Unless life itself is a pathetic cosmic accident, man cannot be the only intelligence in the universe. It is unlikely that man is the highest intelligence. Compared to other planetary systems, our solar system is quite young. Its raw materials have barely been touched. If older intelligences wanted those raw materials only the primitive mind of man would stand in their way. Our so-called defences would perhaps aid the aliens more than they aided us....

Ken Andrews was a research worker in electronics. He had a sensitive mind and a vivid imagination. When he had a strange experience with the radar screen his chief said he had been overworking. His doctor explained it as hallucination, but the so-called delusion persisted. If Ken Andrews was sane his world was in danger.... If he really was in communication with an alien intelligence, could that alien intelligence be trusted? The intruiging thought behind this story is that it could be true. It could happen today, or tomorrow.... It might even have happened a few minutes ago in a top-secret research station somewhere in England....

Helen Powell was a punch card operator in the test office of Elcomp, the largest and most dynamically progressive computer manufacturing company in the West.

A saboteur, acting for a totalitarian regime, eluded the security network and attempted to destroy the new, top secret Mark IX, the greatest computer Elcomp had ever constructed. Unfortunately for the saboteur, the Mark IX had inbuilt defence mechanisms and the secret agent died in a holocaust of high voltage sparks. From that time onwards Helen began to notice strange changes in the great electronic thinking machine. It seemed to her that the Mark IX was developing something which might almost have been described as a personality. She tried to dismiss the thoughts as imagination... then the face appeared... if it was a face! Helen saw the image on the computer's main screen. It was a face, yet not a human face in the accepted sense. The most horrible thing about it was the resemblance it bore to the dead agent.