That night the janitor walked in. He was a balding Greek gentleman, dedicated to a life with brush and dustpan. The machine was muttering darkly to itself, but when he entered the door it quieted down, contemplating its relays.
The janitor went meticulously about his business, mopping the floor, straightening chairs and secretly rearranging pipette and retorts in their racks, because he was a more meticulous person than even Dr. Henderson. As he turned to leave, the machine in the corner belched twice and then said as an afterthought:
"I am the ghost of Astrologers Sagittarian."
The janitor adjusted his hearing aid, squeezed his mop and carried his pail out the door. As he went back in to pack up his cleaning powder and brushes, the machine said, "What year is this? Limits within standard deviation, click, click, awrk!"
The janitor was a reasonable man. He walked over to the machine's microphone and told it what year it was as well as the month, day and hour. Then he carried his brushes and cleaning compound out of the room and locked the door.
But the janitor's night was a long one. At midnight, when he finished two floors and only had three more to go, he took his coffee break. As he talked with his old friend Samuel, the night watchman, he fell to thinking. That was an unforgivable mistake. After the coffee break, they both went back up to Dr. Henderson's laboratory and listened to the machine talking to itself.
"I feel like a spider," said the machine. "Nonsense. From one cobweb to another. Must settle down and build a grau ... spltvbk ... within 95% confidence limits. Nova in Andromeda was bad enough. Now this. One hundred fifty cancer susceptible mice inherit the Earth."
Suddenly the machine fell silent, sensing it had visitors. The night watchman reached into the wastebasket and pulled out one of the machine's cards.
"Aldebaran is martial in nature, in the ninth degree of Tropical Gemini," it said.