
no sound. We were panting with effort and
aggravation in no time.

But we had acclimated ourselves. We kept it up and
eventually gathered up more of the viruses. There was
nothing inside but dust in every case. They were clearly
adapted to empty, automated space objects which, like
modern computers, were vibration-free. That's what

made it possible, I suppose, to build up the
exceedingly rickety-complex metallic structures that
possessed sufficient instability to produce the
properties of simple life.

I said, "Do you think we got them all?"

"How can I say? If there's one left, it will cannibalize
the others for metal supplies and start all over. Let's
bang around some more."

We did until we were sufficiently worn out not to care
whether one was still left alive.

"Of course," I said, panting, "the Planetary Association
for the Advancement of Science isn't going to be
pleased with our killing them all."

Joe's suggestion as to what the P.A.A.A. could do
with itself was forceful, but impractical. He said,
"Look, our mission is to save Computer-Two, a few
thousand lives and, as it turned out, our own lives, too.
Now they can decide whether to renovate this
computer or rebuild it from scratch. It's their baby.

"The P.A.A.S. can get what they can out of these dead
objects and that should be something. If they want live
ones, I suspect they'll find them floating about in these
regions."

I said, "All right. My suggestion is we tell Computer
Central we're going to jerry-rig this Computer and get
it doing some work anyway, and we'll stay till a relief
is up for main repairs or whatever in order to prevent
any reinfestation. Meanwhile, they'd better get to each
of the other Computers and set up a system that can
set it to vibrating strongly as soon as the internal
atmosphere shows a pressure drop."
"Simple enough," said Joe, sardonically.
"It's lucky we found them when we did."
    "Wait a while," said Joe, and the look in his
eye was one of deep trouble. We didn't find
them. They found us. If metal-life has de-
veloped, do you suppose it's likely that this is
the only form it takes?
    "What if such life-forms communicate some-
how and, across the vastness of space, others
are now converging on us for the picking. Other
species, too; all of them after the lush new
fodder of an as-yet untouched space culture.
Other species! Some that are sturdy enough to
withstand vibration. Some that are large enough
to be more versatile in their reactions to danger.
Some that are equipped to invade our
settlements in orbit. Some, for the sake of
Univac, that may be able to invade the Earth
for the metals of its cities.
    "What I'm going to report, what I must re-
port, is that we've been found!"