"What have you done to my wife?"
"We have merely made her happy," the machine sang gaily.
"We have only removed her cares."
"And her memory."
"Forgetfulness is the most useful key we have discovered to human happiness," whined the machine.
"Our drug, euphoride, relieves the pain of needless memories and the tension of useless fear.
Stopping all the corrosion of stress and effort, it triples the brief life expectancy of human beings.
You can see that Ruth has lost her fear of age."
"Maybe!" Forester blinked incredulously.
"But did she ask for euphoride?"
"No request was necessary."
"I won't have it!" He was hoarse and breathless with his anger.
"I want you to restore her mind - if you can!"
"Her mind isn't injured," the machine said briskly.
"The drug merely protects her from memories and fears which serve no purpose now, since our service shields her from every want and harm.
If that distresses you unduly, then it may be necessary for you to take euphoride also."
For an instant he was stunned.
The words had echoed in his mind like silver music before he grasped their sense, but then an unthinking fury flung his stringy fist at the bald plastic head of the machine.
Its steel eyes seemed blind as ever and its narrow face reflected no alarm, but it moved precisely enough to let his fist slip past, and then, when he stumbled, it deftly helped him recover his balance.
"That is useless, sir." It danced back from him, poised and alert.
"Many men have attacked us, on many worlds, and none has ever hurt anything except himself.
Human bodies are too weak to match against us, and human minds too slow."
Gulping convulsively, Forester staggered back from the machine.
It stood darkly beautiful and serenely kind as ever, but all his wrath had chilled into shivering terror.
"I - I didn't really mean to hit you," he stammered desperately.
"It was just - just the shock!"
He tried to get his breath.
"I know I'll soon be happy enough, without any need of your drug."
"That decision is our responsibility," the mechanical hummed.
"But a few men do find happiness without euphoride, and you may try that, if you wish."
"Thank you!"
He swallowed hard. "And you won't punish me?"
"Our function is not to punish men, but merely to serve them."
"Thanks!" he muttered.
"And I'll soon be all right."
He tried to grin at the alert machine. "All I need is time to think." That was it.
He must think how to reach the old search building and make his way down to those missiles in the vault, already set and ready to smash Wing IV and stop these machines.
But he must hide that bleak intent until the moment came, and he turned uncertainly toward the nearest picture in the wall, pretending a casual interest.
He looked upon wide desolation, where whirlwinds carried towering pillars of red dust across a barren desert, marching among huge eroded boulders that crouched like monstrous sleeping saurians of dark stone.
"These are rhodomagnetic television screens," the mechanical explained.
"Our cameras are placed at points of interest on every world we serve, and the scenes may be shifted as you wish."
"I see." Forester mopped at his sweaty palms, carefully studying those dark shapes of twisted stone. "Interesting view."
"That is a world to which we came too late," sang the machine.
"Men landed there six thousand years ago, flourished until they liberated energies which they failed to control rationally, and so destroyed themselves.
The camera looks upon the ruins of a city whose builders died for want of our Prime Directive."
"That so?"
Now he could see the plan of fused and flattened walls, the bulk of crumbled towers.
He tried for a moment to imagine that lost magnificence, before it had been burned and shattered into this dreadful desolation.
Those ancient builders had been lucky, the bleak thought struck him, for they at least were cleanly dead, and not buried alive beneath the suffocating service of these machines.
"I think I'll take a walk." He turned slowly from the niche, carefully casual.