"He's got a screwdriver that he's modified to give it a head with an L-shaped cross-section, and he's wiggling it around inside that hole in the box. But what he's doing is a secret between God and the Nipe at this point," the colonel said glumly.
Stanton glanced away from the screen for a moment to look at the other men who were there. Some of them were watching the screen, but most of them seemed to be watching Stanton, although they looked away as soon as they saw his eyes on them.
Trying to see what kind of a bloke this touted superman is, Stanton thought. Well, I can't say I blame 'em.
He brought his attention back to the screen.
So this was the Nipe's hideaway. He wondered if it were furnished in the fashion that a Nipe's living quarters would be furnished on whatever planet the multilegged horror called home. Probably it had the same similarity as Robinson Crusoe's island home had to a middle-class Nineteenth Century English home.
There was no furniture at all, as such. Low-slung as he was, the Nipe needed no tables for his work, and sleeping was a form of metabolic rest that he evidently found unnecessary, although he would sometimes just remain quiet for periods of time ranging from a few minutes to a couple of hours.
"We had a hard time getting the first cameras in there," the colonel was saying. "That's why we missed some of the early stages of his work. There! Look at that!"
"That attachment he's making?"
"That's right. Now, it looks as though it's a meter of some kind, but we don't know whether it's a test instrument or an integral part of the machine he's making. The whole thing might be a test instrument. After all, he had to start out from the very beginning—making the tools to make the tools to make the tools, you know."