"Hey there!" Lin shouted, clamping fingers over the man's shoulders and starling to shake him. "Hey!" he started to say again, then his voice died away.

The shoulder under his fingers was unyielding. Too unyielding. His lips took on a stubborn line. He applied force. The shoulder was immovable.

He released it and stared down, mystified. The fingers continued their typing without pause, a blur of movement over the keys.

With abrupt decision Lin stepped around so he could see the man's face. He caught an impression of a lean face, intellectual and relaxed, with firm lips and thin high bridged nose. But these were only vaguely noticed, because his attention was immediately dominated by the man's eyes.

Or lack of eyes, that is. For where his eyes should have been was nothing but tightly closed lids that, from their sunken contours, covered no eyes at all, but only empty sockets.

Experimentally Lin reached out and touched the face. The pale skin was as unyielding as rock. He pressed his finger against the right cheek until his nail bent over. It should have left a mark on any living skin and brought an exclamation of pain from any living person. But it left no perceptible mark, and the man gave no sign of having noticed. And the fingers continued their rapid movement over the typewriter keyboard.

Incredulously Lin reached out and tried to remove the skullcap. It wouldn't budge, and was as unyieldingly hard as the face.

"A robot!" The exclamation escaped Lin's lips in a hoarse whisper. "Or—a statue?"

In desperation he seized one of the man's arms at the elbow and tried to interrupt the smooth flow of movement. All his strength couldn't vary the motion of that arm enough to cause a finger to miss a key on the typewriter.

"Not a millionth of an inch of play in the joints!" he said, marvelling.

For the first time he turned his attention from the figure before him and examined his surroundings. The robot or statue or whatever it was was seated at a spot practically perched on the edge of a cliff that went down much farther than the stairs on the other side. Here there was a sheer drop of at least a thousand feet, and probably more nearly two thousand.

Below, an immense valley stretched out toward the far horizon.

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