them the fear of Tom-Tom." Again the chuckle. "I'm almost as hard to hurt as I am to fool, Gaspipe. And that's very, very hard indeed."

"What do you want of me?" blurted Gascon, scowling.

"Now that's a question," nodded Tom-Tom. "It might be extended a little. What do I want of life, Gaspipe? Life is here with me, but I never asked for it. It was thrust into me, and upon me. My first feeling was of crazy rage toward the life-giver—"

"And so you killed him?" interrupted Gascon.

"I did. And the killing gave me the answer. The only thing worth while in life is taking life."

Tom-Tom spread his wooden hands, as though he felt that he had made a neat point. Gascon made a quick gesture of protest, then subsided as Tom-Tom picked up the gun again.

"You're wrong, Tom-Tom," he said earnestly.

"Am I? You're going to give me a moral lecture, are you? But men invented morals, so as to protect their souls. I don't have a soul, Gaspipe. I don't have to worry about protecting it. I'm not human. I'm a thing." Sitting on the desk, he crossed his legs and fiddled with the gun. "You've lived longer than I. What else, besides killing, is worth while in life?"

"Why—enjoyment—"

The marred head waggled. "Enjoyment of what? Food? I can't eat. Companionship? I doubt it, where a freak like me is concerned. Possessions? But I can't use clothes or houses or money or anything like that. They're for men, not dummies. What else, Gaspipe?"

"Why—why—" This time Gascon fell silent.

"Love, you were going to say?" The chuckle was louder, and the glowing yellow eyes flickered aside toward the place behind the wall where Shannon was penned up. "You're being stupid, Gaspipe. Because you know what love is, you think others do. Gaspipe, I'll never know what love is. I'm not made for it."

"I see you aren't," Gascon nodded solemnly. "All right, Tom-Tom. You can find life worth living if you try for supremacy in some line—leadership—"

"That," said Tom-Tom, "is where killing comes in. And where you come in, too."

He laid down the gun and put the tips of his jointed fingers together, in a pose grotesquely like that of a mild lecturer. 

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