The Small World of M-75 by Ed M. Clinton (story reading TXT) 📗

himself. The driving curiosity that had brought him this far overcame that curious, perplexing reticence, and he looked down at the steps and measured their width and depth so that he might set up a feedback pattern. This done, he bounced, almost jauntily, down them.

He had rolled perhaps fifty feet down the smooth pathway curving across the grounds when he made out, clearly discernible in the gathering dusk, the three men and the machine that were moving toward him. It was the last bit of datum he ever filed.

The demolition squad had finished with the hot remains of M-75, and their big truck was coughing away into the night. One by one, the floodlights that had lighted their work flickered out.

"Pretty delicate machines, after all," commented Sokolski. "One jolt from that flame thrower...."

Gaines was silent as they walked back toward the plant. "Bert," he said slowly, "what the hell do you suppose got into him?"

Sokolski shrugged. "You were the one who spotted the trouble with him, Joe. Just think, if you could have checked him out completely—"

Gaines could not help looking up at the stars and saying what he had really been thinking all along, "It's a small world, Bert, a small world."

THE END End of Project Gutenberg's The Small World of M-75, by Ed M. Clinton, Jr.