Nightmare

Countdown for blast off. X-5, 4, 3, 2, X-1, Fire. From the far horizons of the unknown come transcribed tales of new dimensions in time and space. These are stories of the future.

Adventures in which you'll live in a million could be years on a thousand maybe worlds. The National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with Street and Smith, publishers of astounding science fiction presents Heck, heck, heck, heck, heck, heck, heck, heck, minus, minus, minus, minus, minus, minus, one, one, one.

The Knight Story, Nightmare. A story based on the poem Revolt of the Machines by Stephen Vincent Benet. Nobody knows exactly when the Nightmare began. They must have planned it for years though because looking back you can find little incidents here and there.

the concrete mixer in New Jersey that killed the Italian bricklayer. And the time Senator Milburn was sucked into the roto press at the Capitol Office Building. Unrelated accidents, we thought at the time. But they add up now. The day we really should have suspected was when the men walked off the construction job at the new Brook Meadow

atomic pile on Long Island. I'll never forget that day. I was working as a statistical clerk in the project then, operating one of those miracle computing machines. They called it Eniac. Mr. Gurney. Yes, Bella? The chief wants to see you in his office.

Me? Unless you were no longer Samson Gurney, he wants to see you. Oh, thank you. Come here. You wanted to see me, Mr. Hawk? Gurney, I thought those electronic computations were infallible. They are, sir, but... You've got to take back from the chief physicist.

These nuclear fission equations are inaccurate. Well sir, you know the computer is a highly complicated machine, more complicated in many ways than the human brain. I am not interested in the physics of it. Can something go wrong?