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“Good Lord!”

“The flow of advertising has been seriously interfered with. At a modest estimate, three hundred million pieces of expensive first-class advertising have already been chewed to rags and I’m not sure the Steel Helms—God bless ‘em!—have the trouble in hand yet.”

“Judas Priest!”

“Naturally the poor machines weren’t able to cope with the letter. It was utterly outside their experience, beyond the furthest reach of their programming. It threw them into a terrible spasm. Pink Wastebasket is dead and at this very instant, if we’re lucky, three police machines of the toughest blued steel are holding down Black Sorter and putting a muzzle on him.”

“Great Scott! It’s incredible, Potshelter. And Pink Wastebasket dead? Take another tranquilizer, Potshelter, and hand over the tray.”

Krumbine received it with trembling fingers, started to pick up a big pink pill but drew back his hand from it in sudden revulsion at its color and swallowed two blue oval ones instead. The man was obviously fighting to control himself.