There was silence as Fergesson inspected the changer.

“Where’d you get the new spring?” he asked suddenly.

“I found it lying around,” Hoppy said, at once.

It was okay. Fergesson, if he had seen, had not understood. The phocomelus relaxed and felt glee, felt a superior pleasure take the place of his anxiety; he grinned at the two repairmen, looked about for the next job expected of him.

Fergesson said, “Does it make you nervous to have people watch you?”

“No,”. Hoppy said. “People can stare at me all they want; I know I’m different. I’ve been stared at since I was born.”

“I mean when you work.”

“No,” he said, and his voice sounded loud—perhaps too loud—in his ears. “Before I had a cart,” he said, “before the Government provided me anything, my dad used to carry me around on his back, in a sort of knapsack. Like’ a papoose.” He laughed uncertainly.

“I see,” Fergesson said.

“That was up around Sonoma,” Hoppy said. “Where I grew up. We had sheep. One time a ram butted me and I flew through the air. Like a ball.” Again he laughed; the two repairmen regarded him silently, both of them pausing in their work.

“I’ll bet,” one of them said after a moment, “that you rolled when you hit the ground.”

“Yes,” Hoppy said, laughing. They all laughed, now, himself and Fergesson and the two repairmen; they imagined how it looked, Hoppy Harrington, seven years old, with no arms or legs, only a torso and head, rolling over the ground, howling with fright and pain—but it was funny; he knew it. He told it so it would be funny; he made it become that way.

“You’re a lot better set up now, with your cart,” Fergesson said.

“Oh yes,” he said. “And I’m designing a new one, my own design; all electronic—I read an article on brain-wiring, they’re using it in Switzerland and Germany. You’re wired directly to the motor centers of the brain so there’s no lag; you can move even quicker than—a regular physiological structure.” He started to say, than a human. “I’ll have it perfected in a couple of years,” he said, “and it’ll be an improvement even on the Swiss models. And then I can throw away this Government junk.”