His own breath caught when an overturned chair fell with a shocking crash.
Yet there was nothing really horrible about what emerged from that discarded mask.
Rather, it was beautiful.
The shape of it was nearly human, but very slim and graceful, with no mechanical awkwardness or angularity whatever.
Half a head shorter than Forester, it was nude now, and sexless.
The sleek skin of it was a shining black, shined with changing lights of bronze and blue.
A yellow brand gleamed on its breast:
HUMANOID
Serial No. M8-B3-ZZ
"To Serve and Obey,
And Guard Men from Harm."
For a moment, when it had flung off the last of its wrappings, it stood quite still beside the old president.
Now its eyes were blind-seeming orbs that caught the light like polished steel, and its narrow, high-cheeked face was fixed in a look of dark benignity.
After the flowing felicity of its action, that frozen poise seemed eerie as its inhuman voice.
"Your present alarm is needless, gentlemen," it cooed musically, "because we never injure any man.
Major Steel was simply a useful fiction, created for your own benefit, which enabled us to observe the present technological crisis as it developed here and to offer our services in time to avert calamity."
"But - Mr. President!" The defense minister had risen, still gasping.
"I fail to understand this strange display," he protested shakenly.
"But I must remind you that wise laws exist to protect our working classes from the competition of such multipurpose android mechanicals as this appears to be, and I hope you recall that our party is pledged to enforce them.
With elections to come-"
The president merely looked at the machine.
"You need not fear the labor vote," it broke in briskly.
"Because we bring no want or suffering to any workingman.
On the contrary, our only function is to promote human welfare.
Once established, our service will remove all class distinctions, along with such other causes of unhappiness and pain as war and poverty and toil and crime.
There will be no class of toilers, because there will be no toil."
Fumbling agitatedly with a pitcher and a glass, the chief of staff looked uncertainty from the droning mechanical to the trembling lieutenants beside Mason Horn, and finally shouted hoarsely:
"Seize that - device!"
"That isn't necessary, sir," its golden voice sang instantly.
"Because we have no purpose except to serve you."
The two lieutenants merely moved closer to Horn, and the chief of staff forgot them, sputtering breathlessly,
"That's no machine!
It - it thinks!"
"We are mechanical," the steel-eyed thing told him melodiously.
"But we do think, because all our identical units are joined by rhodomagnetic beams to our central relay grid on the planet Wing IV.
Such units as the one before you are only the limbs and the sense organs of that mechanical brain, which perceives and acts through them.
We think more rapidly and effectively than men, in fact, because our rhodomagnetic impulses act without the time lag which slows the inefficient mental reactions of human beings, and because that great relay grid is a far more perfect mechanism than any human brain.
We don't sleep and we don't err and we don't forget, and our awareness embraces everything that happens on many thousand worlds.
You may welcome us without fear, however, because we exist only to serve and obey mankind."
The chief of staff swallowed convulsively, and somehow overturned his glass and pitcher.
Moving with a silent, incredible ability, the mechanical righted them before the water had time to spill, and held the glass to the old general's lips.
"Quite remarkable!" The chief of staff strangled on the water, turning red in the face, and sputtered at the dark humanoid, which now stood alertly motionless again.
"But how - precisely how - can you abolish war?"
"We are used to dealing with the inevitable cataclysmic breakdowns of such hypertrophic technologies as this planet has developed," the machine pealed sweetly, "and we have efficient methods of averting violence.
Our agents here and on the neighbor planets began preparing for this crisis ten years ago.
Our ships from Wing IV are already near, bringing the necessary units and equipment to begin our service, and you will find the formal arrangements very simple."
The humanoid moved swiftly again, to set the glass and pitcher safely beyond reach of the man's agitated hands.
"Your spaceports and those of the Triplanet Powers must be opened immediately to our shipping," it continued serenely.
"Our advance agents must be given authority to monitor communications and inspect military installations, in order to prevent any human treachery.
At an agreed future date, all military equipment must be surrendered to us for safe disposal."