The shot from the Midas Touch pistol was drawing a crowd. An approaching police siren wailed.
Suddenly Granger fixed his eyes on Ed in surprise and recognition. "Dukas," he said. "Let me see—Edward Dukas. At a time when the world was more reasonably watchful, your house was under surveillance. As a possible means of contacting one Mitchell Prell—who had his hand in what once happened to us, and perhaps in what is happening now. How does it feel, Dukas, to be so close to such a celebrity? Ah, maybe you're shy!"
Flattening out Granger again would have been no useful answer to Ed's memories of bitter wrongs. He smiled briefly at him.
"Come see me some evening when you don't feel so much like making a monkey of someone, because someone has just made a monkey out of you," he said.
Then he hustled his companions away. "There's no good in getting involved in public confusion," he told them. "Anyhow not till we talk things out and get them straight."
Ten minutes later they were in a quiet restaurant.
"Abel Freeman," Les Payten said. "He was quite a surprise at that."
"Rather, more of a pointing out of facts we already knew," Barbara remarked.
"The old robot-peril come true," Less said pensively. "Humanity threatened to be replaced, not by clanking giants of metal, simple and melodramatic, but by beings much more refined—though they are perhaps much the same thing. My own father is one of them."
"There's truth in what Granger said," Ed pointed out. "There's that dread of being shouldered out of the way by something strange and tougher. I can feel it too. Granger can certainly make use of it, preaching. He's clever. But he's the worst kind of fool."