High-Pockets listened intently.

“This poor guy has to sit on No. 7. That’s the linotype nobody can do anything with. The poor devil had to lay off because she pretty nearly drove him crazy. Now you are the guy who can make a linotype behave.” His voice was persuasive. “Won’t you help this guy out for a few nights?”

For twenty years it had been High-Pockets’ unbroken rule not to hire out for more than a day at a time. “Short-term contracts,” he insisted. But now⁠—well, the world was changed. Maybe this was to be the future of barnstorming⁠—taming machines instead of foremen. If so, it meant he still had a place in the world. And to fulfill that destiny he would even accept a whole week’s work. He took off his rain-wrinkled coat with a sigh.

He was waiting for time to be called when Arturius Wickware, the linotype machinist on the News , came up to him with short, mincing steps and a scowl that undoubtedly was a habit. “Are you the guy that has such wonderful control over a linotype?” he demanded. He wouldn’t give High-Pockets the satisfaction of looking up at him. He scowled at High-Pockets’ breastbone.

High-Pockets was solemn as he stared over Arturius’ head. “I get along well with them.” He smiled gently then. “Somehow a linotype always does what I want it to do.” He looked down and saw the crowd around him and decided he owed them an explanation. “My theory is that any piece of machinery is electrified by some force that I call personal electricity. I don’t exactly know what that is but it seems to bind the piece of machinery as a whole. I think maybe it’s a negative charge, and I think most men are charged positively with that same force, so that men get along well with machines. Opposite poles attract, you know.”

Arturius Wickware sputtered, but now High-Pockets had to go on. “Sometimes a man comes along who happens to be negatively charged,