CHAPTER V
THE man before the machine which was like Ganesha, the god with the elephant's head, was no longer a human being. Merely a dripping piece of exhaustion, from the pores of which the last powers of volition were oozing out in large drops of sweat. Running eyes no longer saw the manometer. The hand did not hold the lever—It clawed it fast in the last hold which saved the mangled man-creature before it from falling into the crushing arms of the machine.
The Pater-noster works of the New Tower of Babel turned their buckets with an easy smoothness. The eye of the little machine smiled softly and maliciously at the man who stood before it and who was now no more than a babel.
"Father!" babbled the son of Joh Fredersen, "to-day, for the first time, since Metropolis stood, you have for
