hardly be blind. Somewhere beyond this maze of control panels, he also reasoned, there must be an area like the bridge of an enormous ship where the clamor of the bells, buzzers, klaxons and whistles and the silent warnings and importunings of dials, gauges, colored lights, ticker-tapes which spewed from metal mouths, the palsied styles which scribbled on creeping scrolls, were somehow collated and made meaningful, where the yammering loudspeakers could be answered, and where the operators could look out and down and see what they were doing.

Where were the operators?

The noise was deafening. Unlike the noise of machinery in a factory it was not homogeneous. Each sound was intended to attract attention and to evoke a certain response, but what response and from whom? Long levers projecting from the steel deck wagged back and forth spastically like the legs of monstrous insects struggling on their backs. Several times Dewforth was temporarily blinded by an explosion of blue light as a fuse blew or something short-circuited among the rows of knife-switches and rheostats on the panels. One would never really get used to the sporadic sound or to the lights. There was no knowable pattern about them—about what they did or said. When he closed his eyes and tried to compose himself the words Out of Control flashed red against the back of his eyelids, but he told himself that this was foolish. How was one to adjudge a situation to be Out of Control when one did not know what constituted control, over what, or by whom? Furthermore, he rebuked himself, if the panels—never mind how many or how forbidding—with their lights, bells, buzzers, switches, relays, dials, gauges, styles, tapes, pointers, rheostats and buttons had any meaning, and in fact if the Tower itself had any meaning at all, that meaning was Control. How arrogant it had been of him to imagine, even briefly, that because he—a green intruder in that high place—had not immediately comprehended what it was all about, the situation must be out of control. Absurd!

There were hundreds—perhaps thousands—of little labels attached to the control panels, presumably indicating the functions of the buttons, switches and other controls. Dewforth leaned close and studied these, but found only mute combinations of letters and numbers, joined by hyphens or separated by virgules.... They made him feel somewhat more fragile, more round-shouldered and colder, but he resisted despair. It was getting a little darker, though. The skimmed-milk light above him was taking on a bluish tint. He had no way of knowing how long he had wandered among the control panels. His time-sense had always been dependent upon clocks and bells—and upon the arrivals and departures of trains.

It was a sound which finally led Dewforth out of the maze of control panels.

It was not a louder sound, not more emphatic, imperative or clear than the others; it was formless, feeble and ineffably pathetic. It was its utter incongruity which reached Dewforth through the robotic clamor, and which touched him ... a mewing, as of a kitten trapped in a closet.

It came, as he discovered, from The Operator.

He was quite alone among his levers, wheels, switches, buttons, cranks, gauges, lights, bells, buzzers, horns, ticker-tapes, creeping scrolls, barking loudspeakers and cryptic dials. Dewforth saw him sharply silhouetted against a long window through which bluish-gray light poured but through which nothing could be clearly seen from where he stood. The Operator sat on a high, one-legged stool. His head was drawn into his shoulders, which were crumpled things of birdlike bones. His head was bald on top but the fringe was long and wild. He had big simian ears set at right angles to his head and the light shone through them, not pink but yellowish. There was an aureole of fine hairs about them which