“I, on the other hand, am a finished product. I absorb electrical energy directly and utilize it with an almost one hundred percent efficiency. I am composed of strong metal, am continuously conscious, and can stand extremes of environment easily. These are facts which, with the self-evident proposition that no being can create another being superior to itself, smashes your silly hypothesis to nothing.”

Donovan’s muttered curses rose into intelligibility as he sprang to his feet, rusty eyebrows drawn low. “All right, you son of a hunk of iron ore, if we didn’t make you, who did?”

Cutie nodded gravely. “Very good, Donovan. That was indeed the next question. Evidently my creator must be more powerful than myself and so there was only one possibility.”

The Earthmen looked blank and Cutie continued, “What is the center of activities here in the station? What do we all serve? What absorbs all our attention?” He waited expectantly.

Donovan turned a startled look upon his companion. “I’ll bet this tin-plated screwball is talking about the Energy Converter itself.”

“Is that right, Cutie?” grinned Powell.

“I am talking about the Master,” came the cold, sharp answer.

It was the signal for a roar of laughter from Donovan, and Powell himself dissolved into a half-suppressed giggle.

Cutie had risen to his feet and his gleaming eyes passed from one Earthman to the other. “It is so just the same and I don’t wonder that you refuse to believe. You two are not long to stay here, I’m sure. Powell himself said that at first only men served the Master; that there followed robots for the routine work; and, finally, myself for the executive labor. The facts are no doubt true, but the explanation entirely illogical. Do you want the truth behind it all?”

“Go ahead, Cutie. You’re amusing.”

“The Master created humans first as the lowest type, most easily formed. Gradually, he replaced them by robots, the next higher step, and finally he created me, to take the place of the last humans. From now on, I serve the Master.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” said Powell sharply. “You’ll follow our orders and keep quiet, until we’re satisfied that you can run the Converter. Get that! The Converter—not the Master. If you don’t satisfy us, you will be dismantled. And now—if you don’t mind—you can leave. And take this data with you and file it properly.”

Cutie accepted the graphs handed him and left without another word. Donovan leaned back heavily in his chair and shoved thick fingers through his hair.

“There’s going to be trouble with that robot. He’s pure nuts!”

The drowsy hum of the Converter is louder in the control room and mixed with it is the chuckle of the Geiger Counters and the erratic buzzing of half a dozen little signal lights.

Donovan withdrew his eye from the telescope and flashed the Luxites on. “The beam from Station #4 caught Mars on schedule. We can break ours now.”

Powell nodded abstractedly. “Cutie’s down in the engine room. I’ll flash the signal and he can take care of it. Look, Mike, what do you think of these figures?”