"And now there's nothing I can do—nothing I can do."
When after a minute of fumbling in the dark he pushed the door open, it was too late.
He walked over to the hotel; not by an act of will, but with his legs somehow doing the job alone and by themselves. He ordered himself a car from the Braintrust garage. He entered The Brain and went up in the elevator to Apperception 36. Nobody seemed to notice that there was a somnambulist passing by.... He unlocked the door and under the rows of neon lights things were as he had left them eight hours ago. Only there were no longer any snakes crawling across the floor towards a hole in the wall. But the hole was still there and he thought that he had better tidy things up a bit. If nobody had noticed the arrangements for this new experiment so far; why should anybody be forewarned?
Lee put the lid back on the "Lignin-Filler-Spout." He closed the panel so the wall looked whole again. He gathered the sticks of cordwood from the floor and piled them neatly to their stacks again. All this he did like a child putting its things away after a long day's play; a grey-haired child, weary, with the sandman in its eyes. He looked around and found everything done and over with. On the fluorescent screens all curves The Brain described had dropped to the bottom. Like dead things they lay flat. On the visi-screens some stay-behinds of the great exodus were looming large, a hapless little ant-king scurrying about; a few disabled workers, their blind eyes staring into the face of death. It would come soon to them; their work on earth was done....
Lee looked at the clock: 10 p.m. He put out the lights and locked the door behind that yawning emptiness which once had been his lab, which he would never see again. As he descended in the elevator he felt very tired.
CHAPTER IX
Incessant shrieks of the phone aroused Lee from the deep well of his sleep. He didn't know the female voice which fairly jumped at him.
"Is this Dr. Lee? Dr. Semper F. Lee from Canberra; am I at last connected with Dr. Lee?"