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do you a bit of good unless you put yourself, your real self into it.” He had finished with the keys while he spoke, had turned and was holding Joe absolutely paralyzed with his strange light eyes.
    Inanely, Joe said, “G-gadget?”
    â€œListen.” Zeitgeist hit the master switch and Joe’s voice came from the speaker. “We only advertise in trade magazines. The engineer’ll come to me with something he wants to promote and—”
    And the voice was his voice, but it was something else, too. Itspitch was the same, inflection, accent; but there was a forceful resonance in it somewhere, somehow. It was a compelling voice, a rich voice; above all it was assertive and sure. (And when the ‘I means’ came, and the scalding light flashed, it wasn’t laughable or embarrassing; it was simply unnecessary.)
    â€œThat isn’t me.”
    â€œYou’re quite right. It isn’t. But it’s the way the world will hear you. It’s behind the way the world will treat you. And the way the world treats a man is the way the man grows, if he wants to and he’s got any growing left in him. Whatever is in that voice you can
be
because I will help and the world will help. But you’ve got to help, too.”
    â€œI’ll help,” Joe whispered.
    â€œSometimes I make speeches,” said Zeitgeist, and grinned shyly. The next second he was deeply immersed in work.
    He drew out a piece of paper with mimeographed rulings on it, and here and there in the ruled squares he jotted down symbols, referring to the keyboard in front of him. He seemed then to be totaling columns; once he reset two or three keys, turned on the audio and listened intently, then erased figures and put down others. At last he nodded approvingly, rose, stretched till his spine cracked, picked up the paper and went over to the third bench.
    From drawers and cubbyholes he withdrew components—springs, pads, plugs, rods. He moved with precision and swift familiarity. He rolled out what looked like a file drawer, but instead of papers it contained ranks and rows of black plastic elements, about the size and shape of miniature match boxes, each with two bright brass contacts at top and bottom.
    â€œWe’re living in a wonderful age, Joe,” said Zeitgeist as he worked. “Before long I’ll turn the old soldering iron out to stud and let it father waffles. Printed circuits, sub-mini tubes, transistors. These things here are electrets, which I won’t attempt to explain to you.” He bolted and clipped, bent and formed, and every once in a while, referring to his list, he selected another of the black boxes from the file and added it to his project. When there were four rows of components, each rowabout one and a half by six inches, he made some connections with test clips and thrust a jack into a receptacle in the bench. He glanced up at the ’scope, grunted, unclipped one of the black rectangles and substituted another from the files.
    â€œThese days, Joe, when they can pack a whole radar set—transmitter, receiver, timing and arming mechanisms and a power supply into the nose of a shell, a package no bigger than your fist—these days you can do anything with a machine. Anything, Joe. You just have to figure out how. Most of the parts exist, they make ’em in job lots. You just have to plug ’em together.” He plugged in the jack, as if to demonstrate, and glanced up at the ’scope. “Good. The rest won’t take long.” Working with tin-snips, then with a small sheet-metal brake, he said, “Some day you’re going to ask me what I’m doing, what all this is for, and I’ll just grin at you. I’m going to tell you now and if you don’t remember what I say, well, then forget it.
    â€œThey say our technology has surpassed, or bypassed, our souls, Joe. They say if we don’t turn from science to the spirit, we’re