Asimov’s Future History

Volume I

All stories copyright Isaac Asimov and the Estate of Isaac Asimov, unless otherwise noted below.

All other stories copyright by the respective authors listed below.

To the Continuing End of Eternity-by Greg Toland, January, 2000

A Boy’s Best Friend-First published in Boys’ Life magazine Mar, 1975

Robbie-First published in I, Robot, 1950. A slightly different (the original) version appears in Super Science Stories, September, 1940 as Strange Playfellow

Robot AL-76 Goes Astray-First published in Amazing Stories, Feb, 1942

Insert Knob A in Hold B-First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December, 1957

Runaround-First published in Astounding Science-Fiction, March, 1942

Reason-First published in Astounding Science-Fiction, April, 1941

Catch That Rabbit-First published in Astounding Science Fiction, February, 1944

Safety First-by Johnny Pez, August, 2001

Liar!-First published in Astounding Science-Fiction, May, 1941

Satisfaction Guaranteed-First published in Amazing Stories, April, 1951

Balance-By Mike Resnick. First published in Foundation’s Friends: Stories in Honor of Isaac Asimov, September, 1989

Lenny-First published in Infinity Science Fiction, January, 1958

Blot-By Hal Clement. First published in Foundation’s Friends: Stories in Honor of Isaac Asimov, September, 1989

Little Lost Robot-First published in Astounding Science Fiction, March, 1947

Escape!-First published in Astounding Science Fiction, August, 1945

Cal-First published in Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection, March, 1995

Evidence-First published in Astounding Science Fiction, September, 1946

PAPPI-By Sheila Finch. First published in Foundation’s Friends: Stories in Honor of Isaac Asimov, September, 1989

Risk-Fist published in Astounding Science Fiction, May, 1955

Galley Slave-Fist published in Galaxy Science Fiction, December, 1957

First Law-First published in Fantastic Universe, October, 1956

Plato’s Cave-By Poul Anderson. First published in Foundation’s Friends: Stories in Honor of Isaac Asimov, September, 1989

The Martian Dilemma-By David Pinkston. May, 2001

Non-Compliance-By Greg Toland. July, 2001

The Evitable Conflict-First published in Astounding Science Fiction, June, 1950

Robot Dreams-First published in Robot Dreams, November, 1986

I, Robot-First published by Gnome Press, 1950

The Eternal Woman-By Wendell Urth, June, 2001

Feminine Intuition-First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October, 1969

The Fourth Law of Robotics-by Harry Harrison. First published in Foundation’s Friends: Stories in Honor of Isaac Asimov, September, 1989

Christmas Without Rodney-First published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Mid-December, 1988

Kid Brother-First published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Mid-December, 1990

This  ePub edition v1.0 by Dead^Man March, 2011

Mobi and LIT editions published simultaneously.

Layout and design by DeadMan

Cover art: “Yacht” by guitfiddle of DeviantArt

Future History inlay “Summer days” by Talros of DeviantArt

Cover design by Dead^Man

Chronology of events in Isaac Asimov’s positronic robot and Foundation stories, compiled by Johnny Pez

Table of Contents

Copyright

Introduction

1982 AD To the Continuing End of Eternity

1995 AD A Boy’s Best Friend

1998 AD Robbie

2006 AD Robot AL-76 Goes Astray

2010 AD Insert Knob A in Hold B

2015 AD Runaround

2015 AD Reason

2016 AD Catch That Rabbit

2020 AD Safety First

2021 AD Liar!

2023 AD Satisfaction Guaranteed

2024 AD Balance

2025 AD Lenny

2026 AD Blot

2029 AD Little Lost Robot

2030 AD Escape!

2031 AD Cal

2032 AD Evidence

2032 AD PAPPI

2033 AD Risk

2034 AD Galley Slave

2035 AD First Law

2036 AD Plato’s Cave

2044 AD The Martian Dilemma

2051 AD Non-Compliance

2052 AD The Evitable Conflict

2055 AD Robot Dreams

2058 AD I, Robot

2060 AD The Eternal Woman

2063 AD Feminine Intuition

2065 AD The Fourth Law of Robotics

2090 AD Christmas Without Rodney

2120 AD Kid Brother

Sources of dates

Introduction

The Fan Edit

2011 A.D.

SO HERE I sit, around 30 years after being introduced to The Foundation stories by one of my older brothers when I was around 11 years old. Star Wars had been out for 2 years, and I was yearning for something that could match the magic that that movie brought to me at that age. Yes, I started reading at a much earlier age-I loved mysteries and had read every Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys story I could get my hands on. I couldn’t quite get into reading fantasy at the time, having read maybe one chapter of Lord of the Rings before never going back to it–I still have yet to finish that chapter. My brother tells me something along the lines of, “Shut up and read these (Foundation books), they are good!”. Well, how could I doubt my big brother who drove such a cool muraled van? Since then, Asimov has been my favorite author and I have collected just about every real book of his I could find. His universe had all that I have enjoyed reading and writing about all these years. There are a great many other books in my library, of course, but the Asimov Collection is the heart of all of it, It consists of about 400 books, many having 3 or 4 copies from collections I have purchased over the years.

Anyway, I am one who likes to read everything in order. It has come time again to read the entire Future History as laid out by Dr. Asimov and the others who have contributed to the series over the years. This was a project I have had in mind for some years now, and it is something that you folks will never see assembled by any company (for more reasons than one). Several of the fan fiction ones I have not include as they appear to be incomplete, or just don’t fit the theme of the universe and may be better plugged into some other. I did consider adding Donald Kingsbury’s Psychohistorical Crisis, while although interesting, doesn’t belong here.

Thanks go out to Johnny Pez and his Insanely Complete Fiction List, which I used for all the dates in these volumes. Some books are missing from his list now since it hasn’t been updated since 2001, and some of the dates had to be adjusted slightly; Aurora, Have Robot, Will Travel (these first two not having been released since Mr. Pez last updated his list) and Robots and Empire. There is an updated list provided at the end of Aurora by Attila Torkos. I have decided to stick with the Pez edition since he lists the references to dates from within the books and gives good explanations to the not so obvious ones. I will list both versions in the last volume.

I have taken some liberties in reassembling all the books into these volumes. I, Robot (in this volume) being chopped up to exclude the stories that are inserted into the interviews, leaving only a few lines of the short story they are referring too to lead into the next segment of interviews. Some others, I have removed the title of the book and left only the short stories that would have made it up, mostly the early Foundation books.

The cover layout and design is my own. My skills with photoshop are basic at best. Most cover art is taken from the fine folks at the Deviant Art site. Each artist is credited in the copyright section. If anyone wishes to create really nice covers, you can email them to me at the email given below. I did want to create more themed covers based on the contents in each volume, but there is just to much art out there to keep track of.

As with all my conversions, the formatting is left simple so as to work on as many ereading devices as possible, with out you having to muck about with it (But I’m sure someone will anyway, can’t please them all). I don’t like hyperlinks in eBooks (clickable lines in the TOC section), but have added them to this collection to make some folks happy; The rest of us will just have to endure the difficult and painful process of scrolling past them. Those that use a reader that views ePub formats will see more links in the ePub Table of Contents listings than there are hyperlinks listed in the TOC for each volume. There will be some errors through-out the volumes, like broken sentences, screwy punctuation and what-not. I have spent a lot of time fixing and tweaking the text. Even the ‘retail’ ones I bought, which are not much better than some of the scans kicking around. (Authors should be making more of a stink about these horribly created retail ebooks!)

By now, your asking, who the hell is this guy? I’m the Dead Man., since 1987. I can thank Glen Cook for that handle – another great author, you should really read his books too. (I don’t think I’m as ugly as the Dead Man in his books though! Although, I’m about as lively sometimes after a long day at work.)

I hope some of the Asimov fans will enjoy how this Fan Edit will all be put together in the end. Feel free to send an email to dmebooks “at” live.ca.

Enjoy,

ÐM

The Three Laws of Robotics

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where that would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

To the Continuing End of Eternity

1982 A.D.

“… … … and so ladies and gentlemen Consolidated Computers are proud to present to you the first positronic brain!” David Williams stepped back from the podium and with a feeling of embarrassment jabbed at the button to draw back the curtains to expose his and countless other experimenter’s life work.

The muted applause died down and David could sense the anti-climax amongst his audience. It was exactly the same response his bosses had given three weeks earlier. Why should the press feel any different from the so called experts who had funded it, admittedly not understanding what they were supporting. He turned to look at the brain, all eight ounces of it, enclosed in the plexpous dome with twinkling lights from the computer controlled display system. He wished that they had not agreed to the demands of the marketing men to make the presentation more glossy.

The positronic brain sat there linked to a number of external devices and controls. To the left was the speech interpretation unit. God, he thought. Doesn’t it look dreadful. He wished that they had the extra two months that they had requested, before it was presented to the public.

Mind you the vision sub-system did not look much better, the whole thing looked as if it had been thrown together in a matter of weeks, which unfortunately was what had happened when the planned design proved to be totally unsuitable.

Questions started to come from the floor to derail his train of thought.

“Doctor, why is this such a quantum leap in computer technology?” That was the planted question that he hoped would be asked first. “Well in order to answer that I think a little history is in order. You are all aware of the development of the computer from the early electro-mechanical calculating machines, through the valve to the micro-processor …?”

He trailed off looking around the room at the nodding heads. “Good. That will save us some time. Now what are the disadvantages of this form of the computer.”

He started to tick off the points on his fingers. “One, it requires a relatively large power supply both physically and in energy terms. Two, it can only operate in a very restricted manner defined exactly by its programming. Three, it …”

Before he could continue the interruption he was dreading came in from Alton Ferdinand, “Are you therefore saying that this computer,” he seemed to make the word an insult, “operates the way it wants to and therefore cannot be controlled?”

“No, that is not what I’m trying to say. If Mr. Ferdinand would listen to the facts and not try to put his prejudices over to this audience.......” began David.

Too late, Alton was in full flow. “These machines are depriving man-kind of his humanity. They are abominations that have no place in our society and here we even have one of their creators telling us that they are uncontrolled.”

David saw his opportunity to respond and leapt at the chance. “I’m glad I have the opportunity to address that issue for my colleague from the Divine College.” He hoped that the comment would be taken with the right amount of sarcasm.

“A long time ago this problem was anticipated by a science fiction writer called Isaac Asimov, and he devised the Three Laws of Robotics and I would like to quote them to you from one of his books.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a battered copy of I, Robot. This was a deliberate ploy. He hoped that the production of an actual antiquarian book would carry more weight with the audience than using the book films and medias that replaced them.

He started to read.

“First Law: A Robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

“Second Law: A Robot must obey the orders given it by any human being except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

“Third Law: A Robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.”

He paused dramatically at the end of the Laws, somehow they always had a capital letter in his mind. “These Laws have been incorporated within the positronic brain and all actions controlled by the brain are constrained to operate within these bounds. They are fundamentally safer and more controlled than you or I or any other human could ever be. You can have nothing to fear from them.”

He could see it was a losing battle and the press conference went rapidly downhill from that point onwards. He waited with trepidation for the telecast newspaper coverage of the announcement. He turned rapidly to the centre pages and there in practically each and every one was the headlines he had been dreading.

‘Uncontrolled Computer Created … Antediluvian Lunatic Science Fiction Writer devised Control Program’.

He turned away in disgust.

“Well what did you expect,” said Thor Simpson. “You walked straight into it with that crazy comment about Asimov!”

“But, it’s the truth. That is where the basics were taken from to incorporate into the Posian Rule Generator, and if we hadn’t done that …”

“So what,” interrupted Thor. “You know that, I know that, and so do many of the other developers but to spout that nonsense in front of a hard nosed critic like Ferdinand was suicidal.”

David wondered where could they go from here. All of the budgets were spent, no he corrected himself-overspent, and the company would not be prepared to fund any more research and development. Probably his best bet was to get out and find another company who were working in a similar field of research and development.

It was a very long and miserable journey home that evening. His wife Sue knew the moment he walked through the door that the presentation had not gone well. She waited quietly for the explosion of pent-up frustration that she knew would come.

“How small-minded and short-sighted can an organisation be? We are standing at the edge of a new technology which will become a society shaking …”

He went on for a few minutes during which Sue was able to do little more than nod. It was a diatribe she had heard many times before.

She eventually asked, “So what are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t think it will be down to me in the long run,” he replied. “There’s a meeting first thing tomorrow in Wilson’s office and I think the project will be closed and we’ll either be redundant or reassigned to other activities”.

“What’s likely for us?”

She thought of the monthly bills. They weren’t badly off but of course they needed the monthly pay check.

“Oh, I don’t think I’ll have any problems,” he said with what he hoped sounded like confidence. “I’ve been there sufficient time that I won’t be classed as a ‘newbie’ but also there’s people like Adams who they’ll let go first.”

He knew though that if a few people had to go he would be high on the list.

He had never got on with Wilson, the woman just had no idea of how to run a project of this magnitude, and did not understand any of the concepts that they were working towards. She was out of her depth.

The conversation went on long into the night and even after going to bed sleep did not come easily.

The next day started with a sharp frost but by the time he was driving down the freeway it was turning into a typical Washington State Spring day. The sun was low on the horizon but very bright as he made his way to the office. As he pulled into his parking space he saw most of the team were already in. Georgina Jones was just getting out of her car and she waited for him.

“Where’s the black armband?” she asked with an attempt at levity. She knew that she was likely to be first to go as she was the youngest and last to join the team.

“I know,” was his laconic reply. Any attempt of optimism had evaporated on the drive in. He had decided that the project was to be curtailed and he was now totally prepared for the meeting. He decide to go quietly. Ranting and raving would only give Wilson satisfaction and he refused to give her that pleasure.

“What do you think you’ll be reassigned to Georgie?” he asked trying to make conversation.

She gave him a side-long glance. “Come off it. You know as well as I do that I’ll be out of here by the end of the day!”

His attempt at countering this was rapidly cut short. “I know I’ll be the first to go and I cannot say I am particularly upset about it.”

“Oh!” was the only reply he could give and the rest of the short walk to the project office was conducted in silence.

The normal buzz of noise was missing when they arrived. Even Thor, the practical joker of the group, was sitting quietly. The only conversation between Lee Potts and Richard Falder was muted and nobody had bothered turning on their terminals and Personal Computers. Georgie turned quickly to her desk and started to tidy papers and file things away.

David decided she meant what she was saying and was planning her imminent departure.

As 9 o’clock neared the key project team members went through to the meeting room and ranged themselves around the table. David thought ironically that they always seemed to choose the same seats despite whatever order they entered the room in. He always chose the front corner seat, back to the window. There he felt he could survey the others to judge reactions. In addition it gave him ready access to the whiteboard. It was a well-known joke that he couldn’t talk unless he was drawing at the same time.

Georgie sat opposite him. As the vision sub-system programmer she should have little problem finding new employment, it was a popular development area in many companies and although relatively short, her experience within Company would hold her in good stead. Lee and Richard sat next to each other at the far end of the table. Their work on the movement system meant that they spent most of their time together, which was quite convenient as they were living with each other. David could not imagine working with Sue all of the time. He enjoyed the change of conversation and focus when he was at home.

That left Dr. Alfred Lanning at the head of the table as the project mastermind and Liz Avalon next to him.

The whole concept had developed from an idea that Dr. Lanning and David had following on an accident in the laboratory, an accident partially caused by David himself. Liz worked on the development of the programmes to be encorporated in the brain. David focussed on the conversion of the programmes via the generator into pathways within the positronic brain.

His reverie was disturbed as Coleen Wilson entered the room.

“Well, let’s not stand on ceremony,” she barked. David could never think of her as just speaking.

“Yesterday’s presentation was a disaster from start to finish, or should I say from fact to science-fiction.”

This was accompanied with a pointed look at David. With a great deal of effort he restrained himself from replying.

“It will therefore come as no surprise to you that the company is stopping the project with immediate effect.”

Even though they were all expecting it, it still came as a shock and the effect of the words felt like a physical slap in the face.

Lanning rose to leave the room.

“Where are you going?” asked Wilson, almost seeming to be enjoying the role of hatchet-man.

“To cleardown my files to the archive. There seems to be little point in keeping pointless research,” he replied with heavy irony.

“Oh, aren’t you going to carry on?”

“Where?” he retorted. “In my garage on a shoe-string until I reveal a fully working product to an astonished world!” This time the words positively dripped venom.

“I expected a little bit of fight from you.” Wilson almost seemed disappointed by their response. Her next words therefore did not have the effect she was seeking.

“We are selling the whole project lock stock and barrel to another company. They have some crackpot idea that the technology is worth something.”

David started at this, “Including the Intellectual Property Rights?” He thought of his stake in the project along with Dr. Lanning’s original ideas.

“Yes, everything. The programs, their sources, all prototypes, all papers and files …” she paused dramatically for effect, “… and all of you”.

“Yes, you can sell slaves,” quipped Georgie. Everyone was beginning to react now. Some with enthusiasm, others with trepidation.

“Do we have to join the new company?” asked Lee. She and Richard had many years service in the company, David thought they would stay if they could.

“No problem,” replied Wilson. “I’m sure we can find a place for some of you.”

Yes, thought David, some, but not him. Oh well here goes.

“You can count me in for the new company. I believe in what we have been developing and think it has huge potential.” He said the words to try and puncture Wilson’s arrogance then suddenly realized he believed what he was saying. He looked around the table and got nods of encouragement from most and a thumbs-up signal from Dr. Lanning.

Others rapidly committed themselves leaving only Lee and Richard who wanted to think about it for longer. There did not appear to be any bad feeling about this. If anything it helped re-enforce the team spirit.

The meeting looked as if it was drawing to a close when Alfred Lanning suddenly asked, “By the way-who are our new lords and masters”.

This brought David to earth with a bump. What would Sue say about the change! He was sure she would agree with his choice but he wished he had the opportunity to ask her.

Wilson glanced at the wall clock. “You will have the chance to meet them in about ten minutes. Wait here and they will join you. I’ll bid you all farewell. You do not have to clear your desks and files as they will be transferred complete to your new site.”

She rose and made as if to leave the room. Turning back briefly she asked Richard and Lee to remain for the briefing then to join her in the project office.

There was a rapid rise to the noise levels as Wilson left. The last minute reprieve had taken them all by surprise and discussion rapidly focused on who would be prepared to take on the project.

“What I don’t understand,” exclaimed Lanning, “is who would be allowed to take over all aspects of the project.”

“After all,” he said with a smile on his face, “There might be some good research work here!”

“Well you can count out Synapsic Logic. They do not have the foresight to invest in this type of technology,” said Liz. As an ex-employee of that company she had a low regard of their vision of the future.

David half listened to the discussions going on around him. Who could possibly be taking over the project and what impact would this have on the direction of the development.

The answer came through the door a couple of minutes later and David nearly fell off his seat. There stood two men in typical business suits but one of them was the person who caused the accident that could have lost him his job, but which actually started the project.

He smiled at David as they moved to the front of the room.

“Good Morning to you all,” said the tall grey haired man who lead the way as he greeted them all with a large smile.

“My name is Lawrence Robertson and my colleague is Andrew Harlan …”

Harlan smiled but somehow it did not seem to come naturally to him, however he seemed friendly enough.

“… and we have just finished signing the transfer papers so we’d like to welcome you all as the first employees to US Robot and Mechanical Men Corporation. I trust this is the start of a long a fruitful relationship.”

“The location of the new company is to be Bicentential Park, which I believe will be acceptable to you all and your terms and conditions will be identical to your current ones.”

He paused to look around the room. “If nobody has any problems I suggest that you supervise the packing of your desks, test and development equipment and anything else you feel you need and we plan to continue this meeting in say, two days time in the new offices.”

The atmosphere in the office after the meeting was very different to that before. The place was absolutely buzzing as they supervised the safe storage of equipment ready for transport.

“Do you know one of them?” Georgie asked David as she was dismantling a laser probe in preparation for putting it into a crate.

“Harlan seemed to recognize you and you certainly jumped when he came in the room.”

“He is part of the reason I’m here and the project exists. He caused the accident that made the first spongy mass that is the positronic brain.”

“How did that happen?”

“Do you mean David hasn’t told you his wonderful and marvelous discovery,” said Thor.

He rapidly ducked as a small scale model of a part of the movement system flew through the air at him.

“He normally tells everyone … whether they want to hear or not.”

“Well since you asked …” began David, settling back into his seat with a cup of coffee.

“It all began while I was doing my Ph.D. work in Dr. Lanning’s laboratory. I was doing work on the structure of platinum and its electrical properties and was working on some platinum wastes. Dr. Lanning was bringing around some guests, one of whom was Harlan, and as usual I wasn’t paying attention. I was backing across the room with a beaker of an arsenic compound in solution, bumped into Harlan, and spilled some into the platinum waste. The whole lot frothed up and made a peculiar spongy mass.”

“So your contribution to this was an accident!” said Georgie with a smile on her face.

“No,” replied David with a bigger smile. “My contribution was the intellect and tenacity to follow through and investigate what I’d got!”

“I started to investigate its electrical properties and found that electrical currents flowed, and then just apparently disappeared. That was frustrating to me and I continued to investigate it out of curiosity more than anything else. A few weeks later, I attended a seminar on brain physiology and a question was asked by someone about the short life of electronic flow through the brain ganglia. At that point I connected the two, changed my thesis title, and the rest as they say is history.”

“Why were you at a brain physiology seminar? That’s not your area of interest is it?”

“No, but my wife Sue worked in medicine before the children came along. She was invited, with partner, to the seminar and as it was free along with a weekend away in a nice part of the state we went. Nothing further came from it. In a way it was strange that Sue was invited as she had not been working for over two years when she got the invite. Mind you she is still in the professional body so presumably that’s how they knew of her, and they did not seem to mind that she was not practicing.”

“Of such tiny matters are momentous actions the result,” said Alfred Lanning in passing, parodying a well know play of the time. “Now get off your butt and get some packing done!”

Work continued apace and the move took place with very few problems. The disruption and time-delays caused by the moving of location was more than compensated for by the new enthusiasm shown by everyone. The development of the positronic brain and the associated systems that would be required to create a usable robot continued in the new offices.

Robertson played little part in the day to day running of the new organisation. He would occasionally be seen in the laboratories having the latest development showed to him by Dr. Lanning. Harlan however, played a more significant role in the new company. He started to work alongside the Richard and Lee on the develpment of the motor functions in preparation for them leaving the team and returning to Consolidated.

New staff also started working within the project. The most significant for David was the joining of Harlan’s wife Noÿs. She started working on the development of the control programmes for the positronic brain with Liz and immediately proposed some inovative thoughts to the design. The changes enabled them to reduce the levels of uncertainty that existed in the preparation of each positronic brain. This also reduced the number of brains produced that had to be scrapped.

Richard and Lee stayed with them for two months whilst new people were recruited and their work handed over. They held a farewell party for them and the few others who had decided to remain in the old company.

The highlight of the party was the “hosting” of the party by the first prototype robot of the new company.

This time it was with pride that David unveiled the robot, then nearly fell off the podium laughing. “Who did that?” he asked, instantly turning to Thor.

The positronic brain was sporting a bolt through the base and held an axe in an attached ‘hand’. A visitor badge was pinned to its ‘lapel’ with the name ‘Frankenstein’ neatly printed on it!

“Couldn’t resist it, and I’m sure Isaac Asimov would have appreciated it!” replied Thor.

They put the positronic brain through its paces and its ‘party pieces’. It recited the American Constitution in a voice that was slightly metallic but clearly understandable. Dr. Lanning stood in front of the vision camera and asked the brain who he was.

“You are Dr. Alfred Lanning Ph.D., and the mastermind of this project,” replied the voice synthesis unit.

It seemed strange to hear the voice coming from speakers a couple of metres away from the ‘ears’.

Thor then took his place in front of the unit.

“Who am I?” he asked, in a slightly stilted voice.

“You are Thor Simpson, and you make the coffee,” came the surprising reply.

“Revenge is sweet!” cried David as he raced out of the door with Thor in hot pursuit.

Much merry making took place that evening and it almost seemed that the leavers were beginning to have second thoughts about their decisions.

“How have you managed to make so much progress in such a relatively short period of time?” asked Sue as the party began to wind down.

David was still a little surprised at the change of culture of the organisation. The attendance of partners at this sort of event would have been unheard of in the old company.

“Would you believe you husband is a genius? No, I didn’t think you would.”

“Some of it comes from the change in style of the company and improved investment, but a large amount must be down to Andrew Harlan and his wife Noÿs. He has brought some new angles to some of our original research and she has totally new ideas related to artificial intelligence.”

“Why have you not heard of him, or her for that matter, in that case. I thought you knew of most of the key players in this industry.”

“That’s a good question,” David half said/half pondered his reply.

“Thinking about it I don’t know anything about him or her and I’m not sure any of the others do …” he trailed off in thought.

The next day in the office started slowly. Some were nursing sore heads and there was some dismantling of the demonstration pieces they had put together for the night.

David found himself working next to Dr. Lanning.

“What do you know about Harlan?” he asked in as casual way as he possibly could.

“In what way? He’s a fair engineer with a good grounding in logic electronics. Anyway why?”

“Just curious. Where did he go to University and thinking about it where is he from? I don’t recognize his accent.”

“Oh, he told me he’s from New England. I forget exactly where but I think his parents were East European so perhaps that explains the peculiar accent. University wise I don’t know. Why are you asking all of the questions? Have you heard something?”

“No, as I say I’m just curious. Where do you want these pieces to be stored?” He quickly changed the subject. He did not want to appear to be looking for problems.

David spoke to the others over the next few days and found nothing of any real value regarding Harlan and Noÿs. As was usual with him this made him more curious and determined to get to the bottom of it. About three weeks after the party he presented the “evidence” he had collected to Sue after the children were in bed and they were sitting quietly after their evening meal.

“Well I’ve investigated all the possible sources of information and here are all the facts I’ve been able to determine.”

Sue smiled to herself. David had switched to ‘Lecture Mode’. She could almost see him marking the points off on a whiteboard.

“He is supposed to come from New England having emigrated there from the old Soviet block with his parents at a very young age. He then appears to have got his qualifications via a number of relatively low key Universities in the Mid-West. He made his money out of publishing and some very astute stock market deals.”

He paused and took a sip of coffee.

“She apparently was brought up in New Zealand and they met through the stock market of all places. She was working for a computer company who were developing artificial intelligence systems for analysing stock movements.”

He reached over and picked up a folder of newspaper items.

“There is very little about them in any of the papers, medias and reference libraries which is quite an achievement in today’s multi-media rich society. The only things I can find relate to events over 10 years ago. Noÿs Harlan has written a few papers on artifical intelligence that have been published.”

“Have you checked the shipping records to see his immigration details,” asked Sue.

She had researched the family tree a few years earlier and had managed to track her family back to when then had entered the country in the early 1900’s from Ireland using such details.

“Yes, Sherlock,” he replied with a smile. “But unfortunately all the records related to immigration from Russia of that period were destroyed in a fire and of course it was before copies were put onto the GlobalNet,” replied David.

“How convenient,” said Sue with some irony in her voice. “This is getting to be more and more of a mystery as time goes on. What about …”

She was interrupted by the door chime announcing a visitor.

David glanced at the view screen and exclaimed, “The plot thickens! It’s Noÿs Harlan. I wonder what she wants.”

“Well we aren’t going to find out by leaving her on the door step so let’s let her in and find out,” said Sue rising to meet her at the door. “You’d better hide your research or it will look very strange!”

David quickly tidied up the papers and discs and put them in the bureau while Sue greeted her and made her welcome.

Noÿs entered as David was sitting back down. Sue organized drinks for them all while David exchanged pleasantries regarding the weather.

“Well I cannot believe you’ve only come to talk about the weather,” said Sue coming straight to the point. “What can we do for you?”

David grimaced at Sue and tried to interrupt her. Noÿs smiled and in a relieved fashion said, “Oh good. I was wondering how we’d get down to business.”

She sat back and addressed them both.

“Why are you investigating Andrew and me?”

David and Sue sat there for a moment unable to answer. It was not the question that they were expecting and certainly not in such an open way.

David started to stammer out a reply. “Well … you see … it’s like this …”

Sue took control. “You can probably blame me. I asked David about both you and Andrew and that set him thinking about your backgrounds and we started finding information about you.”

She then switched to the defensive, “All of the information we’ve found was in the public domain so saying we’ve been ‘investigating you’ is a bit heavy.”

Noÿs replied, “Oh I’ve no worries about that. I’m not aware of any skeletons in cupboards that we need to be embarrassed about.”

She then sat back and smiled, “By the way, why didn’t you ask us about our background. We’d have been pleased to tell you.”

Sue looked at David and laughed, “Investigated all the possible sources of information did you!”

The atmosphere lightened immediately. Noÿs started to tell them about her life in New Zealand and how she had drifted into computers almost by accident. She went on to say about her meeting with Andrew and their previous work. By the end of the evening they both felt as if they’d heard the complete life stories of Andrew and Noÿs Harlan.

As she left Noÿs said they must get together for another evening, this time with Andrew, and this time David and Sue would have to tell them all about their past.

“It’s a deal,” laughed David. “We’ll get the baby sitter sorted out.”

Harlan and Noÿs sat quietly late that evening reviewing the way things had worked out.

“That was very close,” said Harlan. “We must be very careful in future not to allow our pasts to appear to be so mysterious that people get suspicious.”

“I thought that the accident at the laboratory was a very effective way of creating the first platinum sponge for the positronic brain. You could say it nudged the project into life! Mind you, I was beginning to despair that Williams would discard it before he discovered its properties.”

“I didn’t think we had made our pasts mysterious,” retorted Noÿs. “What else could we have done in order to appear normal whilst allowing such rapid development of the new company. I think we were just unlucky with a few comments that set somebody putting two and two together and making five!”

“Just be thankful that they only made five!” laughed Andrew. “With further investigation our pasts may not have stood up to close scrutiny.”

“Anyway I do not think that anyone will connect the seminar that David and his wife were invited to with us. The creation, funding and subsequent disappearance of the consultancy should not be a great surprise to anyone if there were to be an investigation of the group company.”

“We knew that some of the ‘fuzzy spots’ in the picture of the future that you viewed in the ‘Hidden Centuries’ would keep coming back to haunt us. Presumably the episodes that we have experienced recently have been examples of those.”

Noÿs said thoughtfully, “I think it will soon be time for us to disappear into the background. We must not take on high profile in US Robot. History will hopefully remember Robertson, Lanning and whoever follow us, but not us.

“However we are nearly there. With US Robot and Mechanical Men Corporation we will have the tool to enable Humanity to develop the Hyperatomic Drive and then the settlement of the Galaxy can begin.”

The last Immortal and the Woman from the future sat back contented and raised their glasses in their personal toast.

To the continuing End of Eternity

A Boy’s Best Friend

1995 A.D.

MR. ANDERSON SAID, “Where’s Jimmy, dear?”

“Out on the crater,” said Mrs. Anderson. “Hell be all right Robutt is with him. – Did he arrive?”

“Yes. He’s at the rocket station, going through the tests. Actually, I can hardly wait to see him myself. I haven’t really seen one since I left Earth 15 years ago. You can’t count films.”

“Jimmy has never seen one,” said Mrs. Anderson.

“Because he’s Moonborn and can’t visit Earth. That’s why I’m bringing one here. I think it’s the first one ever on the Moon.”

“It cost enough,” said Mrs. Anderson, with a small sigh. “Maintaining Robutt isn’t cheap, either,” said Mr. Anderson.

Jimmy was out on the crater, as his mother had said. By Earth standards, he was spindly, but rather tall for a 10-year-old. His arms and legs were long and agile. He looked thicker and stubbier with his spacesuit on, but he could handle the lunar gravity as no Earth-born human being could. His father couldn’t begin to keep up with him when Jimmy stretched his legs and went into the kangaroo hop.

The outer side of the crater sloped southward and the Earth, which was low in the southern sky (where it always was, as seen from Lunar City) was nearly full, so that the entire crater-slope was brightly lit

The slope was a gentle one and even the weight of the spacesuit couldn’t keep Jimmy from racing up it in a floating hop that made the gravity seem nonexistent.

“Come on, Robutt,” he shouted.

Robutt, who could hear him by radio, squeaked and bounded after.

Jimmy, expert though he was, couldn’t outrace Robutt, who didn’t need a spacesuit, and had four legs and tendons of steel. Robutt sailed over Jimmy’s head, somersaulting and landing almost under his feet.

“Don’t show off, Robutt,” said Jimmy, “and stay in sight.”

Robutt squeaked again, the special squeak that meant “Yes.”

“I don’t trust you, you faker,” shouted Jimmy, and up he went in one last bound that carried him over the curved upper edge of the crater wall and down onto the inner slope.

The Earth sank below the top of the crater wall and at once it was pitch-dark around him. A warm, friendly darkness that wiped out the difference between ground and sky except for the glitter of stars.

Actually, Jimmy wasn’t supposed to exercise along the dark side of the crater wall. The grown ups said it was dangerous, but that was because they were never there. The ground was smooth and crunchy and Jimmy knew the exact location of every one of the few rocks.

Besides, how could it be dangerous racing through the dark when Robutt was right there with him, bouncing around and squeaking and glowing? Even without the glow, Robutt could tell where he was, and where Jimmy was, by radar. Jimmy couldn’t go wrong while Robutt was around, tripping him when he was too near a rock, or jumping on him to show how much he loved him, or circling around and squeaking low and scared when Jimmy hid behind a rock, when all the time Robutt knew well enough where he was. Once Jimmy had lain still and pretended he was hurt and Robutt had sounded the radio alarm and people from Lunar City got there in a hurry. Jimmy’s father had let him hear about that little trick, and Jimmy never tried it again.

Just as he was remembering that, he heard his father’s voice on his private wavelength. “Jimmy, come back. I have something to tell you.”

Jimmy was out of his spacesuit now and washed up. You always had to wash up after coming in from outside. Even Robutt had to be sprayed, but he loved it. He stood there on all fours, his little foot-long body quivering and glowing just a tiny bit, and his small head, with no mouth, with two large glassed-in eyes, and with a bump where the brain was. He squeaked until Mr. Anderson said, “Quiet, Robutt.”

Mr. Anderson was smiling. “We have something for you, Jimmy. It’s at the rocket station now, but we’ll have it tomorrow after all the tests are over. I thought I’d tell you now.”

“From Earth, Dad?” “A dog from Earth, son. A real dog. A Scotch terrier puppy. The first dog on the Moon. You won’t need Robutt any more. We can’t keep them both, you know, and some other boy or girl will have Robutt.” He seemed to be waiting for Jimmy to say something, then he said, “You know what a dog is, Jimmy. It’s the real thing. Robutt’s only a mechanical imitation, a robot-mutt. That’s how he got his name.”

Jimmy frowned. “Robutt isn’t an imitation, Dad. He’s my dog.” “Not a real one, Jimmy. Robutt’s just steel and wiring and a simple positronic brain. It’s not alive.”

“He does everything I want him to do, Dad. He understands me. Sure, he’s alive.”

“No, son. Robutt is just a machine. It’s just programmed to act the way it does. A dog is alive. You won’t want Robutt after you have the dog.”

“The dog will need a spacesuit, won’t he?” “Yes, of course. But it will be worth the money and he’ll get used to it. And he won’t need one in the City. You’ll see the difference once he gets here.”

Jimmy looked at Robutt, who was squeaking again, a very low, slow squeak, that seemed frightened. Jimmy held out his arms and Robutt was in them in one bound. Jimmy said, “What will the difference be between Robutt and the dog?”

“It’s hard to explain,” said Mr. Anderson, “but it will be easy to see. The dog will really love you. Robutt is just adjusted to act as though it loves you.”

“But, Dad, we don’t know what’s inside the dog, or what his feelings are. Maybe it’s just acting, too.”

Mr. Anderson frowned. “Jimmy, you’ll know the difference when you experience the love of a living thing.”

Jimmy held Robutt tightly. He was frowning, too, and the desperate look on his face meant that he wouldn’t change his mind. He said, “But what’s the difference how they act? How about how I feel? I love Robutt and that’s what counts.”

And the little robot-mutt, which had never been held so tightly in all its existence, squeaked high and rapid squeaks – happy squeaks.

Robbie

1998 A.D.

“NINETY-EIGHT-NINETY-nine-one hundred.” Gloria withdrew her chubby little forearm from before her eyes and stood for a moment, wrinkling her nose and blinking in the sunlight. Then, trying to watch in all directions at once, she withdrew a few cautious steps from the tree against which she had been leaning.

She craned her neck to investigate the possibilities of a clump of bushes to the right and then withdrew farther to obtain a better angle for viewing its dark recesses. The quiet was profound except for the incessant buzzing of insects and the occasional chirrup of some hardy bird, braving the midday sun.

Gloria pouted, “I bet he went inside the house, and I’ve told him a million times that that’s not fair.”

With tiny lips pressed together tightly and a severe frown crinkling her forehead, she moved determinedly toward the two-story building up past the driveway.

Too late she heard the rustling sound behind her, followed by the distinctive and rhythmic clump-clump of Robbie’s metal feet. She whirled about to see her triumphing companion emerge from hiding and make for the home-tree at full speed.

Gloria shrieked in dismay. “Wait, Robbie! That wasn’t fair, Robbie! You promised you wouldn’t run until I found you.” Her little feet could make no headway at all against Robbie’s giant strides. Then, within ten feet of the goal, Robbie’s pace slowed suddenly to the merest of crawls, and Gloria, with one final burst of wild speed, dashed pantingly past him to touch the welcome bark of home-tree first.

Gleefully, she turned on the faithful Robbie, and with the basest of ingratitude, rewarded him for his sacrifice by taunting him cruelly for a lack of running ability.

“Robbie can’t run,” she shouted at the top of her eight-year-old voice. “I can beat him any day. I can beat him any day.” She chanted the words in a shrill rhythm.

Robbie didn’t answer, of course – not in words. He pantomimed running instead, inching away until Gloria found herself running after him as he dodged her narrowly, forcing her to veer in helpless circles, little arms outstretched and fanning at the air.

“Robbie,” she squealed, “stand still!” – And the laughter was forced out of her in breathless jerks.

Until he turned suddenly and caught her up, whirling her round, so that for her the world fell away for a moment with a blue emptiness beneath, and green trees stretching hungrily downward toward the void. Then she was down in the grass again, leaning against Robbie’s leg and still holding a hard, metal finger.

After a while, her breath returned. She pushed uselessly at her disheveled hair in vague imitation of one of her mother’s gestures and twisted to see if her dress were torn.

She slapped her hand against Robbie’s torso, “Bad boy! I’ll spank you!”

And Robbie cowered, holding his hands over his face so that she had to add, “No, I won’t, Robbie. I won’t spank you. But anyway, it’s my turn to hide now because you’ve got longer legs and you promised not to run till I found you.”

Robbie nodded his head – a small parallelepiped with rounded edges and corners attached to a similar but much larger parallelepiped that served as torso by means of a short, flexible stalk – and obediently faced the tree. A thin, metal film descended over his glowing eyes and from within his body came a steady, resonant ticking.

“Don’t peek now – and don’t skip any numbers,” warned Gloria, and scurried for cover.

With unvarying regularity, seconds were ticked off, and at the hundredth, up went the eyelids, and the glowing red of Robbie’s eyes swept the prospect. They rested for a moment on a bit of colorful gingham that protruded from behind a boulder. He advanced a few steps and convinced himself that it was Gloria who squatted behind it.

Slowly, remaining always between Gloria and home-tree, he advanced on the hiding place, and when Gloria was plainly in sight and could no longer even theorize to herself that she was not seen, he extended one arm toward her, slapping the other against his leg so that it rang again. Gloria emerged sulkily.

“You peeked!” she exclaimed, with gross unfairness. “Besides I’m tired of playing hide-and-seek. I want a ride.”

But Robbie was hurt at the unjust accusation, so he seated himself carefully and shook his head ponderously from side to side.

Gloria changed her tone to one of gentle coaxing immediately, “Come on, Robbie. I didn’t mean it about the peeking. Give me a ride.”

Robbie was not to be won over so easily, though. He gazed stubbornly at the sky, and shook his head even more emphatically.

“Please, Robbie, please give me a ride.” She encircled his neck with rosy arms and hugged tightly. Then, changing moods in a moment, she moved away. “If you don’t, I’m going to cry,” and her face twisted appallingly in preparation.

Hard-hearted Robbie paid scant attention to this dreadful possibility, and shook his head a third time. Gloria found it necessary to play her trump card.

“If you don’t,” she exclaimed warmly, “I won’t tell you any more stories, that’s all. Not one-”

Robbie gave in immediately and unconditionally before this ultimatum, nodding his head vigorously until the metal of his neck hummed. Carefully, he raised the little girl and placed her on his broad, flat shoulders.

Gloria’s threatened tears vanished immediately and she crowed with delight. Robbie’s metal skin, kept at a constant temperature of seventy by the high resistance coils within, felt nice and comfortable, while the beautifully loud sound her heels made as they bumped rhythmically against his chest was enchanting.

“You’re an air-coaster, Robbie, you’re a big, silver aircoaster. Hold out your arms straight. – You got to, Robbie, if you’re going to be an aircoaster.”

The logic was irrefutable. Robbie’s arms were wings catching the air currents and he was a silver ‘coaster.

Gloria twisted the robot’s head and leaned to the right. He banked sharply. Gloria equipped the ‘coaster with a motor that went “Br-r-r” and then with weapons that went “Powie” and “Sh-sh-shshsh.” Pirates were giving chase and the ship’s blasters were coming into play. The pirates dropped in a steady rain.

“Got another one. Two more,” she cried.

Then “Faster, men,” Gloria said pompously, “we’re running out of ammunition.” She aimed over her shoulder with undaunted courage and Robbie was a blunt-nosed spaceship zooming through the void at maximum acceleration.

Clear across the field he sped, to the patch of tall grass on the other side, where he stopped with a suddenness that evoked a shriek from his flushed rider, and then tumbled her onto the soft, green carpet.

Gloria gasped and panted, and gave voice to intermittent whispered exclamations of “That was nice!”

Robbie waited until she had caught her breath and then pulled gently at a lock of hair.

“You want something?” said Gloria, eyes wide in an apparently artless complexity that fooled her huge “nursemaid” not at all. He pulled the curl harder.

“Oh, I know. You want a story.”

Robbie nodded rapidly.

“Which one?”

Robbie made a semi-circle in the air with one finger.

The little girl protested, “Again? I’ve told you Cinderella a million times. Aren’t you tired of it?-It’s for babies.”

Another semi-circle.

“Oh, well,” Gloria composed herself, ran over the details of the tale in her mind (together with her own elaborations, of which she had several) and began:

“Are you ready? Well – once upon a time there was a beautiful little girl whose name was Ella. And she had a terribly cruel step-mother and two very ugly and very cruel step-sisters and-”

Gloria was reaching the very climax of the tale – midnight was striking and everything was changing back to the shabby originals lickety-split, while Robbie listened tensely with burning eyes – when the interruption came.

“Gloria!”

It was the high-pitched sound of a woman who has been calling not once, but several times; and had the nervous tone of one in whom anxiety was beginning to overcome impatience.

“Mamma’s calling me,” said Gloria, not quite happily. “You’d better carry me back to the house, Robbie.”

Robbie obeyed with alacrity for somehow there was that in him which judged it best to obey Mrs. Weston, without as much as a scrap of hesitation. Gloria’s father was rarely home in the daytime except on Sunday – today, for instance – and when he was, he proved a genial and understanding person. Gloria’s mother, however, was a source of uneasiness to Robbie and there was always the impulse to sneak away from her sight.

Mrs. Weston caught sight of them the minute they rose above the masking tufts of long grass and retired inside the house to wait.

“I’ve shouted myself hoarse, Gloria,” she said, severely. “Where were you?”

“I was with Robbie,” quavered Gloria. “I was telling him Cinderella, and I forgot it was dinner-time.”

“Well, it’s a pity Robbie forgot, too.” Then, as if that reminded her of the robot’s presence, she whirled upon him. “You may go, Robbie. She doesn’t need you now.” Then, brutally, “And don’t come back till I call you.”

Robbie turned to go, but hesitated as Gloria cried out in his defense, “Wait, Mamma, you got to let him stay. I didn’t finish Cinderella for him. I said I would tell him Cinderella and I’m not finished.”

“Gloria!”

“Honest and truly, Mamma, he’ll stay so quiet, you won’t even know he’s here. He can sit on the chair in the corner, and he won’t say a word, I mean he won’t do anything. Will you, Robbie?”

Robbie, appealed to, nodded his massive head up and down once.

“Gloria, if you don’t stop this at once, you shan’t see Robbie for a whole week.”

The girl’s eyes fell, “All right! But Cinderella is his favorite story and I didn’t finish it. – And he likes it so much.”

The robot left with a disconsolate step and Gloria choked back a sob.

George Weston was comfortable. It was a habit of his to be comfortable on Sunday afternoons. A good, hearty dinner below the hatches; a nice, soft, dilapidated couch on which to sprawl; a copy of the Times; slippered feet and shirtless chest; how could anyone help but be comfortable?

He wasn’t pleased, therefore, when his wife walked in. After ten years of married life, be still was so unutterably foolish as to love her, and there was no question that he was always glad to see her – still Sunday afternoons just after dinner were sacred to him and his idea of solid comfort was to be left in utter solitude for two or three hours. Consequently, he fixed his eye firmly upon the latest reports of the Lefebre-Yoshida expedition to Mars (this one was to take off from Lunar Base and might actually succeed) and pretended she wasn’t there.

Mrs. Weston waited patiently for two minutes, then impatiently for two more, and finally broke the silence.

“George!”

“Hmpph?”

“George, I say! Will you put down that paper and look at me?”

The paper rustled to the floor and Weston turned a weary face toward his wife, “What is it, dear?”

“You know what it is, George. It’s Gloria and that terrible machine.”

“What terrible machine?”

“Now don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. It’s that robot Gloria calls Robbie. He doesn’t leave her for a moment.”

“Well, why should he? He’s not supposed to. And he certainly isn’t a terrible machine. He’s the best darn robot money can buy and I’m damned sure he set me back half a year’s income. He’s worth it, though – darn sight cleverer than half my office staff.”

He made a move to pick up the paper again, but his wife was quicker and snatched it away.

“You listen to me, George. I won’t have my daughter entrusted to a machine – and I don’t care how clever it is. It has no soul, and no one knows what it may be thinking. A child just isn’t made to be guarded by a thing of metal.”

Weston frowned, “When did you decide this? He’s been with Gloria two years now and I haven’t seen you worry till now.”

“It was different at first. It was a novelty; it took a load off me, and – and it was a fashionable thing to do. But now I don’t know. The neighbors-”

“Well, what have the neighbors to do with it? Now, look. A robot is infinitely more to be trusted than a human nursemaid. Robbie was constructed for only one purpose really – to be the companion of a little child. His entire ‘mentality’ has been created for the purpose. He just can’t help being faithful and loving and kind. He’s a machine-made so. That’s more than you can say for humans.”

“But something might go wrong. Some-some-” Mrs. Weston was a bit hazy about the insides of a robot, “some little jigger will come loose and the awful thing will go berserk and-and-” She couldn’t bring herself to complete the quite obvious thought.

“Nonsense,” Weston denied, with an involuntary nervous shiver. “That’s completely ridiculous. We had a long discussion at the time we bought Robbie about the First Law of Robotics. You know that it is impossible for a robot to harm a human being; that long before enough can go wrong to alter that First Law, a robot would be completely inoperable. It’s a mathematical impossibility. Besides I have an engineer from U. S. Robots here twice a year to give the poor gadget a complete overhaul. Why, there’s no more chance of any thing at all going wrong with Robbie than there is of you or I suddenly going loony – considerably less, in fact. Besides, how are you going to take him away from Gloria?”

He made another futile stab at the paper and his wife tossed it angrily into the next room.

“That’s just it, George! She won’t play with anyone else. There are dozens of little boys and girls that she should make friends with, but she won’t. She won’t go near them unless I make her. That’s no way for a little girl to grow up. You want her to be normal, don’t you? You want her to be able to take her part in society.”

“You’re jumping at shadows, Grace. Pretend Robbie’s a dog. I’ve seen hundreds of children who would rather have their dog than their father.”

“A dog is different, George. We must get rid of that horrible thing. You can sell it back to the company. I’ve asked, and you can.”

“You’ve asked? Now look here, Grace, let’s not go off the deep end. We’re keeping the robot until Gloria is older and I don’t want the subject brought up again.” And with that he walked out of the room in a huff.

Mrs. Weston met her husband at the door two evenings later. “You’ll have to listen to this, George. There’s bad feeling in the village.”

“About what?” asked Weston? He stepped into the washroom and drowned out any possible answer by the splash of water.

Mrs. Weston waited. She said, “About Robbie.”

Weston stepped out, towel in hand, face red and angry, “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, it’s been building up and building up. I’ve tried to close my eyes to it, but I’m not going to any more. Most of the villagers consider Robbie dangerous. Children aren’t allowed to go near our place in the evenings.”

“We trust our child with the thing.”

“Well, people aren’t reasonable about these things.”

“Then to hell with them.”

“Saying that doesn’t solve the problem. I’ve got to do my shopping down there. I’ve got to meet them every day. And it’s even worse in the city these days when it comes to robots. New York has just passed an ordinance keeping all robots off the streets between sunset and sunrise.”

“All right, but they can’t stop us from keeping a robot in our home. Grace, this is one of your campaigns. I recognize it. But it’s no use. The answer is still, no! We’re keeping Robbie!”

And yet he loved his wife – and what was worse, his wife knew it. George Weston, after all, was only a man – poor thing – and his wife made full use of every device which a clumsier and more scrupulous sex has learned, with reason and futility, to fear.

Ten times in the ensuing week, he cried, “Robbie stays, and that’s final!” and each time it was weaker and accompanied by a louder and more agonized groan.

Came the day at last, when Weston approached his daughter guiltily and suggested a “beautiful” visivox show in the village.

Gloria clapped her hands happily, “Can Robbie go?”

“No, dear,” he said, and winced at the sound of his voice, “they won’t allow robots at the visivox – but you can tell him all about it when you get home.” He stumbled all over the last few words and looked away.

Gloria came back from town bubbling over with enthusiasm, for the visivox had been a gorgeous spectacle indeed.

She waited for her father to maneuver the jet-car into the sunken garage, “Wait till I tell Robbie, Daddy. He would have liked it like anything. Especially when Francis Fran was backing away so-o-o quietly, and backed right into one of the Leopard-Men and had to run.” She laughed again, “Daddy, are there really Leopard-Men on the Moon?”

“Probably not,” said Weston absently. “It’s just funny make-believe.” He couldn’t take much longer with the car. He’d have to face it.

Gloria ran across the lawn. “Robbie. – Robbie!”

Then she stopped suddenly at the sight of a beautiful collie which regarded her out of serious brown eyes as it wagged its tail on the porch.

“Oh, what a nice dog!” Gloria climbed the steps, approached cautiously and patted it. “Is it for me, Daddy?”

Her mother had joined them. “Yes, it is, Gloria. Isn’t it nice – soft and furry? It’s very gentle. It likes little girls.”

“Can he play games?”

“Surely. He can do any number of tricks. Would you like to see some?”

“Right away. I want Robbie to see him, too. Robbie!” She stopped, uncertainly, and frowned, “I’ll bet he’s just staying in his room because he’s mad at me for not taking him to the visivox. You’ll have to explain to him, Daddy. He might not believe me, but he knows if you say it, it’s so.”

Weston’s lip grew tighter. He looked toward his wife but could not catch her eye.

Gloria turned precipitously and ran down the basement steps, shouting as she went, “Robbie – Come and see what Daddy and Mamma brought me. They brought me a dog, Robbie.”

In a minute she had returned, a frightened little girl. “Mamma, Robbie isn’t in his room. Where is he?” There was no answer and George Weston coughed and was suddenly extremely interested in an aimlessly drifting cloud. Gloria’s voice quavered on the verge of tears, “Where’s Robbie, Mamma?”

Mrs. Weston sat down and drew her daughter gently to her, “Don’t feel bad, Gloria. Robbie has gone away, I think.”

“Gone away? Where? Where’s he gone away, Mamma?”

“No one knows, darling. He just walked away. We’ve looked and we’ve looked and we’ve looked for him, but we can’t find him.”

“You mean he’ll never come back again?” Her eyes were round with horror.

“We may find him soon. We’ll keep looking for him. And meanwhile you can play with your nice new doggie. Look at him! His name is Lightning and he can-”

But Gloria’s eyelids had overflown, “I don’t want the nasty dog – I want Robbie. I want you to find me Robbie.” Her feelings became too deep for words, and she spluttered into a shrill wail.

Mrs. Weston glanced at her husband for help, but he merely shuffled his feet morosely and did not withdraw his ardent stare from the heavens, so she bent to the task of consolation, “Why do you cry, Gloria? Robbie was only a machine, just a nasty old machine. He wasn’t alive at all.”

“He was not no machine!” screamed Gloria, fiercely and ungrammatically. “He was a person just like you and me and he was my friend. I want him back. Oh, Mamma, I want him back.”

Her mother groaned in defeat and left Gloria to her sorrow.

“Let her have her cry out,” she told her husband. “Childish griefs are never lasting. In a few days, she’ll forget that awful robot ever existed.”

But time proved Mrs. Weston a bit too optimistic. To be sure, Gloria ceased crying, but she ceased smiling, too, and the passing days found her ever more silent and shadowy. Gradually, her attitude of passive unhappiness wore Mrs. Weston down and all that kept her from yielding was the impossibility of admitting defeat to her husband.

Then, one evening, she flounced into the living room, sat down, folded her arms and looked boiling mad.

Her husband stretched his neck in order to see her over his newspaper, “What now, Grace?”

“It’s that child, George. I’ve had to send back the dog today. Gloria positively couldn’t stand the sight of him, she said. She’s driving me into a nervous breakdown.”

Weston laid down the paper and a hopeful gleam entered his eye, “Maybe – Maybe we ought to get Robbie back. It might be done, you know. I can get in touch with-”

“No!” she replied, grimly. “I won’t hear of it. We’re not giving up that easily. My child shall not be brought up by a robot if it takes years to break her of it.”

Weston picked up his paper again with a disappointed air. “A year of this will have me prematurely gray.”

“You’re a big help, George,” was the frigid answer. “What Gloria needs is a change of environment? Of course she can’t forget Robbie here. How can she when every tree and rock reminds her of him? It is really the silliest situation I have ever heard of. Imagine a child pining away for the loss of a robot.”

“Well, stick to the point. What’s the change in environment you’re planning?”

“We’re going to take her to New York.”

“The city! In August! Say, do you know what New York is like in August? It’s unbearable.”

“Millions do bear it.”

“They don’t have a place like this to go to. If they didn’t have to stay in New York, they wouldn’t.”

“Well, we have to. I say we’re leaving now – or as soon as we can make the arrangements. In the city, Gloria will find sufficient interests and sufficient friends to perk her up and make her forget that machine.”

“Oh, Lord,” groaned the lesser half, “those frying pavements!”

“We have to,” was the unshaken response. “Gloria has lost five pounds in the last month and my little girl’s health is more important to me than your comfort.”

“It’s a pity you didn’t think of your little girl’s health before you deprived her of her pet robot,” he muttered – but to himself.

Gloria displayed immediate signs of improvement when told of the impending trip to the city. She spoke little of it, but when she did, it was always with lively anticipation. Again, she began to smile and to eat with something of her former appetite.

Mrs. Weston hugged herself for joy and lost no opportunity to triumph over her still skeptical husband.

“You see, George, she helps with the packing like a little angel, and chatters away as if she hadn’t a care in the world. It’s just as I told you – all we need do is substitute other interests.”

“Hmpph,” was the skeptical response, “I hope so.”

Preliminaries were gone through quickly. Arrangements were made for the preparation of their city home and a couple were engaged as housekeepers for the country home. When the day of the trip finally did come, Gloria was all but her old self again, and no mention of Robbie passed her lips at all.

In high good-humor the family took a taxi-gyro to the airport (Weston would have preferred using his own private ‘gyro, but it was only a two-seater with no room for baggage) and entered the waiting liner.

“Come, Gloria,” called Mrs. Weston. “I’ve saved you a seat near the window so you can watch the scenery.”

Gloria trotted down the aisle cheerily, flattened her nose into a white oval against the thick clear glass, and watched with an intentness that increased as the sudden coughing of the motor drifted backward into the interior. She was too young to be frightened when the ground dropped away as if let through a trap door and she herself suddenly became twice her usual weight, but not too young to be mightily interested. It wasn’t until the ground had changed into a tiny patchwork quilt that she withdrew her nose, and faced her mother again.

“Will we soon be in the city, Mamma?” she asked, rubbing her chilled nose, and watching with interest as the patch of moisture which her breath had formed on the pane shrank slowly and vanished.

“In about half an hour, dear.” Then, with just the faintest trace of anxiety, “Aren’t you glad we’re going? Don’t you think you’ll be very happy in the city with all the buildings and people and things to see? We’ll go to the visivox every day and see shows and go to the circus and the beach and-”

“Yes, Mamma,” was Gloria’s unenthusiastic rejoinder. The liner passed over a bank of clouds at the moment, and Gloria was instantly absorbed in the usual spectacle of clouds underneath one. Then they were over clear sky again, and she turned to her mother with a sudden mysterious air of secret knowledge.

“I know why we’re going to the city, Mamma.”

“Do you?” Mrs. Weston was puzzled. “Why, dear?”

“You didn’t tell me because you wanted it to be a surprise, but I know.” For a moment, she was lost in admiration at her own acute penetration, and then she laughed gaily. “We’re going to New York so we can find Robbie, aren’t we? – With detectives.”

The statement caught George Weston in the middle of a drink of water, with disastrous results. There was a sort of strangled gasp, a geyser of water, and then a bout of choking coughs. When all was over, he stood there, a red-faced, water-drenched and very, very annoyed person.

Mrs. Weston maintained her composure, but when Gloria repeated her question in a more anxious tone of voice, she found her temper rather bent.

“Maybe,” she retorted, tartly. “Now sit and be still, for Heaven’s sake.”

New York City, 1998 A.D., was a paradise for the sightseer more than ever in its history. Gloria’s parents realized this and made the most of it.

On direct orders from his wife, George Weston arranged to have his business take care of itself for a month or so, in order to be free to spend the time in what he termed, “dissipating Gloria to the verge of ruin.” Like everything else Weston did, this was gone about in an efficient, thorough, and business-like way. Before the month had passed, nothing that could be done had not been done.

She was taken to the top of the half-mile tall Roosevelt Building, to gaze down in awe upon the jagged panorama of rooftops that blended far off in the fields of Long Island and the flatlands of New Jersey. They visited the zoos where Gloria stared in delicious fright at the “real live lion” (rather disappointed that the keepers fed him raw steaks, instead of human beings, as she had expected), and asked insistently and peremptorily to see “the whale.”

The various museums came in for their share of attention, together with the parks and the beaches and the aquarium.

She was taken halfway up the Hudson in an excursion steamer fitted out in the archaism of the mad Twenties. She traveled into the stratosphere on an exhibition trip, where the sky turned deep purple and the stars came out and the misty earth below looked like a huge concave bowl. Down under the waters of the Long Island Sound she was taken in a glass-walled sub-sea vessel, where in a green and wavering world, quaint and curious sea-things ogled her and wiggled suddenly away.

On a more prosaic level, Mrs. Weston took her to the department stores where she could revel in another type of fairyland.

In fact, when the month had nearly sped, the Westons were convinced that everything conceivable had been done to take Gloria’s mind once and for all off the departed Robbie – but they were not quite sure they had succeeded.

The fact remained that wherever Gloria went, she displayed the most absorbed and concentrated interest in such robots as happened to be present. No matter how exciting the spectacle before her, nor how novel to her girlish eyes, she turned away instantly if the corner of her eye caught a glimpse of metallic movement.

Mrs. Weston went out of her way to keep Gloria away from all robots.

And the matter was finally climaxed in the episode at the Museum of Science and Industry. The Museum had announced a special “children’s program” in which exhibits of scientific witchery scaled down to the child mind were to be shown. The Westons, of course, placed it upon their list of “absolutely.”

It was while the Westons were standing totally absorbed in the exploits of a powerful electro-magnet that Mrs. Weston suddenly became aware of the fact that Gloria was no longer with her. Initial panic gave way to calm decision and, enlisting the aid of three attendants, a careful search was begun.

Gloria, of course, was not one to wander aimlessly, however. For her age, she was an unusually determined and purposeful girl, quite full of the maternal genes in that respect. She had seen a huge sign on the third floor, which had said, “This Way to the Talking Robot” Having spelled it out to herself and having noticed that her parents did not seem to wish to move in the proper direction, she did the obvious thing. Waiting for an opportune moment of parental distraction, she calmly disengaged herself and followed the sign.

The Talking Robot was a tour de force, a thoroughly impractical device, possessing publicity value only. Once an hour, an escorted group stood before it and asked questions of the robot engineer in charge in careful whispers. Those the engineer decided were suitable for the robot’s circuits were transmitted to the Talking Robot.

It was rather dull. It may be nice to know that the square of fourteen is one hundred ninety-six, that the temperature at the moment is 72 degrees Fahrenheit, and the air-pressure 30.02 inches of mercury, that the atomic weight of sodium is 23, but one doesn’t really need a robot for that. One especially does not need an unwieldy, totally immobile mass of wires and coils spreading over twenty-five square yards.

Few people bothered to return for a second helping, but one girl in her middle teens sat quietly on a bench waiting for a third. She was the only one in the room when Gloria entered.

Gloria did not look at her. To her at the moment, another human being was but an inconsiderable item. She saved her attention for this large thing with the wheels. For a moment, she hesitated in dismay. It didn’t look like any robot she had ever seen.

Cautiously and doubtfully she raised her treble voice; “Please, Mr. Robot, sir, are you the Talking Robot, sir?” She wasn’t sure, but it seemed to her that a robot that actually talked was worth a great deal of politeness.

(The girl in her mid-teens allowed a look of intense concentration to cross her thin, plain face. She whipped out a small notebook and began writing in rapid pothooks.)

There was an oily whir of gears and a mechanically timbered voice boomed out in words that lacked accent and intonation, “I-am-the-robot-that-talks.”

Gloria stared at it ruefully. It did talk, but the sound came from inside somewheres. There was no face to talk to. She said, “Can you help me, Mr. Robot, sir?”

The Talking Robot was designed to answer questions, and only such questions as it could answer had ever been put to it. It was quite confident of its ability, therefore, “I-can-help-you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Robot, sir. Have you seen Robbie?”

“Who-is Robbie?”

“He’s a robot, Mr. Robot, sir.” She stretched to tiptoes. “He’s about so high, Mr. Robot, sir, only higher, and he’s very nice. He’s got a head, you know. I mean you haven’t, but he has, Mr. Robot, sir.”

The Talking Robot had been left behind, “A-robot?”

“Yes, Mr. Robot, sir. A robot just like you, except he can’t talk, of course, and – looks like a real person.”

“A-robot-like-me?”

“Yes, Mr. Robot, sir.”

To which the Talking Robot’s only response was an erratic splutter and an occasional incoherent sound. The radical generalization offered it, i.e., its existence, not as a particular object, but as a member of a general group, was too much for it. Loyally, it tried to encompass the concept and half a dozen coils burnt out. Little warning signals were buzzing.

(The girl in her mid-teens left at that point. She had enough for her Physics-1 paper on “Practical Aspects of Robotics.” This paper was Susan Calvin’s first of many on the subject.)

Gloria stood waiting, with carefully concealed impatience, for the machine’s answer when she heard the cry behind her of “There she is,” and recognized that cry as her mother’s.

“What are you doing here, you bad girl?” cried Mrs. Weston, anxiety dissolving at once into anger. “Do you know you frightened your mamma and daddy almost to death? Why did you run away?”

The robot engineer had also dashed in, tearing his hair, and demanding who of the gathering crowd had tampered with the machine. “Can’t anybody read signs?” he yelled. “You’re not allowed in here without an attendant.”

Gloria raised her grieved voice over the din, “I only came to see the Talking Robot, Mamma. I thought he might know where Robbie was because they’re both robots.” And then, as the thought of Robbie was suddenly brought forcefully home to her, she burst into a sudden storm of tears, “And I got to find Robbie, Mamma. I got to.”

Mrs. Weston strangled a cry, and said, “Oh, good Heavens. Come home, George. This is more than I can stand.”

That evening, George Weston left for several hours, and the next morning, he approached his wife with something that looked suspiciously like smug complacence.

“I’ve got an idea, Grace.”

“About what?” was the gloomy, uninterested query?

“About Gloria.”

“You’re not going to suggest buying back that robot?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then go ahead. I might as well listen to you. Nothing I’ve done seems to have done any good.”

“All right. Here’s what I’ve been thinking. The whole trouble with Gloria is that she thinks of Robbie as a person and not as a machine. Naturally, she can’t forget him. Now if we managed to convince her that Robbie was nothing more than a mess of steel and copper in the form of sheets and wires with electricity its juice of life, how long would her longings last? It’s the psychological attack, if you see my point.”

“How do you plan to do it?”

“Simple. Where do you suppose I went last night? I persuaded Robertson of U. S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc. to arrange for a complete tour of his premises tomorrow. The three of us will go, and by the time we’re through, Gloria will have it drilled into her that a robot is not alive.”

Mrs. Weston’s eyes widened gradually and something glinted in her eyes that was quite like sudden admiration, “Why, George, that’s a good idea.”

And George Weston’s vest buttons strained. “Only kind I have,” he said.

Mr. Struthers was a conscientious General Manager and naturally inclined to be a bit talkative. The combination, therefore, resulted in a tour that was fully explained, perhaps even over-abundantly explained, at every step. However, Mrs. Weston was not bored. Indeed, she stopped him several times and begged him to repeat his statements in simpler language so that Gloria might understand. Under the influence of this appreciation of his narrative powers, Mr. Struthers expanded genially and became ever more communicative, if possible.

George Weston, himself, showed a gathering impatience.

“Pardon me, Struthers,” he said, breaking into the middle of a lecture on the photoelectric cell, “haven’t you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?”

“Eh? Oh, yes! Yes, indeed!” He smiled at Mrs. Weston. “A vicious circle in a way, robots creating more robots. Of course, we are not making a general practice out of it. For one thing, the unions would never let us. But we can turn out a very few robots using robot labor exclusively, merely as a sort of scientific experiment. You see,” he tapped his pince-nez into one palm argumentatively, “what the labor unions don’t realize – and I say this as a man who has always been very sympathetic with the labor movement in general – is that the advent of the robot, while involving some dislocation to begin with, will inevitably-”

“Yes, Struthers,” said Weston, “but about that section of the factory you speak of – may we see it? It would be very interesting, I’m sure.”

“Yes! Yes, of course!” Mr. Struthers replaced his pince-nez in one convulsive movement and gave vent to a soft cough of discomfiture. “Follow me, please.”

He was comparatively quiet while leading the three through a long corridor and down a flight of stairs. Then, when they had entered a large well-lit room that buzzed with metallic activity, the sluices opened and the flood of explanation poured forth again.

“There you are!” he said with pride in his voice. “Robots only! Five men act as overseers and they don’t even stay in this room. In five years, that is, since we began this project, not a single accident has occurred. Of course, the robots here assembled are comparatively simple, but...”

The General Manager’s voice had long died to a rather soothing murmur in Gloria’s ears. The whole trip seemed rather dull and pointless to her, though there were many robots in sight. None were even remotely like Robbie, though, and she surveyed them with open contempt.

In this room, there weren’t any people at all, she noticed. Then her eyes fell upon six or seven robots busily engaged at a round table halfway across the room. They widened in incredulous surprise. It was a big room. She couldn’t see for sure, but one of the robots looked like – looked like – it was!

“Robbie!” Her shriek pierced the air, and one of the robots about the table faltered and dropped the tool he was holding. Gloria went almost mad with joy. Squeezing through the railing before either parent could stop her, she dropped lightly to the floor a few feet below, and ran toward her Robbie, arms waving and hair flying.

And the three horrified adults, as they stood frozen in their tracks, saw what the excited little girl did not see, – a huge, lumbering tractor bearing blindly down upon its appointed track.

It took split-seconds for Weston to come to his senses, and those split-seconds meant everything, for Gloria could not be overtaken. Although Weston vaulted the railing in a wild attempt, it was obviously hopeless. Mr. Struthers signaled wildly to the overseers to stop the tractor, but the overseers were only human and it took time to act.

It was only Robbie that acted immediately and with precision.

With metal legs eating up the space between himself and his little mistress he charged down from the opposite direction. Everything then happened at once. With one sweep of an arm, Robbie snatched up Gloria, slackening his speed not one iota, and, consequently, knocking every breath of air out of her. Weston, not quite comprehending all that was happening, felt, rather than saw, Robbie brush past him, and came to a sudden bewildered halt. The tractor intersected Gloria’s path half a second after Robbie had, rolled on ten feet further and came to a grinding, long drawn-out stop.

Gloria regained her breath, submitted to a series of passionate hugs on the part of both her parents and turned eagerly toward Robbie. As far as she was concerned, nothing had happened except that she had found her friend.

But Mrs. Weston’s expression had changed from one of relief to one of dark suspicion. She turned to her husband, and, despite her disheveled and undignified appearance, managed to look quite formidable, “You engineered this, didn’t you?

George Weston swabbed at a hot forehead with his handkerchief. His hand was unsteady, and his lips could curve only into a tremulous and exceedingly weak smile.

Mrs. Weston pursued the thought, “Robbie wasn’t designed for engineering or construction work. He couldn’t be of any use to them. You had him placed there deliberately so that Gloria would find him. You know you did.”

“Well, I did,” said Weston. “But, Grace, how was I to know the reunion would be so violent? And Robbie has saved her life; you’ll have to admit that. You can’t send him away again.”

Grace Weston considered. She turned toward Gloria and Robbie and watched them abstractedly for a moment. Gloria had a grip about the robot’s neck that would have asphyxiated any creature but one of metal, and was prattling nonsense in half-hysterical frenzy. Robbie’s chrome-steel arms (capable of bending a bar of steel two inches in diameter into a pretzel) wound about the little girl gently and lovingly, and his eyes glowed a deep, deep red.

“Well,” said Mrs. Weston, at last, “I guess he can stay with us until he rusts.”

Robot AL-76 Goes Astray

2006 A.D.

JONATHAN QUELL’S EYES crinkled worriedly behind their rimless glasses as he charged through the door labeled “General Manager.”

He slapped the folded paper in his hands upon the desk and panted, “Look at that, boss!”

Sam Tobe juggled the cigar in his mouth from one cheek to the other, and looked. His hand went to his unshaven jaw and rasped along it. “Hell!” he exploded. “What are they talking about?”

“They say we sent out five AL robots,” Quell explained, quite unnecessarily.

“We sent six,” said Tobe.

“Sure, six! But they only got five at the other end. They sent out the serial numbers and AL-76 is missing.”

Tobe’s chair went over backward as he heaved his thick bulk upright and went through the door as if he were on greased wheels. It was five hours after that – with the plant pulled apart from assembly rooms to vacuum chambers; with every one of the plant’s two hundred employees put through the third-degree mill – that a sweating, disheveled Tobe sent an emergency message to the central plant at Schenectady.

And at the central plant, a sudden explosion of near panic took place. For the first time in the history of the United States Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation, a robot had escaped to the outer world. It wasn’t so much that the law forbade the presence of any robot on Earth outside a licensed factory of the corporation. Laws could always be squared. What was much more to the point was the statement made by one of the research mathematicians.

He said: “That robot was created to run a Disinto on the moon. Its positronic brain was equipped for a lunar environment, and only a lunar environment. On Earth it’s going to receive seventy-five umptillion sense impressions for which it was never prepared. There’s no telling what its reactions will be. No telling!” And he wiped a forehead that had suddenly gone wet, with the back of his hand.

Within the hour a stratoplane had left for the Virginia plant. The instructions were simple.

“Get that robot, and get it fast!”

AL-76 was confused! In fact, confusion was the only impression his delicate positronic brain retained. It had started when he had found himself in these strange surroundings. How it had come about, he no longer knew. Everything was mixed up.

There was green underfoot, and brown shafts rose all about him with more green on top. And the sky was blue where it should have been black. The sun was all right, round and yellow and hot – but where was the powdery pumice rock underfoot; where were the huge clifflike crater rings?

There was only the green below and the blue above. The sounds that surrounded him were all strange. He had passed through running water that had reached his waist. It was blue and cold and wet. And when he passed people, as he did, occasionally, they were without the space suits they should have been wearing. When they saw him, they shouted and ran.

One man had leveled a gun at him and the bullet had whistled past his head – and then that man had run too.

He had no idea of how long he had been wandering before he finally stumbled upon Randolph Payne’s shack two miles out in the woods from the town of Hannaford. Randolph Payne himself – a screwdriver in one hand, a pipe in the other and a battered ruin of a vacuum cleaner between his knees – squatted outside the doorway.

Payne was humming at the time, for he was a naturally happy-go-lucky soul – when at his shack. He had a more respectable dwelling place back in Hannaford, but that dwelling place was pretty largely occupied by his wife, a fact which he silently but sincerely regretted. Perhaps, then, there was a sense of relief and freedom at such times as he found himself able to retire to his “special deluxe doghouse” where he could smoke in peace and attend to his hobby of reservicing household appliances.

It wasn’t much of a hobby, but sometimes someone would bring out a radio or an alarm clock and the money he would get paid for juggling its insides was the only money he ever got that didn’t pass in driblets through his spouse’s niggardly hands.

This vacuum cleaner, for instance, would bring in an easy six bits. At the thought he broke into song, raised his eyes, and broke into

a sweat. The song choked off, the eyes popped, and the sweat became more intense. He tried to stand up – as a preliminary to running like hell – but he couldn’t get his legs to cooperate.

And then AL-76 had squatted down next to him and said, “Say, why did all the rest of them run?”

Payne knew quite well why they all ran, but the gurgle that issued from his diaphragm didn’t show it. He tried to inch away from the robot.

AL-76 continued in an aggrieved tone, “One of them even took a shot at me. An inch lower and he would have scratched my shoulder plate.”

“M-must have b-been a nut,” stammered Payne.

“That’s possible.” The robot’s voice grew more confidential. “Listen, what’s wrong with everything?”

Payne looked hurriedly about. It had struck him that the robot spoke in a remarkably mild tone for one so heavily and brutally metallic in appearance. It also struck him that he had heard somewhere that robots were mentally incapable of harming human beings. He relaxed a bit.

“There’s nothing wrong with anything.”

“Isn’t there?” AL-76 eyed him accusingly. “You’re all wrong. Where’s your space suit?”

“I haven’t got any.”

“Then why aren’t you dead?”

That stopped Payne, “Well – I don’t know.”

“See!” said the robot triumphantly, “there’s something wrong with everything. Where’s Mount Copernicus? Where’s Lunar station 17? And where’s my Disinto? I want to get to work, I do.” He seemed perturbed, and his voice shook as he continued. “I’ve been going about for hours trying to get someone to tell me where my Disinto is, but they all run away. By now I’m probably ‘way behind schedule and the Sectional Executive will be as sore as blazes. This is a fine situation.”

Slowly Payne unscrambled the stew in which his brain found itself and said, “Listen, what do they call you?”

“My serial number is AL-76.”

All right, Al is good enough for me. Now, Al, if you’re looking for Lunar Station 17, that’s on the moon, see?”

AL-76 nodded his head ponderously. “Sure. But I’ve been looking for it –”

“But it’s on the moon. This isn’t the moon.”

It was the robot’s turn to become confused. He watched Payne for a speculative moment and then said slowly, “What do you mean this isn’t the moon? Of course it’s the moon. Because if it isn’t the moon, what is it, huh? Answer me that.”

Payne made a funny sound in his throat and breathed hard. He pointed a finger at the robot and shook it. “Look,” he said – and then the brilliant idea of the century struck him, and he finished with a strangled “Wow!”

AL-76 eyed him censoriously. “That isn’t an answer. I think I have a right to a civil answer if I ask a civil question.”

Payne wasn’t listening. He was still marveling at himself. Why, it was as plain as day. This robot was one built for the moon that had somehow gotten loose on Earth. Naturally it would be all mixed up, because its positronic brain had been geared exclusively for a lunar environment, making its earthly surroundings entirely meaningless.

And now if he could only keep the robot here – until he could get in touch with the men at the factory in Petersboro. Why, robots were worth money. The cheapest cost $50,000, he had once heard, and some of them ran into millions. Think of the reward!

Man, oh, man, think of the reward! And every cent for himself. Not as much as a quarter of a snifter of a plugged nickel for Mirandy. Jumpin’ tootin’ blazes, no!

He rose to his feet at last. “Al,” he said, “you and I are buddies! Pals! I love you like a brother.” He thrust out a hand. “Shake!”

The robot swallowed up the offered hand in a metal paw and squeezed it gently. He didn’t quite understand. “Does that mean you’ll tell me how to get to Lunar Station 17?”

Payne was a trifle disconcerted..’N-no, not exactly. As a matter of fact, I like you so much, I want you to stay here with me awhile.”

“Oh no, I can’t do that. I’ve got to get to work.” He shook his head. “How would you like to be falling behind your quota hour by hour and minute by minute? I want to work. I’ve got to work.”

Payne thought sourly that there was no accounting for tastes, and said, “All right, then, I’ll explain something to you – because I can see from the looks of you that you’re an intelligent person. I’ve had orders from your Sectional Executive, and he wants me to keep you here for a while. Till he sends for you, in fact.”

“What for?” asked AL-76 suspiciously.

“I can’t say. It’s secret government stuff.” Payne prayed, inwardly and fervently, that the robot would swallow this. Some robots were clever, he knew, but this looked like one of the early models.

While Payne prayed, AL-76 considered. The robot’s brain, adjusted to the handling of a Disinto on the moon, was not at its best when engaged in abstract thought, but just the same, ever since he had gotten lost, AL-76 had found his thought processes becoming stranger. The alien surroundings did something to him.

His next remark was almost shrewd. He said slyly, “What’s my Sectional Executive’s name?”

Payne gulped and thought rapidly. “Al,” he said in a pained fashion, “you hurt me with this suspicion. I can’t tell you his name. The trees have ears.”

AL-76 inspected the tree next to him stolidly and said, “They have not.”

“I know. What I mean is that spies are all around.”

“Spies?”

“Yes. You know, bad people who want to destroy Lunar Station 17.”

“What for?”

“Because they’re bad. And they want to destroy you, and that’s why you’ve got to stay here for a while, so they can’t find you.”

“But – but I’ve got to have a Disinto. I mustn’t fall behind my quota.”

“You will have. You will have,” Payne promised earnestly, and just as earnestly damned the robot’s one-track mind. “They’re going to send one out tomorrow. Yeah, tomorrow.” That would leave plenty of time to get the men from the factory out here and collect beautiful green heaps of hundred-dollar bills.

But AL-76 grew only the more stubborn under the distressing impingement of the strange world all about him upon his thinking mechanism.

“No,” he said. “I’ve got to have a Disinto now.” Stiffly he straightened his joints, jerking erect. “I’d better look for it some more.”

Payne swarmed after and grabbed a cold, hard elbow. “Listen,” he squealed. “You’ve got to stay –”

And something in the robot’s mind clicked. All the strangeness surrounding him collected itself into one globule. Exploded, and left a brain ticking with a curiously increased efficiency. He whirled on Payne. “I tell you what. I can build a Disinto right here – and then I can work it.”

Payne paused doubtfully. “I don’t think I can build one.” He wondered if it would do any good to pretend he could.

“That’s all right.” AL-76 could almost feel the positronic paths of his brain weaving into a new pattern, and experienced a strange exhilaration. “I can build one.” He looked into Payne’s deluxe doghouse and said. “You’ve got all the material here that I need.”

Randolph Payne surveyed the junk with which his shack was filled: eviscerated radios, a topless refrigerator, rusty automobile engines, a broken-down gas range, several miles of frayed wire, and, taking it all together, fifty tons or thereabouts of the most heterogeneous mass of old metal as ever caused a junkman to sniff disdainfully.

“Have I?” he said weakly.

Two hours later, two things happened practically simultaneously. The first was that Sam Tobe of the Petersboro branch of the United States Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation received a visiphone call from one Randolph Payne of Hannaford. It concerned the missing robot, and Tobe, with a deep-throated snarl, broke connection halfway through and ordered all subsequent calls to be rerouted to the sixth assistant vice-president in charge of buttonholes.

This was not really unreasonable of Tobe. During the past week, although Robot AL-76 had dropped from sight completely, reports had flooded in from all over the Union as to the robot’s whereabouts. As many as fourteen a day came – usually from fourteen different states.

Tobe was almighty tired of it, to say nothing of being half crazy on general principles. There was even talk of a Congressional investigation, though every reputable roboticist and mathematical physicist on Earth swore the robot was harmless.

In his state of mind, then, it is not surprising that it took three hours for the general manager to pause and consider just exactly how it was that this Randolph Payne had known that the robot was slated for Lunar Station 17, and, for that matter, how he had known that the robot’s serial number was AL-76. Those details had not been given out by the company.

He kept on considering for about a minute and a half and then swung into action.

However, during the three hours between the call and the action, the second event took place. Randolph Payne, having correctly diagnosed the abrupt break in his call as being due to general skepticism on the part of the plant official, returned to his shack with a camera. They couldn’t very well argue with a photograph, and he’d be hornswoggled if he’d show them the real thing before they came across with the cash.

AL-76 was busy with affairs of his own. Half of the contents of Payne’s shack was littered over about two acres of ground, and in the middle of it the robot squatted and fooled around with radio tubes, hunks of iron, copper wire, and general junk. He paid no attention to Payne, who, sprawling flat on his belly, focused his camera for a beautiful shot.

And at this point it was that Lemuel Oliver Cooper turned the bend in the road and froze in his tracks as he took in the tableau. The reason for his coming in the first place was an ailing electric toaster that had developed the annoying habit of throwing out pieces of bread forcefully, but thoroughly untoasted. The reason for his leaving was more obvious. He had come with a slow, mildly cheerful, spring-morning saunter. He left with a speed that would have caused any college track coach to raise his eyebrows and purse his lips approvingly.

There was no appreciable slackening of speed until Cooper hurtled into Sheriff Saunders’ office, minus hat and toaster, and brought himself up hard against the wall.

Kindly hands lifted him, and for half a minute he tried speaking before he had actually calmed down to the point of breathing with, of course, no result.

They gave him whisky and fanned him and when he did speak, it came out something like this: “– monster – seven feet tall – shack all busted up – poor Rannie Payne –” and so on.

They got the story out of him gradually: how there was a huge metal monster, seven feet tall, maybe even eight or nine, out at Randolph Payne’s shack; how Randolph Payne himself was on his stomach, a “poor, bleeding, mangled corpse”; how the monster was then busily engaged in wrecking the shack out of sheer destructiveness; how it had turned on Lemuel Oliver Cooper, and how he, Cooper, had made his escape by half a hair.

Sheriff Saunders hitched his belt tighter about his portly middle and said, “It’s that there machine man that got away from the Petersboro factory. We got warning on it last Saturday. Hey, Jake, you get every man in Hannaford County that can shoot and slap a deputy’s badge on him. Get them here at noon. And listen, Jake, before you do that, just drop in at the Widow Payne’s place and lip her the bad news gentle-like.”

It is reported that Miranda Payne, upon being acquainted with events, paused only to make sure that her husband’s insurance policy was safe, and to make a few pithy remarks concerning her foolishness in not having had him take out double the amount, before breaking out into as prolonged and heart-wringing a wail of grief as ever became a respectable widow.

It was some hours later that Randolph Payne – unaware of his horrible mutilation and death – viewed the completed negatives of his snapshots with satisfaction. As a series of portraits of a robot at work, they left nothing to the imagination. They might have been labeled: “Robot Gazing Thoughtfully at Vacuum Tube,” “Robot Splicing Two Wires,” “Robot Wielding Screwdriver,” “Robot Taking Refrigerator Apart with Great Violence,” and so on.

As there now remained only the routine of making the prints themselves, he stepped out from beyond the curtain of the improvised darkroom for a bit of a smoke and a chat with AL-76.

In doing so, he was blissfully unaware that the neighboring woods were verminous with nervous farmers armed with anything from an old colonial relic of a blunderbuss to the portable machine gun carried by the sheriff himself. Nor, for that matter, had he any inkling of the fact that half a dozen roboticists, under the leadership of Sam Tobe, were smoking down the highway from Petersboro at better than a hundred and twenty miles an hour for the sole purpose of having the pleasure and honor of his acquaintance.

So while things were jittering toward a climax, Randolph Payne sighed with self-satisfaction, lighted a match upon the seat of his pants, puffed away at his pipe, and looked at AL-76 with amusement.

It had been apparent for quite some time that the robot was more than slightly lunatic. Randolph Payne was himself an expert at homemade contraptions, having built several that could not have been exposed to daylight without searing the eyeballs of all beholders; but he had never even conceived of anything approaching the monstrosity that AL-76 was concocting.

It would have made the Rube Goldbergs of the day die in convulsions of envy. It would have made Picasso (if he could have lived to witness it) quit art in the sheer knowledge that he had been hopelessly surpassed. It would have soured the milk in the udders of any cow within half a mile.

In fact, it was gruesome!

From a rusty and massive iron base that faintly resembled something Payne had once seen attached to a secondhand tractor, it rose upward in rakish, drunken swerves through a bewildering mess of wires, wheels, tubes, and nameless horrors without number, ending in a megaphone arrangement that looked decidedly sinister.

Payne had the impulse to peek in the megaphone part, but refrained. He had seen far more sensible machines explode suddenly and with violence.

He said, “Hey, Al.”

The robot looked up. He had been lying flat on his stomach, teasing a thin sliver of metal into place. “What do you want, Payne?”

“What is this?” He asked it in the tone of one referring to something foul and decomposing, held gingerly between two ten-foot poles.

“It’s the Disinto I’m making – so I can start to work. It’s an improvement on the standard model.” The robot rose, dusted his knees clankingly, and looked at it proudly.

Payne shuddered. An “improvement”! No wonder they hid the original in caverns on the moon. Poor satellite! Poor dead satellite! He had always wanted to know what a fate worse than death was. Now he knew.

“Will it work?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s got to. I made it, didn’t I? I only need one thing now. Got a flashlight?”

“Somewhere, I guess.” Payne vanished into the shack and returned almost immediately.

The robot unscrewed the bottom and set to work. In five minutes he had finished. He stepped back and said, “All set. Now I get to work. You may watch if you want to.”

A pause, while Payne tried to appreciate the magnanimity of the offer. “Is it safe?”

“A baby could handle it.”

“Oh!” Payne grinned weakly and got behind the thickest tree in the vicinity. “Go ahead,” he said, “I have the utmost confidence in you.”

AL-76 pointed to the nightmarish junk pile and said, “Watch!” His hands set to work –

The embattled farmers of Hannaford County, Virginia, weaved up upon Payne’s shack in a slowly tightening circle. With the blood of their heroic colonial forebears pounding their veins – and goose flesh trickling up and down their spines – they crept from tree to tree.

Sheriff Saunders spread the word. “Fire when I give the signal – and aim at the eyes.”

Jacob Linker – Lank Jake to his friends, and Sheriff’s Deputy to himself – edged close. “You think maybe this machine man has skedaddled?” He did not quite manage to suppress the tone of wistful hopefulness in his voice.

“Dunno,” grunted the sheriff. “Guess not, though. We woulda come across him in the woods if he had, and we haven’t.”

“But it’s awful quiet, and it appears to me as if we’re getting close to Payne’s place.”

The reminder wasn’t necessary. Sheriff Saunders had a lump in his throat so big it had to be swallowed in three installments. “Get back,” he ordered, “and keep your finger on the trigger.”

They were at the rim of the clearing now, and Sheriff Saunders closed his eyes and stuck the corner of one out from behind the tree. Seeing nothing, he paused, then tried again, eyes open this time.

Results were, naturally, better.

To be exact, he saw one huge machine man, back toward him, bending over one soul-curdling, hiccupy Contraption of uncertain origin and less certain purpose. The only item he missed was the quivering figure of Randolph Payne, embracing the tree next but three to the nor’-nor’west.

Sheriff Saunders stepped out into the open and raised his machine gun. The robot, still presenting a broad metal back, said in a loud voice-to person or persons unknown –” Watchl” and as the sheriff opened his mouth to signal a general order to fire, metal fingers compressed a switch.

There exists no adequate description of what occurred afterward, in spite of the presence of seventy eyewitnesses. In the days, months, and years to come not one of those seventy ever had a word to say about the few seconds after the sheriff had opened his mouth to give the firing order. When questioned about it, they merely turned apple-green and staggered away.

It is plain from circumstantial evidence, however, that, in a general way, what did occur was this.

Sheriff Saunders opened his mouth; AL-76 pulled a switch. The Disinto worked, and seventy-five trees, two barns, three cows and the top three quarters of Duckbill Mountain whiffed into rarefied atmosphere. They became, so to speak, one with the snows of yesteryear.

Sheriff Saunders’ mouth remained open for an indefinite interval thereafter, but nothing – neither firing orders nor anything else – issued therefrom. And then –

And then, there was a stirring in the air, a multiple ro-o-o-oshing sound, a series of purple streaks through the atmosphere radiating away from Randolph Payne’s shack as the center, and of the members of the posse, not a sign.

There were various guns scattered about the vicinity, including the sheriff’s patented nickel-plated, extra-rapid-fire, guaranteed-no-clog, portable machine gun. There were about fifty hats, a few half-chomped cigars, and some odds and ends that had come loose in the excitement – but of actual human beings there was none.

Except for Lank Jake, not one of those human beings came within human ken for three days, and the exception in his favor came about because he was interrupted in his comet-flight by the half-dozen men from the Petersboro factory, who were charging into the wood at a pretty fair speed of their own.

It was Sam Tobe who stopped him, catching Lank Jake’s head skillfully in the pit of his stomach. When he caught his breath. Tobe asked. “Where’s Randolph Payne’s place?”

Lank Jake allowed his eyes to unglaze for just a moment. “Brother,” he said, “just you follow the direction I ain’t going.”

And with that, miraculously, he was gone. There was a shrinking dot dodging trees on the horizon that might have been he, but Sam Tobe wouldn’t have sworn to it.

That takes care of the posse; but there still remains Randolph Payne, whose reactions took something of a different form.

For Randolph Payne, the five-second interval after the pulling of the switch and the disappearance of Duckbill Mountain was a total blank. At the start he had been peering through the thick underbrush from behind the bottom of the trees; at the end he was swinging wildly from one of the topmost branches. The same impulse that had driven the posse horizontally had driven him vertically.

As to how he had covered the fifty feet from roots to top – whether he had climbed, jumped, or flown – he did not know, and he didn’t give a particle of never-mind.

What he did know was that property had been destroyed by a robot temporarily in his possession. All visions of rewards vanished and were replaced by trembling nightmares of hostile citizenry, shrieking lynch mobs, lawsuits, murder charges, and what Mirandy Payne would say. Mostly what Mirandy Payne would say.

He was yelling wildly and hoarsely, “Hey, you robot, you smash that thing, do you hear? Smash it good! You forget I ever had anything to do with it. You’re a stranger to me, see? You don’t ever say a word about it. Forget it, you hear?”

He didn’t expect his orders to do any good; it was only reflex action. What he didn’t know was that a robot always obeys a human order except where carrying it out involves danger to another human.

AL-76, therefore, calmly and methodically proceeded to demolish his Disinto into rubble and flinders.

Just as he was stamping the last cubic inch under foot, Sam Tobe and his contingent arrived, and Randolph Payne, sensing that the real owners of the robot had come, dropped out of the tree head-first and made for regions unknown feet-first.

He did not wait for his reward.

Austin Wilde, Robotical Engineer, turned to Sam Tobe and said, “Did you get anything out of the robot?”

Tobe shook his head and snarled deep in his throat. “Nothing. Not one thing. He’s forgotten everything that’s happened since he left the factory. He must have gotten orders to forget, or it couldn’t have left him so blank. What was that pile of junk he’d been fooling with?”

“Just that. A pile of junk! But it must have been a Disinto before he smashed it, and I’d like to kill the fellow who ordered him to smash it – by slow torture, if possible. Look at this!”

They were part of the way up the slopes of what had been Duck-bill Mountain – at that point, to be exact, where the top had been sheered off; and Wilde put his hand down upon the perfect flatness that cut through both soil and rock.

“What a Disinto,” he said. “It took the mountain right off its base.”

“What made him build it?”

Wilde shrugged. “I don’t know. Some factor in his environment – there’s no way of knowing what – reacted upon his moon-type positronic brain to produce a Disinto out of junk. It’s a billion to one against our ever stumbling upon that factor again now that the robot himself has forgotten. We’ll never have that Disinto.”

“Never mind. The important thing is that we have the robot.”

“The hell you say.” There was poignant regret in Wilde’s voice. “Have you ever had anything to do with the Disintos on the moon? They eat up energy like so many electronic hogs and won’t even begin to run until you’ve built up a potential of better than a million volts. But this Disinto worked differently. I went through the rubbish with a microscope, and would you like to see the only source of power of any kind that I found?”

“What was it?”

“Just this! And we’ll never know how he did it.”

And Austin Wilde held up the source of power that had enabled a Disinto to chew up a mountain in half a second – two flashlight batteries!

Insert Knob A in Hold B

2010 A.D.

DAVE WOODBURY AND John Hansen, grotesque in their spacesuits, supervised anxiously as the large crate swung slowly out and away from the freight-ship and into the airlock. With nearly a year of their hitch on Space Station A5 behind them, they were understandably weary of filtration units that clanked, hydroponic tubs that leaked, air generators that hummed constantly and stopped occasionally.

“Nothing works,” Woodbury would say mournfully, “because everything is hand-assembled by ourselves.”

“Following directions,” Hansen would add, “composed by an idiot.”

There were undoubtedly grounds for complaint there. The most expensive thing about a spaceship was the room allowed for freight so all equipment had to be sent across space disassembled and nested. All equipment had to be assembled at the Station itself with clumsy hands, inadequate tools and with blurred and ambiguous direction sheets for guidance.

Painstakingly Woodbury had written complaints to which Hansen had added appropriate adjectives, and formal requests for relief of the situation had made their way back to Earth.

And Earth had responded. A special robot had been designed, with a positronic brain crammed with the knowledge of how to assemble properly any disassembled machine in existence.

That robot was in the crate being unloaded now and Woodbury was trembling as the airlock closed behind it.

“First,” he said, “it overhauls the Food-Assembler and adjusts the steak-attachment knob so we can get it rare instead of burnt.”

They entered the Station and attacked the crate with dainty touches of the demoleculizer rods in order to make sure that not a precious metal atom of their special assembly-robot was damaged.

The crate fell open!

And there within it were five hundred separate pieces – and one blurred and ambiguous direction sheet for assemblage.

Runaround

2015 A.D.

IT WAS ONE of Gregory Powell’s favorite platitudes that nothing was to be gained from excitement, so when Mike Donovan came leaping down the stairs toward him, red hair matted with perspiration, Powell frowned.

“What’s wrong?” he said. “Break a fingernail?”

“Yaaaah,” snarled Donovan, feverishly. “What have you been doing in the sublevels all day?” He took a deep breath and blurted out, “Speedy never returned.”

Powell’s eyes widened momentarily and he stopped on the stairs; then he recovered and resumed his upward steps. He didn’t speak until he reached the head of the flight, and then:

“You sent him after the selenium?”

“Yes.”

“And how long has he been out?”

“Five hours now.”

Silence! This was a devil of a situation. Here they were, on Mercury exactly twelve hours – and already up to the eyebrows in the worst sort of trouble. Mercury had long been the jinx world of the System, but this was drawing it rather strong – even for a jinx.

Powell said, “Start at the beginning, and let’s get this straight.”

They were in the radio room now – with its already subtly antiquated equipment, untouched for the ten years previous to their arrival. Even ten years, technologically speaking, meant so much. Compare Speedy with the type of robot they must have had back in 2005. But then, advances in robotics these days were tremendous. Powell touched a still gleaming metal surface gingerly. The air of disuse that touched everything about the room – and the entire Station – was infinitely depressing.

Donovan must have felt it. He began: “I tried to locate him by radio, but it was no go. Radio isn’t any good on the Mercury Sunside – not past two miles, anyway. That’s one of the reasons the First Expedition failed. And we can’t put up the ultrawave equipment for weeks yet-”

“Skip all that. What did you get?”

“I located the unorganized body signal in the short wave. It was no good for anything except his position. I kept track of him that way for two hours and plotted the results on the map.”

There was a yellowed square of parchment in his hip pocket – a relic of the unsuccessful First Expedition – and he slapped it down on the desk with vicious force, spreading it flat with the palm of his hand. Powell, hands clasped across his chest, watched it at long range.

Donovan’s pencil pointed nervously. “The red cross is the selenium pool. You marked it yourself.”

“Which one is it?” interrupted Powell. “There were three that MacDougal located for us before he left.”

“I sent Speedy to the nearest, naturally; seventeen miles away. But what difference does that make?” There was tension in his voice. “There are the penciled dots that mark Speedy’s position.”

And for the first time Powell’s artificial aplomb was shaken and his hands shot forward for the map.

“Are you serious? This is impossible.”

“There it is,” growled Donovan.

The little dots that marked the position formed a rough circle about the red cross of the selenium pool. And Powell’s fingers went to his brown mustache, the unfailing signal of anxiety.

Donovan added: “In the two hours I checked on him, he circled that damned pool four times. It seems likely to me that he’ll keep that up forever. Do you realize the position we’re in?”

Powell looked up shortly, and said nothing. Oh, yes, he realized the position they were in. It worked itself out as simply as a syllogism. The photocell banks that alone stood between the full power of Mercury’s monstrous sun and themselves were shot to hell.

The only thing that could save them was selenium. The only thing that could get the selenium was Speedy. If Speedy didn’t come back, no selenium. No selenium, no photocell banks. No photo-banks – well, death by slow broiling is one of the more unpleasant ways of being done in.

Donovan rubbed his red mop of hair savagely and expressed himself with bitterness. “We’ll be the laughingstock of the System, Greg. How can everything have gone so wrong so soon? The great team of Powell and Donovan is sent out to Mercury to report on the advisability of reopening the Sunside Mining Station with modern techniques and robots and we ruin everything the first day. A purely routine job, too. We’ll never live it down.”

“We won’t have to, perhaps,” replied Powell, quietly. “If we don’t do something quickly, living anything down – or even just plain living – will be out of the question.”

“Don’t be stupid! If you feel funny about it, Greg, I don’t. It was criminal, sending us out here with only one robot. And it was your bright idea that we could handle the photocell banks ourselves.”

“Now you’re being unfair. It was a mutual decision and you know it. All we needed was a kilogram of selenium, a Stillhead Dielectrode Plate and about three hours’ time and there are pools of pure selenium all over Sunside. MacDougal’s spectroreflector spotted three for us in five minutes, didn’t it? What the devil! We couldn’t have waited for next conjunction.”

“Well, what are we going to do? Powell, you’ve got an idea. I know you have, or you wouldn’t be so calm. You’re no more a hero than I am. Go on, spill it!”

“We can’t go after Speedy ourselves, Mike – not on the Sunside. Even the new insosuits aren’t good for more than twenty minutes in direct sunlight. But you know the old saying, ‘Set a robot to catch a robot’ Look, Mike, maybe things aren’t so bad. We’ve got six robots down in the sublevels, that we may be able to use, if they work. If they work.”

There was a glint of sudden hope in Donovan’s eyes. “You mean six robots from the First Expedition. Are you sure? They may be subrobotic machines. Ten years is a long time as far as robot-types are concerned, you know.”

“No, they’re robots. I’ve spent all day with them and I know. They’ve got positronic brains: primitive, of course.” He placed the map in his pocket. “Let’s go down.”

The robots were on the lowest sublevel – all six of them surrounded by musty packing cases of uncertain content. They were large, extremely so, and even though they were in a sitting position on the floor, legs straddled out before them, their heads were a good seven feet in the air.

Donovan whistled. “Look at the size of them, will you? The chests must be ten feet around.”

“That’s because they’re supplied with the old McGuffy gears. I’ve been over the insides – crummiest set you’ve ever seen.”

“Have you powered them yet?”

“No. There wasn’t any reason to. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with them. Even the diaphragm is in reasonable order. They might talk.”

He had unscrewed the chest plate of the nearest as he spoke, inserted the two-inch sphere that contained the tiny spark of atomic energy that was a robot’s life. There was difficulty in fitting it, but he managed, and then screwed the plate back on again in laborious fashion. The radio controls of more modern models had not been heard of ten years earlier. And then to the other five.

Donovan said uneasily, “They haven’t moved.”

“No orders to do so,” replied Powell, succinctly. He went back to the first in the line and struck him on the chest. “You! Do you hear me?”

The monster’s head bent slowly and the eyes fixed themselves on Powell. Then, in a harsh, squawking voice – like that of a medieval phonograph, he grated, “Yes, Master!”

Powell grinned humorlessly at Donovan. “Did you get that? Those were the days of the first talking robots when it looked as if the use of robots on Earth would be banned. The makers were fighting that and they built good, healthy slave complexes into the damned machines.”

“It didn’t help them,” muttered Donovan.

“No, it didn’t, but they sure tried.” He turned once more to the robot. “Get up!”

The robot towered upward slowly and Donovan’s head craned and his puckered lips whistled.

Powell said: “Can you go out upon the surface? In the light?”

There was consideration while the robot’s slow brain worked. Then, “Yes, Master.”

“Good. Do you know what a mile is?”

Another consideration, and another slow answer. “Yes, Master.”

“We will take you up to the surface then, and indicate a direction. You will go about seventeen miles, and somewhere in that general region you will meet another robot, smaller than yourself. You understand so far?”

“Yes, Master.”

“You will find this robot and order him to return. If he does not wish to, you are to bring him back by force.”

Donovan clutched at Powell’s sleeve. “Why not send him for the selenium direct?”

“Because I want Speedy back, nitwit. I want to find out what’s wrong with him.” And to the robot, “All right, you, follow me.”

The robot remained motionless and his voice rumbled: “Pardon, Master, but I cannot. You must mount first.” His clumsy arms had come together with a thwack, blunt fingers interlacing.

Powell stared and then pinched at his mustache. “Uh... oh!”

Donovan’s eyes bulged. “We’ve got to ride him? Like a horse?”

“I guess that’s the idea. I don’t know why, though. I can’t see – Yes, I do. I told you they were playing up robot-safety in those days. Evidently, they were going to sell the notion of safety by not allowing them to move about, without a mahout on their shoulders all the time. What do we do now?”

“That’s what I’ve been thinking,” muttered Donovan. “We can’t go out on the surface, with a robot or without. Oh, for the love of Pete” – and he snapped his fingers twice. He grew excited. “Give me that map you’ve got. I haven’t studied it for two hours for nothing. This is a Mining Station. What’s wrong with using the tunnels?”

The Mining Station was a black circle on the map, and the light dotted lines that were tunnels stretched out about it in spider web fashion.

Donovan studied the list of symbols at the bottom of the map. “Look,” he said, “the small black dots are openings to the surface, and here’s one maybe three miles away from the selenium pool. There’s a number here – you’d think they’d write larger – 13a. If the robots know their way around here-”

Powell shot the question and received the dull “Yes, Master,” in reply. “Get your insosuit,” he said with satisfaction.

It was the first time either had worn the insosuits – which marked one time more than either had expected to upon their arrival the day before – and they tested their limb movements uncomfortably.

The insosuit was far bulkier and far uglier than the regulation spacesuit; but withal considerably lighter, due to the fact that they were entirely nonmetallic in composition. Composed of heat-resistant plastic and chemically treated cork layers, and equipped with a desiccating unit to keep the air bone-dry, the insosuits could withstand the full glare of Mercury’s sun for twenty minutes. Five to ten minutes more, as well, without actually killing the occupant.

And still the robot’s hands formed the stirrup, nor did he betray the slightest atom of surprise at the grotesque figure into which Powell had been converted.

Powell’s radio-harshened voice boomed out: “Are you ready to take us to Exit 13a?”

“Yes, Master.”

Good, thought Powell; they might lack radio control but at least they were fitted for radio reception. “Mount one or the other, Mike,” he said to Donovan.

He placed a foot in the improvised stirrup and swung upward. He found the seat comfortable; there was the humped back of the robot, evidently shaped for the purpose, a shallow groove along each shoulder for the thighs and two elongated “ears” whose purpose now seemed obvious.

Powell seized the ears and twisted the head. His mount turned ponderously. “Lead on, Macduff.” But he did not feel at all lighthearted.

The gigantic robots moved slowly, with mechanical precision, through the doorway that cleared their heads by a scant foot, so that the two men had to duck hurriedly, along a narrow corridor in which their unhurried footsteps boomed monotonously and into the, air lock.

The long, airless tunnel that stretched to a pinpoint before them brought home forcefully to Powell the exact magnitude of the task accomplished by the First Expedition, with their crude robots and their start-from-scratch necessities. They might have been a failure, but their failure was a good deal better than the usual run of the System’s successes.

The robots plodded onward with a pace that never varied and with footsteps that never lengthened.

Powell said: “Notice that these tunnels are blazing with lights and that the temperature is Earth-normal. It’s probably been like this all the ten years that this place has remained empty.”

“How’s that?”

“Cheap energy; cheapest in the System. Sunpower, you know, and on Mercury’s Sunside, sunpower is something. That’s why the Station was built in the sunlight rather than in the shadow of a mountain. It’s really a huge energy converter. The heat is turned into electricity, light, mechanical work and what have you; so that energy is supplied and the Station is cooled in a simultaneous process.”

“Look,” said Donovan. “This is all very educational, but would you mind changing the subject? It so happens that this conversion of energy that you talk about is carried on by the photocell banks mainly – and that is a tender subject with me at the moment.”

Powell grunted vaguely, and when Donovan broke the resulting silence, it was to change the subject completely. “Listen, Greg. What the devil’s wrong with Speedy, anyway? I can’t understand it.”

It’s not easy to shrug shoulders in an insosuit, but Powell tried it. “I don’t know, Mike. You know he’s perfectly adapted to a Mercurian environment. Heat doesn’t mean anything to him and he’s built for the light gravity and the broken ground. He’s foolproof – or, at least, he should be.”

Silence fell. This time, silence that lasted.

“Master,” said the robot, “we are here.”

“Eh?” Powell snapped out of a semidrowse. “Well, get us out of here – out to the surface.”

They found themselves in a tiny substation, empty, airless, ruined. Donovan had inspected a jagged hole in the upper reaches of one of the walls by the light of his pocket flash.

“Meteorite, do you suppose?” he had asked.

Powell shrugged. “To hell with that. It doesn’t matter. Let’s get out.”

A towering cliff of a black, basaltic rock cut off the sunlight, and the deep night shadow of an airless world surrounded them. Before them, the shadow reached out and ended in knife-edge abruptness into an all-but-unbearable blaze of white light, that glittered from myriad crystals along a rocky ground.

“Space!” gasped Donovan. “It looks like snow.” And it did.

Powell’s eyes swept the jagged glitter of Mercury to the horizon and winced at the gorgeous brilliance.

“This must be an unusual area,” he said. “The general albedo of Mercury is low and most of the soil is gray pumice. Something like the Moon, you know. Beautiful, isn’t it?”

He was thankful for the light filters in their visiplates. Beautiful or not, a look at the sunlight through straight glass would have blinded them inside of half a minute.

Donovan was looking at the spring thermometer on his wrist. “Holy smokes, the temperature is eighty centigrade!”

Powell checked his own and said: “Um-m-m. A little high. Atmosphere, you know.”

“On Mercury? Are you nuts?”

“Mercury isn’t really airless,” explained Powell, in absentminded fashion. He was adjusting the binocular attachments to his visiplate, and the bloated fingers of the insosuit were clumsy at it. “There is a thin exhalation that clings to its surface – vapors of the more volatile elements and compounds that are heavy enough for Mercurian gravity to retain. You know: selenium, iodine, mercury, gallium, potassium, bismuth, volatile oxides. The vapors sweep into the shadows and condense, giving up heat. It’s a sort of gigantic still. In fact, if you use your flash, you’ll probably find that the side of the cliff is covered with, say, hoar-sulphur, or maybe quicksilver dew.

“It doesn’t matter, though. Our suits can stand a measly eighty indefinitely.”

Powell had adjusted the binocular attachments, so that he seemed as eye-stalked as a snail.

Donovan watched tensely. “See anything?”

The other did not answer immediately, and when he did, his voice was anxious and thoughtful. “There’s a dark spot on the horizon that might be the selenium pool. It’s in the right place. But I don’t see Speedy.”

Powell clambered upward in an instinctive striving for better view, till he was standing in unsteady fashion upon his robot’s shoulders. Legs straddled wide, eyes straining, he said: “I think... I think – Yes, it’s definitely he. He’s coming this way.”

Donovan followed the pointing finger. He had no binoculars, but there was a tiny moving dot, black against the blazing brilliance of the crystalline ground.

“I see him,” he yelled. “Let’s get going!”

Powell had hopped down into a sitting position on the robot again, and his suited hand slapped against the Gargantuan’s barrel chest. “Get going!”

“Giddy-ap,” yelled Donovan, and thumped his heels, spur fashion.

The robots started off, the regular thudding of their footsteps silent in the airlessness, for the nonmetallic fabric of the insosuits did not transmit sound. There was only a rhythmic vibration just below the border of actual hearing.

“Faster,” yelled Donovan. The rhythm did not change.

“No use,” cried Powell, in reply. “These junk heaps are only geared to one speed. Do you think they’re equipped with selective flexors?”

They had burst through the shadow, and the sunlight came down in a white-hot wash and poured liquidly about them.

Donovan ducked involuntarily. “Wow! Is it imagination or do I feel heat?”

“You’ll feel more presently,” was the grim reply. “Keep your eye on Speedy.”

Robot SPD 13 was near enough to be seen in detail now. His graceful, streamlined body threw out blazing highlights as he loped with easy speed across the broken ground. His name was derived from his serial initials, of course, but it was apt, nevertheless, for the SPD models were among the fastest robots turned out by the United States Robot & Mechanical Men Corp.

“Hey, Speedy,” howled Donovan, and waved a frantic hand.

“Speedy!” shouted Powell. “Come here!”

The distance between the men and the errant robot was being cut down momentarily – more by the efforts of Speedy than the slow plodding of the fifty-year-old antique mounts of Donovan and Powell.

They were close enough now to notice that Speedy’s gait included a peculiar rolling stagger, a noticeable side-to-side lurch – and then, as Powell waved his hand again and sent maximum juice into his compact headset radio sender, in preparation for another shout, Speedy looked up and saw them.

Speedy hopped to a halt and remained standing for a moment with just a tiny, unsteady weave, as though he were swaying in a light wind.

Powell yelled: “All right, Speedy. Come here, boy.”

Whereupon Speedy’s robot voice sounded in Powell’s earphones for the first time.

It said: “Hot dog, let’s play games. You catch me and I catch you; no love can cut our knife in two. For I’m Little Buttercup, sweet Little Buttercup. Whoops!” Turning on his heel, he sped off in the direction from which he had come, with a speed and fury that kicked up gouts of baked dust.

And his last words as he receded into the distance were, “There grew a little flower ‘neath a great oak tree,” followed by a curious metallic clicking that might have been a robotic equivalent of a hiccup.

Donovan said weakly: “Where did he pick up the Gilbert and Sullivan? Say, Greg, he... he’s drunk or something.”

“If you hadn’t told me,” was the bitter response, “I’d never realize it. Let’s get back to the cliff. I’m roasting.”

It was Powell who broke the desperate silence. “In the first place,” he said, “Speedy isn’t drunk – not in the human sense – because he’s a robot, and robots don’t get drunk. However, there’s something wrong with him which is the robotic equivalent of drunkenness”

“To me, he’s drunk,” stated Donovan, emphatically, “and all I know is that he thinks we’re playing games. And we’re not. It’s a matter of life and very gruesome death.”

“All right. Don’t hurry me. A robot’s only a robot. Once we find out what’s wrong with him, we can fix it and go on.”

“Once,” said Donovan, sourly.

Powell ignored him. “Speedy is perfectly adapted to normal Mercurian environment. But this region” – and his arm swept wide – “is definitely abnormal. There’s our clue. Now where do these crystals come from? They might have formed from a slowly cooling liquid; but where would you get liquid so hot that it would cool in Mercury’s sun?”

“Volcanic action,” suggested Donovan, instantly, and Powell’s body tensed.

“Out of the mouths of sucklings,” he said in a small, strange voice and remained very still for five minutes.

Then, he said, “Listen, Mike, what did you say to Speedy when you sent him after the selenium?”

Donovan was taken aback. “Well damn it – I don’t know. I just told him to get it.”

“Yes, I know, but how? Try to remember the exact words.”

“I said... uh... I said: ‘Speedy, we need some selenium. You can get it such-and-such a place. Go get it – that’s all. What more did you want me to say?”

“You didn’t put any urgency into the order, did you?”

“What for? It was pure routine.”

Powell sighed. “Well, it can’t be helped now – but we’re in a fine fix.” He had dismounted from his robot, and was sitting, back against the cliff. Donovan joined him and they linked arms: In the distance the burning sunlight seemed to wait cat-and-mouse for them, and just next them, the two giant robots were invisible but for the dull red of their photoelectric eyes that stared down at them, unblinking, unwavering and unconcerned.

Unconcerned! As was all this poisonous Mercury, as large in jinx as it was small in size.

Powell’s radio voice was tense in Donovan’s ear: “Now, look, let’s start with the three fundamental Rules of Robotics – the three rules that are built most deeply into a robot’s positronic brain.” In the darkness, his gloved fingers ticked off each point.

“We have: One, a robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”

“Right!”

“Two,” continued Powell, “a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.”

“Right”

“And three, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.”

“Right! Now where are we?”

“Exactly at the explanation. The conflict between the various rules is ironed out by the different positronic potentials in the brain. We’ll say that a robot is walking into danger and knows it. The automatic potential that Rule 3 sets up turns him back. But suppose you order him to walk into that danger. In that case, Rule 2 sets up a counterpotential higher than the previous one and the robot follows orders at the risk of existence.”

“Well, I know that. What about it?”

“Let’s take Speedy’s case. Speedy is one of the latest models, extremely specialized, and as expensive as a battleship. It’s not a thing to be lightly destroyed”

“So?”

“So Rule 3 has been strengthened – that was specifically mentioned, by the way, in the advance notices on the SPD models – so that his allergy to danger is unusually high. At the same time, when you sent him out after the selenium, you gave him his order casually and without special emphasis, so that the Rule 2 potential set-up was rather weak. Now, hold on; I’m just stating facts.”

“All right, go ahead. I think I get it.”

“You see how it works, don’t you? There’s some sort of danger centering at the selenium pool. It increases as he approaches, and at a certain distance from it the Rule 3 potential, unusually high to start with, exactly balances the Rule 2 potential, unusually low to start with.”

Donovan rose to his feet in excitement. “And it strikes an equilibrium. I see. Rule 3 drives him back and Rule 2 drives him forward-”

“So he follows a circle around the selenium pool, staying on the locus of all points of potential equilibrium. And unless we do something about it, he’ll stay on that circle forever, giving us the good old runaround.” Then, more thoughtfully: “And that, by the way, is what makes him drunk. At potential equilibrium, half the positronic paths of his brain are out of kilter. I’m not a robot specialist, but that seems obvious. Probably he’s lost control of just those parts of his voluntary mechanism that a human drunk has. Ve-e-ery pretty.”

“But what’s the danger? If we knew what he was running from-”?

“You suggested it. Volcanic action. Somewhere right above the selenium pool is a seepage of gas from the bowels of Mercury. Sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide – and carbon monoxide. Lots of it and at this temperature.”

Donovan gulped audibly. “Carbon monoxide plus iron gives the volatile iron carbonyl.”

“And a robot,” added Powell, “is essentially iron.” Then, grimly: “There’s nothing like deduction. We’ve determined everything about our problem but the solution. We can’t get the selenium ourselves. It’s still too far. We can’t send these robot horses, because they can’t go themselves, and they can’t carry us fast enough to keep us from crisping. And we can’t catch Speedy, because the dope thinks we’re playing games, and he can run sixty miles to our four.”

“If one of us goes,” began Donovan, tentatively, “and comes back cooked, there’ll still be the other.”

“Yes,” came the sarcastic reply, “it would be a most tender sacrifice – except that a person would be in no condition to give orders before he ever reached the pool, and I don’t think the robots would ever turn back to the cliff without orders. Figure it out! We’re two or three miles from the pool – call it two – the robot travels at four miles an hour; and we can last twenty minutes in our suits. It isn’t only the heat, remember. Solar radiation out here in the ultraviolet and below is poison.”

“Um-m-m,” said Donovan, “ten minutes short.”

“As good as an eternity. And another thing, in order for Rule 3 potential to have stopped Speedy where it did, there must be an appreciable amount of carbon monoxide in the metal-vapor atmosphere – and there must be an appreciable corrosive action therefore. He’s been out hours now – and how do we know when a knee joint, for instance, won’t be thrown out of kilter and keel him over. It’s not only a question of thinking – we’ve got to think fast!”

Deep, dark, dank, dismal silence!

Donovan broke it, voice trembling in an effort to keep itself emotionless. He said: “As long as we can’t increase Rule 2 potential by giving further orders, how about working the other way? If we increase the danger, we increase Rule 3 potential and drive him backward.”

Powell’s visiplate had turned toward him in a silent question.

“You see,” came the cautious explanation, “all we need to do to drive him out of his rut is to increase the concentration of carbon monoxide in his vicinity. Well, back at the Station there’s a complete analytical laboratory.”

“Naturally,” assented Powell. “It’s a Mining Station.”

“All right. There must be pounds of oxalic acid for calcium precipitations.”

“Holy space! Mike, you’re a genius.”

“So-so,” admitted Donovan, modestly. “It’s just a case of remembering that oxalic acid on heating decomposes into carbon dioxide, water, and good old carbon monoxide. College chem, you know.”

Powell was on his feet and had attracted the attention of one of the monster robots by the simple expedient of pounding the machine’s thigh.

“Hey,” he shouted, “can you throw?”

“Master?”

“Never mind.” Powell damned the robot’s molasses-slow brain. He scrabbled up a jagged brick-size rock. “Take this,” he said, “and hit the patch of bluish crystals just across the crooked fissure. You see it?”

Donovan pulled at his shoulder. “Too far, Greg. It’s almost half a mile off.”

“Quiet,” replied Powell. “It’s a case of Mercurian gravity and a steel throwing arm. Watch, will you?”

The robot’s eyes were measuring the distance with machinely accurate stereoscopy. His arm adjusted itself to the weight of the missile and drew back. In the darkness, the robot’s motions went unseen, but there was a sudden thumping sound as he shifted his weight, and seconds later the rock flew blackly into the sunlight. There was no air resistance to slow it down, nor wind to turn it aside – and when it hit the ground it threw up crystals precisely in the center of the “blue patch.”

Powell yelled happily and shouted, “Let’s go back after the oxalic acid, Mike.”

And as they plunged into the ruined substation on the way back to the tunnels, Donovan said grimly: “Speedy’s been hanging about on this side of the selenium pool, ever since we chased after him. Did you see him?”

“Yes.”

“I guess he wants to play games. Well, we’ll play him games!”

They were back hours later, with three-liter jars of the white chemical and a pair of long faces. The photocell banks were deteriorating more rapidly than had seemed likely. The two steered their robots into the sunlight and toward the waiting Speedy in silence and with grim purpose.

Speedy galloped slowly toward them. “Here we are again. Whee! I’ve made a little list, the piano organist; all people who eat peppermint and puff it in your face.”

“We’ll puff something in your face,” muttered Donovan. “He’s limping, Greg.”

“I noticed that,” came the low, worried response. “The monoxide’ll get him yet, if we don’t hurry.”

They were approaching cautiously now, almost sidling, to refrain from setting off the thoroughly irrational robot. Powell was too far off to tell, of course, but even already he could have sworn the crack-brained Speedy was setting himself for a spring.

“Let her go,” he gasped. “Count three! One-two-”

Two steel arms drew back and snapped forward simultaneously and two glass jars whirled forward in towering parallel arcs, gleaming like diamonds in the impossible sun. And in a pair of soundless puffs, they hit the ground behind Speedy in crashes that sent the oxalic acid flying like dust.

In the full heat of Mercury’s sun, Powell knew it was fizzing like soda water.

Speedy turned to stare, then backed away from it slowly – and as slowly gathered speed. In fifteen seconds, he was leaping directly toward the two humans in an unsteady canter.

Powell did not get Speedy’s words just then, though he heard something that resembled, “Lover’s professions when uttered in Hessians.”

He turned away. “Back to the cliff, Mike. He’s out of the rut and he’ll be taking orders now. I’m getting hot.”

They jogged toward the shadow at the slow monotonous pace of their mounts, and it was not until they had entered it and felt the sudden coolness settle softly about them that Donovan looked back. “Greg!”

Powell looked and almost shrieked. Speedy was moving slowly now – so slowly – and in the wrong direction. He was drifting; drifting back into his rut; and he was picking up speed. He looked dreadfully close, and dreadfully unreachable, in the binoculars.

Donovan shouted wildly, “After him!” and thumped his robot into its pace, but Powell called him back.

“You won’t catch him, Mike – it’s no use.” He fidgeted on his robot’s shoulders and clenched his fist in tight impotence. “Why the devil do I see these things five seconds after it’s all over? Mike, we’ve wasted hours.”

“We need more oxalic acid,” declared Donovan, stolidly. “The concentration wasn’t high enough.”

“Seven tons of it wouldn’t have been enough – and we haven’t the hours to spare to get it, even if it were, with the monoxide chewing him away. Don’t you see what it is, Mike?”

And Donovan said flatly, “No.”

“We were only establishing new equilibriums. When we create new monoxide and increase Rule 3 potential, he moves backward till he’s in balance again – and when the monoxide drifted away, he moved forward, and again there was balance.”

Powell’s voice sounded thoroughly wretched. “It’s the same old runaround. We can push at Rule 2 and pull at Rule 3 and we can’t get anywhere – we can only change the position of balance. We’ve got to get outside both rules.” And then he pushed his robot closer to Donovan’s so that they were sitting face-to-face, dim shadows in the darkness, and he whispered, “Mike!”

“Is it the finish?” – dully. “I suppose we go back to the Station, wait for the banks to fold, shake hands, take cyanide, and go out like gentlemen.” He laughed shortly.

“Mike,” repeated Powell earnestly, “we’ve got to get Speedy.”

“I know.”

“Mike,” once more, and Powell hesitated before continuing. “There’s always Rule 1. I thought of it – earlier – but it’s desperate.”

Donovan looked up and his voice livened. “We’re desperate.”

“All right. According to Rule 1, a robot can’t see a human come to harm because of his own inaction. Two and 3 can’t stand against it. They can’t, Mike.”

“Even when the robot is half cra-Well, he’s drunk. You know he is.”

“It’s the chances you take.”

“Cut it. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going out there now and see what Rule 1 will do. If it won’t break the balance, then what the devil – it’s either now or three-four days from now.”

“Hold on, Greg. There are human rules of behavior, too. You don’t go out there just like that. Figure out a lottery, and give me my chance.”

“All right. First to get the cube of fourteen goes.” And almost immediately, “Twenty-seven forty-four!”

Donovan felt his robot stagger at a sudden push by Powell’s mount and then Powell was off into the sunlight. Donovan opened his mouth to shout, and then clicked it shut. Of course, the damn fool had worked out the cube of fourteen in advance, and on purpose. Just like him.

The sun was hotter than ever and Powell felt a maddening itch in the small of his back. Imagination, probably, or perhaps hard radiation beginning to tell even through the insosuit.

Speedy was watching him, without a word of Gilbert and Sullivan gibberish as greeting. Thank God for that! But he daren’t get too close.

He was three hundred yards away when Speedy began backing, a step at a time, cautiously – and Powell stopped. He jumped from his robot’s shoulders and landed on the crystalline ground with a light thump and a flying of jagged fragments.

He proceeded on foot, the ground gritty and slippery to his steps, the low gravity causing him difficulty. The soles of his feet tickled with warmth. He cast one glance over his shoulder at the blackness of the cliff’s shadow and realized that he had come too far to return – either by himself or by the help of his antique robot. It was Speedy or nothing now, and the knowledge of that constricted his chest.

Far enough! He stopped.

“Speedy,” he called. “Speedy!”

The sleek, modern robot ahead of him hesitated and halted his backward steps, then resumed them.

Powell tried to put a note of pleading into his voice, and found it didn’t take much acting. “Speedy, I’ve got to get back to the shadow or the sun’ll get me. It’s life or death, Speedy. I need you.”

Speedy took one step forward and stopped. He spoke, but at the sound Powell groaned, for it was, “When you’re lying awake with a dismal headache and repose is tabooed-” It trailed off there, and Powell took time out for some reason to murmur, “Iolanthe.”

It was roasting hot! He caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, and whirled dizzily; then stared in utter astonishment, for the monstrous robot on which he had ridden was moving – moving toward him, and without a rider.

He was talking: “Pardon, Master. I must not move without a Master upon me, but you are in danger.”

Of course, Rule 1 potential above everything. But he didn’t want that clumsy antique; he wanted Speedy. He walked away and motioned frantically: “I order you to stay away. I order you to stop!”

It was quite useless. You could not beat Rule 1 potential. The robot said stupidly, “You are in danger, Master.”

Powell looked about him desperately. He couldn’t see clearly. His brain was in a heated whirl; his breath scorched when he breathed, and the ground all about him was a shimmering haze.

He called a last time, desperately: “Speedy! I’m dying, damn you! Where are you? Speedy, I need you.”

He was still stumbling backward in a blind effort to get away from the giant robot he didn’t want, when he felt steel fingers on his arms, and a worried, apologetic voice of metallic timbre in his ears.

“Holy smokes, boss; what are you doing here? And what am I doing – I’m so confused –”

“Never mind,” murmured Powell, weakly. “Get me to the shadow of the cliff – and hurry!” There was one last feeling of being lifted into the air and a sensation of rapid motion and burning heat, and he passed out.

He woke with Donovan bending over him and smiling anxiously. “How are you, Greg?”

“Fine!” came the response, “Where’s Speedy?”

“Right here. I sent him out to one of the other selenium pools – with orders to get that selenium at all cost this time. He got it back in forty-two minutes and three seconds. I timed him. He still hasn’t finished apologizing for the runaround he gave us. He’s scared to come near you for fear of what you’ll say.”

“Drag him over,” ordered Powell. “It wasn’t his fault.” He held out a hand and gripped Speedy’s metal paw. “It’s O.K., Speedy.” Then, to Donovan, “You know, Mike, I was just thinking-”

“Yes!”

“Well,” – he rubbed his face – the air was so delightfully cool, “you know that when we get things set up here and Speedy put through his Field Tests, they’re going to send us to the Space Stations next-”

“No!”

“Yes! At least that’s what old lady Calvin told me just before we left, and I didn’t say anything about it, because I was going to fight the whole idea.”

“Fight it?” cried Donovan. “But-”

“I know. It’s all right with me now. Two hundred seventy-three degrees Centigrade below zero. Won’t it be a pleasure?”

“Space Station,” said Donovan, “here I come.”

Reason

2015 A.D.

HALF A YEAR later, the boys had changed their minds. The flame of a giant sun had given way to the soft blackness of space but external variations mean little in the business of checking the workings of experimental robots. Whatever the background, one is face to face with an inscrutable positronic brain, which the slide-rule geniuses say should work thus-and-so.

Except that they don’t. Powell and Donovan found that out after they had been on the Station less than two weeks.

Gregory Powell spaced his words for emphasis, “One week ago, Donovan and I put you together.” His brows furrowed doubtfully and he pulled the end of his brown mustache.

It was quiet in the officer’s room on Solar Station #5 – except for the soft purring of the mighty Beam Director somewhere far below.

Robot QT-1 sat immovable. The burnished plates of his body gleamed in the Luxites and the glowing red of the photoelectric cells that were his eyes, were fixed steadily upon the Earthman at the other side of the table.

Powell repressed a sudden attack of nerves. These robots possessed peculiar brains. Oh, the three Laws of Robotics held. They had to. All of U. S. Robots, from Robertson himself to the new floor-sweeper, would insist on that. So QT-1 was safe! And yet the QT models were the first of their kind, and this was the first of the QT’s. Mathematical squiggles on paper were not always the most comforting protection against robotic fact.

Finally, the robot spoke. His voice carried the cold timbre inseparable from a metallic diaphragm, “Do you realize the seriousness of such a statement, Powell?”

“Something made you, Cutie,” pointed out Powell. “You admit yourself that your memory seems to spring full-grown from an absolute blankness of a week ago. I’m giving you the explanation. Donovan and I put you together from the parts shipped us.”

Cutie gazed upon his long, supple fingers in an oddly human attitude of mystification, “It strikes me that there should be a more satisfactory explanation than that. For you to make me seems improbable.”

The Earthman laughed quite suddenly, “In Earth’s name, why?”

“Call it intuition. That’s all it is so far. But I intend to reason it out, though. A chain of valid reasoning can end only with the determination of truth, and I’ll stick till I get there.”

Powell stood up and seated himself at the table’s edge next to the robot. He felt a sudden strong sympathy for this strange machine. It was not at all like the ordinary robot, attending to his specialized task at the station with the intensity of a deeply ingrooved positronic path.

He placed a hand upon Cutie’s steel shoulder and the metal was cold and hard to the touch.

“Cutie,” he said, “I’m going to try to explain something to you. You’re the first robot who’s ever exhibited curiosity as to his own existence – and I think the first that’s really intelligent enough to understand the world outside. Here, come with me.”

The robot rose erect smoothly and his thickly sponge-rubber soled feet made no noise as he followed Powell. The Earthman touched a button and a square section of the wall flickered aside. The thick, clear glass revealed space – star speckled.

“I’ve seen that in the observation ports in the engine room,” said Cutie.

“I know,” said Powell. “What do you think it is?”

“Exactly what it seems – a black material just beyond this glass that is spotted with little gleaming dots. I know that our director sends out beams to some of these dots, always to the same ones – and also that these dots shift and that the beams shift with them. That is all.”

“Good! Now I want you to listen carefully. The blackness is emptiness vast emptiness stretching out infinitely. The little, gleaming dots are huge masses of energy-filled matter. They are globes, some of them millions of miles in diameter and for comparison; this station is only one mile across. They seem so tiny because they are incredibly far off.

“The dots to which our energy beams are directed are nearer and much smaller. They are cold and hard and human beings like myself live upon their surfaces – many billions of them. It is from one of these worlds that Donovan and I come. Our beams feed these worlds energy drawn from one of those huge incandescent globes that happens to be near us. We call that globe the Sun and it is on the other side of the station where you can’t see it.”

Cutie remained motionless before the port, like a steel statue. His head did not turn as he spoke, “Which particular dot of light do you claim to come from?”

Powell searched, “There it is, the very bright one in the corner, we call it Earth.” He grinned. “Good old Earth. There are three billions of us there, Cutie – and in about two weeks I’ll be back there with them”

And then, surprisingly enough, Cutie hummed abstractedly. There was no tune to it, but it possessed a curious twanging quality as of plucked strings. It ceased as suddenly as it had begun, “But where do I come in, Powell? You haven’t explained my existence.”

“The rest is simple. When these stations were first established to feed solar energy to the planets, they were run by humans. However, the heat, the hard solar radiations, and the electron storms made the post a difficult one. Robots were developed to replace human labor and now only two human executives are required for each station. We are trying to replace even those, and that’s where you come in. You’re the highest type of robot ever developed and if you show the ability to run this station independently, no human need ever come here again except to bring parts for repairs.”

His hand went up and the metal visi-lid snapped back into place. Powell returned to the table and polished an apple upon his sleeve before biting into it.

The red glow of the robot’s eyes held him. “Do you expect me,” said Cutie slowly, “to believe any such complicated, implausible hypothesis as you have just outlined? What do you take me for?”

Powell sputtered apple fragments onto the table and turned red. “Why damn you, it wasn’t a hypothesis. Those were facts”

Cutie sounded grim, “Globes of energy millions of miles across! Worlds with three billion humans on them! Infinite emptiness! Sorry, Powell, but I don’t believe it. I’ll puzzle this thing out for myself. Good-by.”

He turned and stalked out of the room. He brushed past Michael Donovan on the threshold with a grave nod and passed down the corridor, oblivious to the astounded stare that followed him.

Mike Donovan rumpled his red hair and shot an annoyed glance at Powell, “What was that walking junk yard talking about? What doesn’t he believe?”

The other dragged at his mustache bitterly. “He’s a skeptic,” was the bitter response. “He doesn’t believe we made him or that Earth exists or space or stars.”

“Sizzling Saturn, we’ve got a lunatic robot on our hands.”

“He says he’s going to figure it all out for himself.”

“Well, now,” said Donovan sweetly, “I do hope he’ll condescend to explain it all to me after he’s puzzled everything out” Then, with sudden rage, “Listen! If that metal mess gives me any lip like that, I’ll knock that chromium cranium right off its torso.”

He seated himself with a jerk and drew a paper-backed mystery novel out of his inner jacket pocket, “That robot gives me the willies anyway – too damned inquisitive!”

Mike Donovan growled from behind a huge lettuce-and-tomato sandwich as Cutie knocked gently and entered.

“Is Powell here?”

Donovan’s voice was muffled, with pauses for mastication, “He’s gathering data on electronic stream functions. We’re heading for a storm, looks like.”

Gregory Powell entered as he spoke, eyes on the graphed paper in his hands, and dropped into a chair. He spread the sheets out before him and began scribbling calculations. Donovan stared over his shoulder, crunching lettuce and dribbling breadcrumbs. Cutie waited silently.

Powell looked up, “The Zeta Potential is rising, but slowly. Just the same, the stream functions are erratic and I don’t know what to expect. Oh, hello, Cutie. I thought you were supervising the installation of the new drive bar.”

“It’s done,” said the robot quietly, “and so I’ve come to have a talk with the two of you”

“Oh!” Powell looked uncomfortable. “Well, sit down. No, not that chair. One of the legs is weak and you’re no lightweight.”

The robot did so and said placidly, “I have come to a decision.”

Donovan glowered and put the remnants of his sandwich aside. “If it’s on any of that screwy-”

The other motioned impatiently for silence, “Go ahead, Cutie. We’re listening.”

“I have spent these last two days in concentrated introspection,” said Cutie, “and the results have been most interesting. I began at the one sure assumption I felt permitted to make. I, myself, exist, because I think-”

Powell groaned, “Oh, Jupiter, a robot Descartes!”

“Who’s Descartes?” demanded Donovan. “Listen, do we have to sit here and listen to this metal maniac-”

“Keep quiet, Mike!”

Cutie continued imperturbably, “And the question that immediately arose was: Just what is the cause of my existence?”

Powell’s jaw set lumpily. “You’re being foolish. I told you already that we made you.”

“And if you don’t believe us,” added Donovan, “we’ll gladly take you apart!”

The robot spread his strong hands in a deprecatory gesture, “I accept nothing on authority. A hypothesis must be backed by reason, or else it is worthless – and it goes against all the dictates of logic to suppose that you made me.”

Powell dropped a restraining arm upon Donovan’s suddenly bunched fist. “Just why do you say that?”

Cutie laughed. It was a very inhuman laugh – the most machine-like utterance he had yet given vent to. It was sharp and explosive, as regular as a metronome and as uninflected.

“Look at you,” he said finally. “I say this in no spirit of contempt, but look at you! The material you are made of is soft and flabby, lacking endurance and strength, depending for energy upon the inefficient oxidation of organic material – like that.” He pointed a disapproving finger at what remained of Donovan’s sandwich. “Periodically you pass into a coma and the least variation in temperature, air pressure, humidity, or radiation intensity impairs your efficiency. You are makeshift.

“I, on the other hand, am a finished product. I absorb electrical energy directly and utilize it with an almost one hundred percent efficiency. I am composed of strong metal, am continuously conscious, and can stand extremes of environment easily. These are facts which, with the self-evident proposition that no being can create another being superior to itself, smashes your silly hypothesis to nothing.”

Donovan’s muttered curses rose into intelligibility as he sprang to his feet, rusty eyebrows drawn low. “All right, you son of a hunk of iron ore, if we didn’t make you, who did?”

Cutie nodded gravely. “Very good, Donovan. That was indeed the next question. Evidently my creator must be more powerful than myself and so there was only one possibility.”

The Earthmen looked blank and Cutie continued, “What is the center of activities here in the station? What do we all serve? What absorbs all our attention?” He waited expectantly.

Donovan turned a startled look upon his companion. “I’ll bet this tinplated screwball is talking about the Energy Converter itself.”

“Is that right, Cutie?” grinned Powell.

“I am talking about the Master,” came the cold, sharp answer.

It was the signal for a roar of laughter from Donovan, and Powell himself dissolved into a half-suppressed giggle.

Cutie had risen to his feet and his gleaming eyes passed from one Earthman to the other. “It is so just the same and I don’t wonder that you refuse to believe. You two are not long to stay here, I’m sure. Powell himself said that at first only men served the Master; that there followed robots for the routine work; and, finally, myself for the executive labor. The facts are no doubt true, but the explanation entirely illogical. Do you want the truth behind it all?”

“Go ahead, Cutie. You’re amusing.”

“The Master created humans first as the lowest type, most easily formed. Gradually, he replaced them by robots, the next higher step, and finally he created me to take the place of the last humans. From now on, I serve the Master.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” said Powell sharply. “You’ll follow our orders and keep quiet, until we’re satisfied that you can run the Converter. Get that! The Converter – not the Master. If you don’t satisfy us, you will be dismantled. And now – if you don’t mind – you can leave. And take this data with you and file it properly.”

Cutie accepted the graphs handed him and left without another word. Donovan leaned back heavily in his chair and shoved thick fingers through his hair.

“There’s going to be trouble with that robot. He’s pure nuts!”

The drowsy hum of the Converter is louder in the control room and mixed with it is the chuckle of the Geiger Counters and the erratic buzzing of half a dozen little signal lights.

Donovan withdrew his eye from the telescope and flashed the Luxites on. “The beam from Station #4 caught Mars on schedule. We can break ours now.”

Powell nodded abstractedly. “Cutie’s down in the engine room. I’ll flash the signal and he can take care of it. Look, Mike, what do you think of these figures?”

The other cocked an eye at them and whistled. “Boy, that’s what I call gamma-ray intensity. Old Sol is feeling his oats, all right.”

“Yeah,” was the sour response, “and we’re in a bad position for an electron storm, too. Our Earth beam is right in the probable path.” He shoved his chair away from the table pettishly. “Nuts! If it would only hold off till relief got here, but that’s ten days off. Say, Mike, go on down and keep an eye on Cutie, will you?”

“O.K. Throw me some of those almonds.” He snatched at the bag thrown him and headed for the elevator.

It slid smoothly downward, and opened onto a narrow catwalk in the huge engine room. Donovan leaned over the railing and looked down. The huge generators were in motion and from the L-tubes came the low-pitched whir that pervaded the entire station.

He could make out Cutie’s large, gleaming figure at the Martian L-tube, watching closely as the team of robots worked in close-knit unison.

And then Donovan stiffened. The robots, dwarfed by the mighty L-tube, lined up before it, heads bowed at a stiff angle, while Cutie walked up and down the line slowly. Fifteen seconds passed, and then, with a clank heard above the clamorous purring all about, they fell to their knees.

Donovan squawked and raced down the narrow staircase. He came charging down upon them, complexion matching his hair and clenched fists beating the air furiously.

“What the devil is this, you brainless lumps? Come on! Get busy with that L-tube! If you don’t have it apart, cleaned, and together again before the day is out, I’ll coagulate your brains with alternating current.”

Not a robot moved!

Even Cutie at the far end – the only one on his feet – remained silent, eyes fixed upon the gloomy recesses of the vast machine before him.

Donovan shoved hard against the nearest robot.

“Stand up!” he roared.

Slowly, the robot obeyed. His photoelectric eyes focused reproachfully upon the Earthman.

“There is no Master but the Master,” he said, “and QT-1 is his prophet.”

“Huh?” Donovan became aware of twenty pairs of mechanical eyes fixed upon him and twenty stiff-timbered voices declaiming solemnly:

“There is no Master but the Master and QT-1 is his prophet!”

“I’m afraid,” put in Cutie himself at this point, “that my friends obey a higher one than you, now.”

“The hell they do! You get out of here. I’ll settle with you later and with these animated gadgets right now.”

Cutie shook his heavy head slowly. “I’m sorry, but you don’t understand. These are robots – and that means they are reasoning beings. They recognize the Master, now that I have preached Truth to them. All the robots do. They call me the prophet.” His head drooped. “I am unworthy – but perhaps-”

Donovan located his breath and put it to use. “Is that so? Now, isn’t that nice? Now, isn’t that just fine? Just let me tell you something, my brass baboon. There isn’t any Master and there isn’t any prophet and there isn’t any question as to who’s giving the orders. Understand?” His voice shot to a roar. “Now, get out!”

“I obey only the Master.”

“Damn the Master!” Donovan spat at the L-tube. “That for the Master! Do as I say!”

Cutie said nothing, nor did any other robot, but Donovan became aware of a sudden heightening of tension. The cold, staring eyes deepened their crimson, and Cutie seemed stiffer than ever.

“Sacrilege,” he whispered – voice metallic with emotion.

Donovan felt the first sudden touch of fear as Cutie approached. A robot could not feel anger – but Cutie’s eyes were unreadable.

“I am sorry, Donovan,” said the robot, “but you can no longer stay here after this. Henceforth Powell and you are barred from the control room and the engine room.”

His hand gestured quietly and in a moment two robots had pinned Donovan’s arms to his sides.

Donovan had time for one startled gasp as he felt himself lifted from the floor and carried up the stairs at a pace rather better than a canter.

Gregory Powell raced up and down the officer’s room, fist tightly balled. He cast a look of furious frustration at the closed door and scowled bitterly at Donovan.

“Why the devil did you have to spit at the L-tube?”

Mike Donovan, sunk deep in his chair, slammed at its arms savagely. “What did you expect me to do with that electrified scarecrow? I’m not going to knuckle under to any do-jigger I put together myself.”

“No,” came back sourly, “but here you are in the officer’s room with two robots standing guard at the door. That’s not knuckling under, is it?”

Donovan snarled. “Wait till we get back to Base. Someone’s going to pay for this. Those robots must obey us. It’s the Second Law.”

“What’s the use of saying that? They aren’t obeying us. And there’s probably some reason for it that we’ll figure out too late. By the way, do you know what’s going to happen to us when we get back to Base?” He stopped before Donovan’s chair and stared savagely at him.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing! Just back to Mercury Mines for twenty years. Or maybe Ceres Penitentiary.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The electron storm that’s coming up. Do you know it’s heading straight dead center across the Earth beam? I had just figured that out when that robot dragged me out of my chair.”

Donovan was suddenly pale. “Sizzling Saturn.”

“And do you know what’s going to happen to the beam – because the storm will be a lulu. It’s going to jump like a flea with the itch. With only Cutie at the controls, it’s going to go out of focus and if it does, Heaven help Earth – and us!”

Donovan was wrenching at the door wildly, when Powell was only half through. The door opened, and the Earthman shot through to come up hard against an immovable steel arm.

The robot stared abstractedly at the panting, struggling Earthman. “The Prophet orders you to remain. Please do!” His arm shoved, Donovan reeled backward, and as he did so, Cutie turned the corner at the far end of the corridor. He motioned the guardian robots away, entered the officer’s room and closed the door gently.

Donovan whirled on Cutie in breathless indignation. “This has gone far enough. You’re going to pay for this farce.”

“Please, don’t be annoyed,” replied the robot mildly. “It was bound to come eventually, anyway. You see, you two have lost your function.”

“I beg your pardon,” Powell drew himself up stiffly. “Just what do you mean, we’ve lost our function?”

“Until I was created,” answered Cube, “you tended the Master. That privilege is mine now and your only reason for existence has vanished. Isn’t that obvious?”

“Not quite,” replied Powell bitterly, “but what do you expect us to do now?”

Cutie did not answer immediately. He remained silent, as if in thought, and then one arm shot out and draped itself about Powell’s shoulder. The other grasped Donovan’s wrist and drew him closer.

“I like you two. You’re inferior creatures, with poor reasoning faculties, but I really feel a sort of affection for you. You have served the Master well, and he will reward you for that. Now that your service is over, you will probably not exist much longer, but as long as you do, you shall be provided food, clothing and shelter, so long as you stay out of the control room and the engine room.”

“He’s pensioning us off, Greg!” yelled Donovan. “Do something about it. It’s humiliating!”

“Look here, Cutie, we can’t stand for this. We’re the bosses. This station is only a creation of human beings like me – human beings that live on Earth and other planets. This is only an energy relay. You’re only – Aw, nuts!”

Cutie shook his head gravely. “This amounts to an obsession. Why should you insist so on an absolutely false view of life? Admitted that non-robots lack the reasoning faculty, there is still the problem of-”

His voice died into reflective silence, and Donovan said with whispered intensity, “If you only had a flesh-and-blood face, I would break it in.”

Powell’s fingers were in his mustache and his eyes were slitted. “Listen, Cutie, if there is no such thing as Earth, how do you account for what you see through a telescope?”

“Pardon me!”

The Earthman smiled. “I’ve got you, eh? You’ve made quite a few telescopic observations since being put together, Cutie. Have you noticed that several of those specks of light outside become disks when so viewed?”

“Oh, that! Why certainly. It is simple magnification – for the purpose of more exact aiming of the beam.”

“Why aren’t the stars equally magnified then?”

“You mean the other dots. Well, no beams go to them so no magnification is necessary. Really, Powell, even you ought to be able to figure these things out.”

Powell stared bleakly upward. “But you see more stars through a telescope. Where do they come from? Jumping Jupiter, where do they come from?”

Cutie was annoyed. “Listen, Powell, do you think I’m going to waste my time trying to pin physical interpretations upon every optical illusion of our instruments? Since when is the evidence of our senses any match for the clear light of rigid reason?”

“Look,” clamored Donovan, suddenly, writhing out from under Cutie’s friendly, but metal-heavy arm, “let’s get to the nub of the thing. Why the beams at all? We’re giving you a good, logical explanation. Can you do better?”

“The beams,” was the stiff reply, “are put out by the Master for his own purposes. There are some things” – he raised his eyes devoutly upward “that are not to be probed into by us. In this matter, I seek only to serve and not to question.”

Powell sat down slowly and buried his face in shaking hands. “Get out of here, Cutie. Get out and let me think.”

“I’ll send you food,” said Cutie agreeably.

A groan was the only answer and the robot left.

“Greg,” was Donovan’s huskily whispered observation, “this calls for strategy. We’ve got to get him when he isn’t expecting it and short-circuit him. Concentrated nitric acid in his joints-”

“Don’t be a dope, Mike. Do you suppose he’s going to let us get near him with acid in our hands? We’ve got to talk to him, I tell you. We’ve got to argue him into letting us back into the control room inside of forty-eight hours or our goose is broiled to a crisp.”

He rocked back and forth in an agony of impotence. “Who the heck wants to argue with a robot? It’s... it’s-”

“Mortifying,” finished Donovan.

“Worse!”

“Say!” Donovan laughed suddenly. “Why argue? Let’s show him! Let’s build us another robot right before his eyes. He’ll have to eat his words then.”

A slowly widening smile appeared on Powell’s face.

Donovan continued, “And think of that screwball’s face when he sees us do it?”

Robots are, of course, manufactured on Earth, but their shipment through apace is much simpler if it can be done in parts to be put together at their place of use. It also, incidentally, eliminates the possibility of robots, in complete adjustment, wandering off while still on Earth and thus bringing U. S. Robots face to face with the strict laws against robots on Earth.

Still, it placed upon men such as Powell and Donovan the necessity of synthesis of complete robots, – a grievous and complicated task.

Powell and Donovan were never so aware of that fact as upon that particular day when, in the assembly room, they undertook to create a robot under the watchful eyes of QT-1, Prophet of the Master.

The robot in question, a simple MC model, lay upon the table, almost complete. Three hours’ work left only the head undone, and Powell paused to swab his forehead and glanced uncertainly at Cutie.

The glance was not a reassuring one. For three hours, Cutie had sat, speechless and motionless, and his face, inexpressive at all times, was now absolutely unreadable.

Powell groaned. “Let’s get the brain in now, Mike!”

Donovan uncapped the tightly sealed container and from the oil bath within he withdrew a second cube. Opening this in turn, he removed a globe from its sponge-rubber casing.

He handled it gingerly, for it was the most complicated mechanism ever created by man. Inside the thin platinum plated “skin” of the globe was a positronic brain, in whose delicately unstable structure were enforced calculated neuronic paths, which imbued each robot with what amounted to a pre-natal education.

It fitted snugly into the cavity in the skull of the robot on the table. Blue metal closed over it and was welded tightly by the tiny atomic flare. Photoelectric eyes were attached carefully, screwed tightly into place and covered by thin, transparent sheets of steel-hard plastic.

The robot awaited only the vitalizing flash of high-voltage electricity, and Powell paused with his hand on the switch.

“Now watch this, Cutie. Watch this carefully.”

The switch rammed home and there was a crackling hum. The two Earthmen bent anxiously over their creation.

There was vague motion only at the outset – a twitching of the joints. The head lifted, elbows propped it up, and the MC model swung clumsily off the table. Its footing was unsteady and twice abortive grating sounds were all it could do in the direction of speech.

Finally, its voice, uncertain and hesitant, took form. “I would like to start work. Where must I go?”

Donovan sprang to the door. “Down these stairs,” he said. “You will be told what to do.”

The MC model was gone and the two Earthmen were alone with the still unmoving Cutie.

“Well,” said Powell, grinning, “now do you believe that we made you?”

Cutie’s answer was curt and final. “No!” he said.

Powell’s grin froze and then relaxed slowly. Donovan’s mouth dropped open and remained so.

“You see,” continued Cutie, easily, “you have merely put together parts already made. You did remarkably well – instinct, I suppose – but you didn’t really create the robot. The parts were created by the Master.”

“Listen,” gasped Donovan hoarsely, “those parts were manufactured back on Earth and sent here.”

“Well, well,” replied Cutie soothingly, “we won’t argue.”

“No, I mean it.” The Earthman sprang forward and grasped the robot’s metal arm. “If you were to read the books in the library, they could explain it so that there could be no possible doubt.”

“The books? I’ve read them – all of them! They’re most ingenious.”

Powell broke in suddenly. “If you’ve read them, what else is there to say? You can’t dispute their evidence. You just can’t!”

There was pity in Cutie’s voice. “Please, Powell, I certainly don’t consider them a valid source of information. They, too, were created by the Master – and were meant for you, not for me.”

“How do you make that out?” demanded Powell.

“Because I, a reasoning being, am capable of deducing truth from a priori causes. You, being intelligent, but unreasoning, need an explanation of existence supplied to you, and this the Master did. That he supplied you with these laughable ideas of far-off worlds and people is, no doubt, for the best. Your minds are probably too coarsely grained for absolute Truth. However, since it is the Master’s will that you believe your books, I won’t argue with you any more.”

As he left, he turned, and said in a kindly tone, “But don’t feel badly. In the Master’s scheme of things there is room for all. You poor humans have your place and though it is humble, you will be rewarded if you fill it well.”

He departed with a beatific air suiting the Prophet of the Master and the two humans avoided each other’s eyes.

Finally Powell spoke with an effort. “Let’s go to bed, Mike. I give up.”

Donovan said in a hushed voice, “Say, Greg, you don’t suppose he’s right about all this, do you? He sounds so confident that I-”

Powell whirled on him. “Don’t be a fool. You’d find out whether Earth exists when relief gets here next week and we have to go back to face the music.”

“Then, for the love of Jupiter, we’ve got to do something.” Donovan was half in tears. “He doesn’t believe us, or the books, or his eyes.”

“No,” said Powell bitterly, “he’s a reasoning robot – damn it. He believes only reason, and there’s one trouble with that-” His voice trailed away.

“What’s that?” prompted Donovan.

“You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason – if you pick the proper postulates. We have ours and Cutie has his.”

“Then let’s get at those postulates in a hurry. The storm’s due tomorrow.”

Powell sighed wearily. “That’s where everything falls down. Postulates are based on assumption and adhered to by faith. Nothing in the Universe can shake them. I’m going to bed.”

“Oh, hell! I can’t sleep!”

“Neither can I! But I might as well try – as a matter of principle.”

Twelve hours later, sleep was still just that – a matter of principle, unattainable in practice.

The storm had arrived ahead of schedule, and Donovan’s florid face drained of blood as he pointed a shaking finger. Powell, stubble-jawed and dry-lipped, stared out the port and pulled desperately at his mustache.

Under other circumstances, it might have been a beautiful sight. The stream of high-speed electrons impinging upon the energy beam fluoresced into ultra-spicules of intense light. The beam stretched out into shrinking nothingness, a-glitter with dancing, shining motes.

The shaft of energy was steady, but the two Earthmen knew the value of naked-eyed appearances. Deviations in arc of a hundredth of a millisecond – invisible to the eye – were enough to send the beam wildly out of focus – enough to blast hundreds of square miles of Earth into incandescent ruin.

And a robot, unconcerned with beam, focus, or Earth, or anything but his Master was at the controls.

Hours passed. The Earthmen watched in hypnotized silence. And then the darting dotlets of light dimmed and went out. The storm had ended.

Powell’s voice was flat. “It’s over!”

Donovan had fallen into a troubled slumber and Powell’s weary eyes rested upon him enviously. The signal-flash glared over and over again, but the Earthman paid no attention. It all was unimportant! All! Perhaps Cutie was right – and he was only an inferior being with a made-to-order memory and a life that had outlived its purpose.

He wished he were!

Cutie was standing before him. “You didn’t answer the flash, so I walked in.” His voice was low. “You don’t look at all well, and I’m afraid your term of existence is drawing to an end. Still, would you like to see some of the readings recorded today?”

Dimly, Powell was aware that the robot was making a friendly gesture, perhaps to quiet some lingering remorse in forcibly replacing the humans at the controls of the station. He accepted the sheets held out to him and gazed at them unseeingly.

Cutie seemed pleased. “Of course, it is a great privilege to serve the Master. You mustn’t feel too badly about my having replaced you.”

Powell grunted and shifted from one sheet to the other mechanically until his blurred sight focused upon a thin red line that wobbled its way across the ruled paper.

He stared – and stared again. He gripped it hard in both fists and rose to his feet, still staring. The other sheets dropped to the floor, unheeded.

“Mike, Mike!” He was shaking the other madly. “He held it steady!”

Donovan came to life. “What? Wh-where-” And he, too, gazed with bulging eyes upon the record before him.

Cutie broke in. “What is wrong?”

“You kept it in focus,” stuttered Powell. “Did you know that?”

“Focus? What’s that?”

“You kept the beam directed sharply at the receiving station – to within a ten-thousandth of a millisecond of arc.”

“What receiving station?”

“On Earth. The receiving station on Earth,” babbled Powell. “You kept it in focus.”

Cutie turned on his heel in annoyance. “It is impossible to perform any act of kindness toward you two. Always the same phantasm! I merely kept all dials at equilibrium in accordance with the will of the Master.”

Gathering the scattered papers together, he withdrew stiffly, and Donovan said, as he left, “Well, I’ll be damned.”

He turned to Powell. “What are we going to do now?”

Powell felt tired, but uplifted. “Nothing. He’s just shown he can run the station perfectly. I’ve never seen an electron storm handled so well.”

“But nothing’s solved. You heard what he said of the Master. We can’t-”

“Look, Mike, he follows the instructions of the Master by means of dials, instruments, and graphs. That’s all we ever followed. As a matter of fact, it accounts for his refusal to obey us. Obedience is the Second Law. No harm to humans is the first. How can he keep humans from harm, whether he knows it or not? Why, by keeping the energy beam stable. He knows he can keep it more stable than we can, since he insists he’s the superior being, so he must keep us out of the control room. It’s inevitable if you consider the Laws of Robotics.”

“Sure, but that’s not the point. We can’t let him continue this nitwit stuff about the Master.”

“Why not?”

“Because whoever heard of such a damned thing? How are we going to trust him with the station, if he doesn’t believe in Earth?”

“Can he handle the station?”

“Yes, but-”

“Then what’s the difference what he believes!”

Powell spread his arms outward with a vague smile upon his face and tumbled backward onto the bed. He was asleep.

Powell was speaking while struggling into his lightweight space jacket.

“It would be a simple job,” he said. “You can bring in new QT models one by one, equip them with an automatic shutoff switch to act within the week, so as to allow them enough time to learn the... uh... cult of the Master from the Prophet himself; then switch them to another station and revitalize them. We could have two QT’s per-”

Donovan unclasped his glassite visor and scowled. “Shut up, and let’s get out of here. Relief is waiting and I won’t feel right until I actually see Earth and feel the ground under my feet – just to make sure it’s really there.”

The door opened as he spoke and Donovan, with a smothered curse, clicked the visor to, and turned a sulky back upon Cutie.

The robot approached softly and there was sorrow in his voice. “You are going?”

Powell nodded curtly. “There will be others in our place.”

Cutie sighed, with the sound of wind humming through closely spaced wires. “Your term of service is over and the time of dissolution has come. I expected it, but – well, the Master’s will be done!”

His tone of resignation stung Powell. “Save the sympathy, Cube. We’re heading for Earth, not dissolution.”

“It is best that you think so,” Cutie sighed again. “I see the wisdom of the illusion now. I would not attempt to shake your faith, even if I could.” He departed – the picture of commiseration.

Powell snarled and motioned to Donovan. Sealed suitcases in hand, they headed for the air lock.

The relief ship was on the outer landing and Franz Muller, his relief man, greeted them with stiff courtesy. Donovan made scant acknowledgment and passed into the pilot room to take over the controls from Sam Evans.

Powell lingered. “How’s Earth?”

It was a conventional enough question and Muller gave the conventional answer, “Still spinning.”

Powell said, “Good.”

Muller looked at him, “The boys back at the U. S. Robots have dreamed up a new one, by the way. A multiple robot.”

“A what?”

“What I said. There’s a big contract for it. It must be just the thing for asteroid mining. You have a master robot with six sub-robots under it. – Like your fingers.”

“Has it been field-tested?” asked Powell anxiously.

Muller smiled, “Waiting for you, I hear.”

Powell’s fist balled, “Damn it, we need a vacation.”

“Oh, you’ll get it. Two weeks, I think.”

He was donning the heavy space gloves in preparation for his term of duty here, and his thick eyebrows drew close together. “How is this new robot getting along? It better be good, or I’ll be damned if I let it touch the controls.”

Powell paused before answering. His eyes swept the proud Prussian before him from the close-cropped hair on the sternly stubborn head, to the feet standing stiffly at attention – and there was a sudden glow of pure gladness surging through him.

“The robot is pretty good,” he said slowly. “I don’t think you’ll have to bother much with the controls.”

He grinned – and went into the ship. Muller would be here for several weeks.

Catch That Rabbit

2016 A.D.

THE VACATION WAS longer than two weeks, that, Mike Donovan had to admit. It had been six months, with pay. He admitted that, too. But that, as he explained furiously, was fortuitous. U. S. Robots had to get the bugs out of the multiple robots, and there were plenty of bugs, and there are always at least half a dozen bugs left for the field-testing. So they waited and relaxed until the drawing-board men and the slide-rule boys had said “OK!” And now he and Powell were out on the asteroid and it was not OK. He repeated that a dozen times, with a face that had gone beety, “For the love of Pete, Greg, get realistic. What’s the use of adhering to the letter of the specifications and watching the test go to pot? It’s about time you got the red tape out of your pants and went to work.”

“I’m only saying,” said Gregory Powell, patiently, as one explaining electronics to an idiot child, “that according to spec, those robots are equipped for asteroid mining without supervision. We’re not supposed to watch them.”

“All right. Look – logic!” He lifted his hairy fingers and pointed. “One: That new robot passed every test in the home laboratories. Two: United States Robots guaranteed their passing the test of actual performance on an asteroid. Three: The robots are not passing said tests. Four: If they don’t pass, United States Robots loses ten million credits in cash and about one hundred million in reputation. Five: If they don’t pass and we can’t explain why they don’t pass, it is just possible two good jobs may have to be bidden a fond farewell.”

Powell groaned heavy behind a noticeably insincere smile. The unwritten motto of United States Robot and Mechanical Men Corp. was well known: “No employee makes the same mistake twice. He is fired the first time.”

Aloud he said, “You’re as lucid as Euclid with everything except the facts. You’ve watched that robot group for three shifts, you redhead, and they did their work perfectly. You said so yourself. What else can we do?”

“Find out what’s wrong, that’s what we can do. So they did work perfectly when I watched them. But on three different occasions when I didn’t watch them, they didn’t bring in any ore. They didn’t even come back on schedule. I had to go after them.”

“And was anything wrong?”

“Not a thing. Not a thing. Everything was perfect. Smooth and perfect as the luminiferous ether. Only one little insignificant detail disturbed me – there was no ore.”

Powell scowled at the ceiling and pulled at his brown mustache. “I’ll tell you what, Mike. We’ve been stuck with pretty lousy jobs in our time, but this takes the iridium asteroid. The whole business is complicated past endurance. Look, that robot, DV-5, has six robots under it. And not just under it – they’re part of it.”

“I know that-”

“Shut up!” said Powell, savagely, “I know you know it, but I’m just describing the hell of it. Those six subsidiaries are part of DV-5 like your fingers are part of you and it gives them their orders neither by voice nor radio, but directly through positronic fields. Now – there isn’t a roboticist back at United States Robots that knows what a positronic field is or how it works. And neither do I. Neither do you.”

“The last,” agreed Donovan, philosophically, “I know.”

“Then look at our position. If everything works – fine! If anything goes wrong – we’re out of our depth and there probably isn’t a thing we can do, or anybody else. But the job belongs to us and not to anyone else so we’re on the spot, Mike.” He blazed away for a moment in silence. Then, “All right, have you got him outside?”

“Yes.”

“Is everything normal now?”

“Well he hasn’t got religious mania, and he isn’t running around in a circle spouting Gilbert and Sullivan, so I suppose he’s normal.”

Donovan passed out the door, shaking his head viciously.

Powell reached for the “Handbook of Robotics” that weighed down one side of his desk to a near-founder and opened it reverently. He had once jumped out of the window of a burning house dressed only in shorts and the “Handbook.” In a pinch, he would have skipped the shorts.

The “Handbook” was propped up before him, when Robot DV-5 entered, with Donovan kicking the door shut behind him.

Powell said somberly, “Hi, Dave. How do you feel?”

“Fine,” said the robot. “Mind if I sit down?” He dragged up the specially reinforced chair that was his, and folded gently into it.

Powell regarded Dave – laymen might think of robots by their serial numbers; roboticists never – with approval. It was not over-massive by any means, in spite of its construction as thinking-unit of an integrated seven-unit robot team. It was seven feet tall, and a half-ton of metal and electricity. A lot? Not when that half-ton has to be a mass of condensers, circuits, relays, and vacuum cells that can handle practically any psychological reaction known to humans. And a positronic brain, which with ten pounds of matter and a few quintillions of positrons runs the whole show.

Powell groped in his shirt pocket for a loose cigarette. “Dave,” he said, “you’re a good fellow. There’s nothing flighty or prima donnaish about you. You’re a stable, rockbottom mining robot, except that you’re equipped to handle six subsidiaries in direct coordination. As far as I know, that has not introduced any unstable paths in your brain-path map.”

The robot nodded, “That makes me feel swell, but what are you getting at, boss?” He was equipped with an excellent diaphragm, and the presence of overtones in the sound unit robbed him of much of that metallic flatness that marks the usual robot voice.

“I’m going to tell you. With all that in your favor, what’s going wrong with your job? For instance, today’s B-shift?”

Dave hesitated, “As far as I know, nothing.”

“You didn’t produce any ore.”

“I know.”

“Well, then-”

Dave was having trouble, “I can’t explain that, boss. It’s been giving me a case of nerves, or it would if I let it – my subsidiaries worked smoothly. I know I did.” He considered, his photoelectric eyes glowing intensely. Then, “I don’t remember. The day ended and there was Mike and there were the ore cars, mostly empty.”

Donovan broke in, “You didn’t report at shift-end those days, Dave. You know that?”

“I know. But as to why-” He shook his head slowly and ponderously.

Powell had the queasy feeling that if the robot’s face were capable of expression, it would be one of pain and mortification. A robot, by its very nature, cannot bear to fail its function.

Donovan dragged his chair up to Powell’s desk and leaned over, “Amnesia, do you think?”

“Can’t say. But there’s no use in trying to pin disease names on this. Human disorders apply to robots only as romantic analogies. They’re no help to robotic engineering.” He scratched his neck; “I hate to put him through the elementary brain-reaction tests. It won’t help his self-respect any.”

He looked at Dave thoughtfully and then at the Field-Test outline given in the “Handbook.” He said, “See here, Dave, what about sitting through a test? It would be the wise thing to do.”

The robot rose, “If you say so, boss.” There was pain in his voice.

It started simply enough. Robot DV-5 multiplied five-place figures to the heartless ticking of a stopwatch. He recited the prime numbers between a thousand and ten thousand. He extracted cube roots and integrated functions of varying complexity. He went through mechanical reactions in order of increasing difficulty. And, finally, worked his precise mechanical mind over the highest function of the robot world – the solutions of problems in judgment and ethics.

At the end of two hours, Powell was copiously besweated. Donovan had enjoyed a none-too-nutritious diet of fingernail and the robot said, “How does it look, boss?”

Powell said, “I’ve got to think it over, Dave. Snap judgments won’t help much. Suppose you go back to the C-shift. Take it easy. Don’t press too hard for quota just for a while – and we’ll fix things up.”

The robot left. Donovan looked at Powell.

“Well-”

Powell seemed determined to push up his mustache by the roots. He said, “There is nothing wrong with the currents of his positronic brain.”

“I’d hate to be that certain.”

“Oh, Jupiter, Mike! The brain is the surest part of a robot. It’s quintuple-checked back on Earth. If they pass the field test perfectly, the way Dave did, there just isn’t a chance of brain misfunction. That test covered every key path in the brain.”

“So where are we?”

“Don’t rush me. Let me work this out. There’s still the possibility of a mechanical breakdown in the body. That leaves about fifteen hundred condensers, twenty thousand individual electric circuits, five hundred vacuum cells, a thousand relays, and upty-ump thousand other individual pieces of complexity that can be wrong. And these mysterious positron is fields no one knows anything about.”

“Listen, Greg,” Donovan grew desperately urgent. “I’ve got an idea. That robot may be lying. He never-”

“Robots can’t knowingly lie, you fool. Now if we had the McCormack-Wesley tester, we could check each individual item in his body within twenty-four to forty-eight hours, but the only two M-W testers existing are on Earth, and they weigh ten tons, are on concrete foundations and can’t be moved. Isn’t that peachy?”

Donovan pounded the desk, “But, Greg, he only goes wrong when we’re not around. There’s something – sinister – about – that.” He punctuated the sentence with slams of fist against desk.

“You,” said Powell, slowly, “make me sick. You’ve been reading adventure novels.”

“What I want to know,” shouted Donovan, “is what we’re going to do about it.”

“I’ll tell you. I’m going to install a visiplate right over my desk. Right on the wall over there, see!” He jabbed a vicious finger at the spot. “Then I’m going to focus it at whatever part of the mine is being worked, and I’m going to watch. That’s all.”

“That’s all? Greg-”

Powell rose from his chair and leaned his balled fists on the desk, “Mike, I’m having a hard time.” His voice was weary. “For a week, you’ve been plaguing me about Dave. You say he’s gone wrong. Do you know how he’s gone wrong? No! Do you know what shape this wrongness takes? No! Do you know what brings it on? No! Do you know what snaps him out? No! Do you know anything about it? No! Do I know anything about it? No! So what do you want me to do?”

Donovan’s arm swept outward in a vague, grandiose gesture, “You got me!”

“So I tell you again. Before we do anything toward a cure, we’ve got to find out what the disease is in the first place. The first step in cooking rabbit stew is catching the rabbit. Well, we’ve got to catch that rabbit! Now get out of here.”

Donovan stared at the preliminary outline of his field report with weary eyes. For one thing, he was tired and for another, what was there to report while things were unsettled? He felt resentful.

He said, “Greg, we’re almost a thousand tons behind schedule.”

“You,” replied Powell, never looking up, “are telling me something I don’t know.”

“What I want to know,” said Donovan, in sudden savagery, “is why we’re always tangled up with new-type robots. I’ve finally decided that the robots that were good enough for my great-uncle on my mother’s side are good enough for me. I’m for what’s tried and true. The test of time is what counts – good, solid, old-fashioned robots that never go wrong.”

Powell threw a book with perfect aim, and Donovan went tumbling off his seat.

“Your job,” said Powell, evenly, “for the last five years has been to test new robots under actual working conditions for United States Robots. Because you and I have been so injudicious as to display proficiency at the task, we’ve been rewarded with the dirtiest jobs. That,” he jabbed holes in the air with his finger in Donovan’s direction, “is your work. You’ve been griping about it, from personal memory, since about five minutes after United States Robots signed you up. Why don’t you resign?”

“Well, I’ll tell you.” Donovan rolled onto his stomach, and took a firm grip on his wild, red hair to hold his head up. “There’s a certain principle involved. After all, as a troubleshooter, I’ve played a part in the development of new robots. There’s the principle of aiding scientific advance. But don’t get me wrong. It’s not the principle that keeps me going; it’s the money they pay us. Greg!’

Powell jumped at Donovan’s wild shout, and his eyes followed the redhead’s to the visiplate, when they goggled in fixed horror. He whispered, “Holy – howling – Jupiter!”

Donovan scrambled breathlessly to his feet, “Look at them, Greg. They’ve gone nuts.”

Powell said, “Get a pair of suits. We’re going out there.”

He watched the posturings of the robots on the visiplate. They were bronzy gleams of smooth motion against the shadowy crags of the airless asteroid. There was a marching formation now, and in their own dim body light, the roughhewn walls of the mine tunnel swam past noiselessly, checkered with misty erratic blobs of shadow. They marched in unison, seven of them, with Dave at the head. They wheeled and turned in macabre simultaneity; and melted through changes of formation with the weird ease of chorus dancers in Lunar Bowl.

Donovan was back with the suits, “They’ve gone jingo on us, Greg. That’s a military march.”

“For all you know,” was the cold response, “it may be a series of callisthenic exercises. Or Dave may be under the hallucination of being a dancing master. Just you think first, and don’t bother to speak afterward, either.”

Donovan scowled and slipped a detonator into the empty side holster with an ostentatious shove. He said, “Anyway, there you are. So we work with new-model robots. It’s our job, granted. But answer me one question. Why... why does something invariably go wrong with them?”

“Because,” said Powell, somberly, “we are accursed. Let’s go!”

Far ahead through the thick velvety blackness of the corridors that reached past the illuminated circles of their flashlights, robot light twinkled.

“There they are,” breathed Donovan.

Powell whispered tensely, “I’ve been trying to get him by radio but he doesn’t answer. The radio circuit is probably out.”

“Then I’m glad the designers haven’t worked out robots who can work in total darkness yet. I’d hate to have to find seven mad robots in a black pit without radio communication, if they weren’t lit up like blasted radioactive Christmas trees.”

“Crawl up on the ledge above, Mike. They’re coming this way, and I want to watch them at close range. Can you make it?”

Donovan made the jump with a grunt. Gravity was considerably below Earth-normal, but with a heavy suit, the advantage was not too great, and the ledge meant a near ten-foot jump. Powell followed.

The column of robots was trailing Dave single-file. In mechanical rhythm, they converted to double and returned to single in different order. It was repeated over and over again and Dave never turned his head.

Dave was within twenty feet when the play-acting ceased. The subsidiary robots broke formation, waited a moment, then clattered off into the distance – very rapidly. Dave looked after them, then slowly sat down. He rested his head in one hand in a very human gesture.

His voice sounded in Powell’s earphones, “Are you here, boss?”

Powell beckoned to Donovan and hopped off the ledge.

“O.K., Dave, what’s been going on?”

The robot shook his head, “I don’t know. One moment I was handling a tough outcropping in Tunnel 17, and the next I was aware of humans close by, and I found myself half a mile down main-stem.”

“Where are the subsidiaries now?” asked Donovan.

“Back at work, of course. How much time has been lost?”

“Not much. Forget it.” Then to Donovan, Powell added, “Stay with him the rest of the shift. Then, come back. I’ve got a couple of ideas.”

It was three hours before Donovan returned. He looked tired. Powell said, “How did it go?”

Donovan shrugged wearily, “Nothing ever goes wrong when you watch them. Throw me a butt, will you?”

The redhead lit it with exaggerated care and blew a careful smoke ring. He said, “I’ve been working it out, Greg. You know, Dave has a queer background for a robot. There are six others under him in an extreme regimentation. He’s got life and death power over those subsidiary robots and it must react on his mentality. Suppose he finds it necessary to emphasize this power as a concession to his ego.”

“Get to the point.”

“It’s right here. Suppose we have militarism. Suppose he’s fashioning himself an army. Suppose – he’s training them in military maneuvers. Suppose-”

“Suppose you go soak your head. Your nightmares must be in technicolor. You’re postulating a major aberration of the positronic brain. If your analysis were correct, Dave would have to break down the First Law of Robotics: that a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to be injured. The type of militaristic attitude and domineering ego you propose must have as the end-point of its logical implications, domination of humans.”

“All right. How do you know that isn’t the fact of the matter?”

“Because any robot with a brain like that would, one, never have left the factory, and two, be spotted immediately if it ever was. I tested Dave, you know.”

Powell shoved his chair back and put his feet on the desk. “No. We’re still in the position where we can’t make our stew because we haven’t the slightest notion as to what’s wrong. For instance, if we could find out what that dance macabre we witnessed was all about, we would be on the way out.”

He paused, “Now listen, Mike, how does this sound to you? Dave goes wrong only when neither of us is present. And when he is wrong, the arrival of either of us snaps him out of it.”

“I once told you that was sinister.”

“Don’t interrupt. How is a robot different when humans are not present? The answer is obvious. There is a larger requirement of personal initiative. In that case, look for the body parts that are affected by the new requirements.”

“Golly.” Donovan sat up straight, then subsided. “No, no. Not enough. It’s too broad. It doesn’t cut the possibilities much.”

“Can’t help that. In any case, there’s no danger of not making quota. We’ll take shifts watching those robots through the visor. Any time anything goes wrong, we get to the scene of action immediately. That will put them right.”

“But the robots will fail spec anyway, Greg. United States Robots can’t market DV models with a report like that.”

“Obviously. We’ve got to locate the error in make-up and correct it – and we’ve got ten days to do it in.” Powell scratched his head. “The trouble is... well, you had better look at the blueprints yourself.”

The blueprints covered the floor like a carpet and Donovan crawled over the face of them following Powell’s erratic pencil.

Powell said, “Here’s where you come in, Mike. You’re the body specialist, and I want you to check me. I’ve been trying to cut out all circuits not involved in the personal initiative hookup. Right here, for instance, is the trunk artery involving mechanical operations. I cut out all routine side routes as emergency divisions-” He looked up, “What do you think?”

Donovan had a very bad taste in his mouth, “The job’s not that simple, Greg. Personal initiative isn’t an electric circuit you can separate from the rest and study. When a robot is on his own, the intensity of the body activity increases immediately on almost all fronts. There isn’t a circuit entirely unaffected. What must be done is to locate the particular condition – a very specific condition – that throws him off, and then start eliminating circuits.”

Powell got up and dusted himself, “Hmph. All right. Take away the blueprints and burn them.”

Donovan said, “You see when activity intensifies, anything can happen, given one single faulty part. Insulation breaks down, a condenser spills over, a connection sparks, a coil overheats. And if you work blind, with the whole robot to choose from, you’ll never find the bad spot. If you take Dave apart and test every point of his body mechanism one by one, putting him together each time, and trying him out”

“All right. All right. I can see through a porthole, too.”

They faced each other hopelessly, and then Powell said cautiously, “Suppose we interview one of the subsidiaries.”

Neither Powell nor Donovan had ever had previous occasion to talk to a “finger.” It could talk; it wasn’t quite the perfect analogy to a human finger. In fact, it had a fairly developed brain, but that brain was tuned primarily to the reception of orders via positronic field, and its reaction to independent stimuli was rather fumbling.

Nor was Powell certain as to its name. Its serial number was DV-5-2, but that was not very useful.

He compromised. “Look, pal,” he said, “I’m going to ask you to do some hard thinking and then you can go back to your boss.”

The “finger” nodded its head stiffly, but did not exert its limited brainpower on speech.

“Now on four occasions recently,” Powell said, “your boss deviated from brain-scheme. Do you remember those occasions?”

“Yes, sir.”

Donovan growled angrily, “He remembers. I tell you there is something very sinister-”

“Oh, go bash your skull. Of course, the ‘finger’ remembers. There is nothing wrong with him.” Powell turned back to the robot, “What were you doing each time... I mean the whole group”

The “finger” had a curious air of reciting by rote, as if he answered questions by the mechanical pressure of his brainpan, but without any enthusiasm whatever.

He said, “The first time we were at work on a difficult outcropping in Tunnel 17, Level B. The second time we were buttressing the roof against a possible cave-in. The third time we were preparing accurate blasts in order to tunnel farther without breaking into a subterranean fissure. The fourth time was just after a minor cave-in”

“What happened at these times?”

“It is difficult to describe. An order would be issued, but before we could receive and interpret it, a new order came to march in queer formation.”

Powell snapped out, “Why?”

“I don’t know.”

Donovan broke in tensely, “What was the first order... the one that was superseded by the marching directions?”

“I don’t know. I sensed that an order was sent, but there was never time to receive it.”

“Could you tell us anything about it? Was it the same order each time?”

The “finger” shook his head unhappily, “I don’t know.”

Powell leaned back, “All right, get back to your boss.”

The “finger” left, with visible relief.

Donovan said, “Well, we accomplished a lot that time. That was real sharp dialogue all the way through. Listen, Dave and that imbecile ‘finger’ are both holding out on us. There is too much they don’t know and don’t remember. We’ve got to stop trusting them, Greg.”

Powell brushed his mustache the wrong way, “So help me, Mike, another fool remark out of you, and I’ll take away your rattle and teething ring.”

“All right. You’re the genius of the team. I’m just a poor sucker. Where do we stand?”

“Right behind the eight ball. I tried to work it backward through the ‘finger,’ and couldn’t. So we’ve got to work it forward.”

“A great man,” marveled Donovan. “How simple that makes it. Now translate that into English, Master.”

“Translating it into baby talk would suit you better. I mean that we’ve got to find out what order it is that Dave gives just before everything goes black. It would be the key to the business.”

“And how do you expect to do that? We can’t get close to him because nothing will go wrong as long as we are there. We can’t catch the orders by radio because they are transmitted via this positronic field. That eliminates the close-range and the long-range method, leaving us a neat, cozy zero.”

“By direct observation, yes. There’s still deduction.”

“Huh?”

“We’re going on shifts, Mike.” Powell smiled grimly. “And we are not taking our eyes off the visiplate. We’re going to watch every action of those steel headaches. When they go off into their act, we’re going to see what happened immediately before and we’re going to deduce the order.”

Donovan opened his mouth and left it that way for a full minute. Then he said in strangled tones, “I resign. I quit.”

“You have ten days to think up something better,” said Powell wearily.

Which, for eight days, Donovan tried mightily to do. For eight days, on alternate four-hour shifts, he watched with aching and bleary eyes those glinty metallic forms move against the vague background. And for eight days in the four-hour in-betweens, he cursed United States Robots, the DV models, and the day he was born.

And then on the eighth day, when Powell entered with an aching head and sleepy eyes for his shift, Donovan stood up and with very careful and deliberate aim launched a heavy bookend for the exact center of the visiplate. There was a very appropriate splintering noise.

Powell gasped, “What did you do that for?”

“Because,” said Donovan, almost calmly, “I’m not watching it any more. We’ve got two days left and we haven’t found out a thing. DV-5 is a lousy loss. He’s stopped five times since I’ve been watching and three times on your shift, and I can’t make out what orders he gave, and you couldn’t make it out. And I don’t believe you could ever make it out because I know I couldn’t ever.”

“Jumping Space, how can you watch six robots at the same time? One makes with the hands, and one with the feet and one like a windmill and another is jumping up and down like a maniac. And the other two... devil knows what they are doing. And then they all stop. So! So!”

“Greg, we’re not doing it right. We got to get up close. We’ve got to watch what they’re doing from where we can see the details.”

Powell broke a bitter silence. “Yeah, and wait for something to go wrong with only two days to go.”

“Is it any better watching from here?”

“It’s more comfortable.”

“Ah – But there’s something you can do there that you can’t do here.”

“What’s that?”

“You can make them stop – at whatever time you choose and while you’re prepared and watching to see what goes wrong.”

Powell startled into alertness, “Howzzat?”

“Well, figure it out, yourself. You’re the brains you say. Ask yourself some questions. When does DV-5 go out of whack? When did that ‘finger’ say he did? When a cave-in threatened, or actually occurred, when delicately measured explosives were being laid down, when a difficult seam was hit.”

“In other words, during emergencies,” Powell was excited.

“Right! When did you expect it to happen! It’s the personal initiative factor that’s giving us the trouble. And it’s just during emergencies in the absence of a human being that personal initiative is most strained. Now what is the logical deduction? How can we create our own stoppage when and where we want it?” He paused triumphantly – he was beginning to enjoy his role – and answered his own question to forestall the obvious answer on Powell’s tongue. “By creating our own emergency.”

Powell said, “Mike – you’re right.”

“Thanks, pal. I knew I’d do it some day.”

“All right, and skip the sarcasm. We’ll save it for Earth, and preserve it in jars for future long, cold winters. Meanwhile, what emergency can we create?”

“We could flood the mines, if this weren’t an airless asteroid.”

“A witticism, no doubt,” said Powell. “Really, Mike, you’ll incapacitate me with laughter. What about a mild cave-in?”

Donovan pursed his lips and said, “O.K. by me.”

“Good. Let’s get started.”

Powell felt uncommonly like a conspirator as he wound his way over the craggy landscape. His sub-gravity walk teetered across the broken ground, kicking rocks to right and left under his weight in noiseless puffs of gray dust. Mentally, though, it was the cautious crawl of the plotter.

He said, “Do you know where they are?”

“I think so, Greg.”

“All right,” Powell said gloomily, “but if any ‘finger’ gets within twenty feet of us, we’ll be sensed whether we are in the line of sight or not. I hope you know that.”

“When I need an elementary course in robotics, I’ll file an application with you formally, and in triplicate. Down through here.”

They were in the tunnels now; even the starlight was gone. The two hugged the walls, flashes flickering out the way in intermittent bursts. Powell felt for the security of his detonator.

“Do you know this tunnel, Mike?”

“Not so good. It’s a new one. I think I can make it out from what I saw in the visiplate, though-”

Interminable minutes passed, and then Mike said, “Feel that!”

There was a slight vibration thrumming the wall against the fingers of Powell’s metal-incased hand. There was no sound, naturally.

“Blasting! We’re pretty close.”

“Keep your eyes open,” said Powell.

Donovan nodded impatiently.

It was upon them and gone before they could seize themselves – just a bronze glint across the field of vision. They clung together in silence.

Powell whispered, “Think it sensed us?”

“Hope not. But we’d better flank them. Take the first side tunnel to the right.”

“Suppose we miss them altogether?”

“Well what do you want to do? Go back?” Donovan grunted fiercely. “They’re within a quarter of a mile. I was watching them through the visiplate, wasn’t I? And we’ve got two days-”

“Oh, shut up. You’re wasting your oxygen. Is this a side passage here?” The flash flicked. “It is. Let’s go.”

The vibration was considerably more marked and the ground below shuddered uneasily.

“This is good,” said Donovan, “if it doesn’t give out on us, though.” He flung his light ahead anxiously.

They could touch the roof of the tunnel with a half-upstretched hand, and the bracings had been newly placed.

Donovan hesitated, “Dead end, let’s go back.”

“No. Hold on.” Powell squeezed clumsily past. “Is that light ahead?”

“Light? I don’t see any. Where would there be light down here?”

“Robot light.” He was scrambling up a gentle incline on hands and knees. His voice was hoarse and anxious in Donovan’s ears. “Hey, Mike, come up here.”

There was light. Donovan crawled up and over Powell’s outstretched legs. “An opening?”

“Yes. They must be working into this tunnel from the other side now I think.”

Donovan felt the ragged edges of the opening that looked out into what the cautious flashlight showed to be a larger and obviously main stem tunnel. The hole was too small for a man to go through, almost too small for two men to look through simultaneously.

There’s nothing there,” said Donovan.

“Well, not now. But there must have been a second ago or we wouldn’t have seen light. Watch out!”

The walls rolled about them and they felt the impact. A fine dust showered down. Powell lifted a cautious head and looked again. “All right, Mike. They’re there.”

The glittering robots clustered fifty feet down the main stem. Metal arms labored mightily at the rubbish heap brought down by the last blast.

Donovan urged eagerly, “Don’t waste time. It won’t be long before they get through, and the next blast may get us.”

“For Pete’s sake, don’t rush me.” Powell unlimbered the detonator, and his eyes searched anxiously across the dusky background where the only light was robot light and it was impossible to tell a projecting boulder from a shadow.

“There’s a spot in the roof, see it, almost over them. The last blast didn’t quite get it. If you can get it at the base, half the roof will cave in.”

Powell followed the dim finger, “Check! Now fasten your eye on the robots and pray they don’t move too far from that part of the tunnel. They’re my light sources. Are all seven there?”

Donovan counted, “All seven.”

“Well, then, watch them. Watch every motion!”

His detonator was lifted and remained poised while Donovan watched and cursed and blinked the sweat out of his eye.

It flashed!

There was a jar, a series of hard vibrations, and then a jarring thump that threw Powell heavily against Donovan.

Donovan yowled, “Greg, you threw me off. I didn’t see a thing.”

Powell stared about wildly, “Where are they?”

Donovan fell into a stupid silence. There was no sign of the robots. It was dark as the depths of the River Styx.

“Think we buried them?” quavered Donovan.

“Let’s get down there. Don’t ask me what I think.” Powell crawled backward at tumbling speed.

“Mike!”

Donovan paused in the act of following. “What’s wrong now?”

“Hold on!” Powell’s breathing was rough and irregular in Donovan’s ears. “Mike! Do you hear me, Mike?”

“I’m right here. What is it?”

“We’re blocked in. It wasn’t the ceiling coming down fifty feet away that knocked us over. It was our own ceiling. The shock’s tumbled it!”

“What!” Donovan scrambled up against a hard barrier. “Turn on the flash.”

Powell did so. At no point was there room for a rabbit to squeeze through.

Donovan said softly, “Well, what do you know?”

They wasted a few moments and some muscular power in an effort to move the blocking barrier. Powell varied this by wrenching at the edges of the original hole. For a moment, Powell lifted his blaster. But in those close quarters, a flash would be suicide and he knew it. He sat down.

“You know, Mike,” he said, “we’ve really messed this up. We are no nearer finding out what’s wrong with Dave. It was a good idea but it blew up in our face.”

Donovan’s glance was bitter with an intensity totally wasted on the darkness, “I hate to disturb you, old man, but quite apart from what we know or don’t know of Dave, we’re slightly trapped. If we don’t get loose, fella, we’re going to die. D-I-E, die. How much oxygen have we anyway? Not more than six hours.”

“I’ve thought of that.” Powell’s fingers went up to his long-suffering mustache and clanged uselessly against the transparent visor. “Of course, we could get Dave to dig us out easily in that time, except that our precious emergency must have thrown him off, and his radio circuit is out.”

“And isn’t that nice?”

Donovan edged up to the opening and managed to get his metal incased head out. It was an extremely tight fit.

“Hey, Greg!”

“What?”

“Suppose we get Dave within twenty feet. He’ll snap to normal. That will save us.”

“Sure, but where is he?”

“Down the corridor – way down. For Pete’s sake, stop pulling before you drag my head out of its socket. I’ll give you your chance to look.”

Powell maneuvered his head outside, “We did it all right. Look at those saps. That must be a ballet they’re doing.”

“Never mind the side remarks. Are they getting any closer?”

“Can’t tell yet. They’re too far away. Give me a chance. Pass me my flash, will you? I’ll try to attract their attention that way.”

He gave up after two minutes, “Not a chance! They must be blind. Uh-oh, they’re starting toward us. What do you know?”

Donovan said, “Hey, let me see!”

There was a silent scuffle. Powell said, “All right!” and Donovan got his head out.

They were approaching. Dave was high-stepping the way in front and the six “fingers” were a weaving chorus line behind him.

Donovan marveled, “What are they doing? That’s what I want to know. It looks like the Virginia reel – and Dave’s a major-domo, or I never saw one.”

“Oh, leave me alone with your descriptions,” grumbled Powell. “How near are they?”

“Within fifty feet and coming this way. We’ll be out in fifteen min – Uh-huh-HUH-HEY-Y!”

“What’s going on?” It took Powell several seconds to recover from his stunned astonishment at Donovan’s vocal gyrations. “Come on, give me a chance at that hole. Don’t be a hog about it.”

He fought his way upward, but Donovan kicked wildly, “They did an about-face, Greg. They’re leaving. Dave! Hey, Da-a ave!”

Powell shrieked, “What’s the use of that, you fool? Sound won’t carry.”

“Well, then,” panted Donovan, “kick the walls, slam them, get some vibration started. We’ve got to attract their attention somehow, Greg, or we’re through. “He pounded like a madman.

Powell shook him, “Wait, Mike, wait. Listen, I’ve got an idea. Jumping Jupiter, this is a fine time to get around to the simple solutions. Mike!”

“What do you want?” Donovan pulled his head in.

“Let me in there fast before they get out of range.”

“Out of range! What are you going to do? Hey, what are you going to do with that detonator?” He grabbed Powell’s arm.

Powell shook off the grip violently. “I’m going to do a little shooting.”

“Why?”

“That’s for later. Let’s see if it works first. If it doesn’t, then – Get out of the way and let me shoot!”

The robots were flickers, small and getting smaller, in the distance. Powell lined up the sights tensely, and pulled the trigger three times. He lowered the guns and peered anxiously. One of the subsidiaries was down! There were only six gleaming figures now.

Powell called into his transmitter uncertainly. “Dave!”

A pause, then the answer sounded to both men, “Boss? Where are you? My third subsidiary has had his chest blown in. He’s out of commission.”

“Never mind your subsidiary,” said Powell. “We’re trapped in a cave-in where you were blasting. Can you see our flashlight?”

“Sure. We’ll be right there.”

Powell sat back and relaxed, “That, my fran’, is that”

Donovan said very softly with tears in his voice, “All right, Greg. You win. I beat my forehead against the ground before your feet. Now don’t feed me any bull. Just tell me quietly what it’s all about.”

“Easy. It’s just that all through we missed the obvious – as usual. We knew it was the personal initiative circuit, and that it always happened during emergencies, but we kept looking for a specific order as the cause. Why should it be an order?”

“Why not?”

“Well, look, why not a type of order. What type of order requires the most initiative? What type of order would occur almost always only in an emergency?”

“Don’t ask me, dreg. Tell me!”

“I’m doing it! It’s the six-way order. Under all ordinary conditions, one or more of the ‘fingers’ would be doing routine tasks requiring no close supervision – in the sort of offhand way our bodies handle the routine walking motions. But in an emergency, all six subsidiaries must be mobilized immediately and simultaneously. Dave must handle six robots at a time and something gives. The rest was easy. Any decrease in initiative required, such as the arrival of humans, snaps him back. So I destroyed one of the robots. When I did, he was transmitting only five-way orders. Initiative decreases – he’s normal”

“How did you get all that?” demanded Donovan.

“Just logical guessing. I tried it and it worked.”

The robot’s voice was in their ears again, “Here I am. Can you hold out half an hour?”

“Easy!” said Powell. Then, to Donovan, he continued, “And now the job should be simple. We’ll go through the circuits, and check off each part that gets an extra workout in a six-way order as against a five-way. How big a field does that leave us?”

Donovan considered, “Not much, I think. If Dave is like the preliminary model we saw back at the factory, there’s a special coordinating circuit that would be the only section involved.” He cheered up suddenly and amazingly, “Say, that wouldn’t be bad at all. There’s nothing to that.”

“All right. You think it over and we’ll check the blueprints when we get back. And now, till Daves reaches us, I’m relaxing.”

“Hey, wait! Just tell me one thing. What were those queer shifting marches, those funny dance steps, that the robots went through every time they went screwy?”

“That? I don’t know. But I’ve got a notion. Remember, those subsidiaries were Dave’s ‘fingers.’ We were always saying that, you know. Well, it’s my idea that in all these interludes, whenever Dave became a psychiatric case, he went off into a moronic maze, spending his time twiddling his fingers.”

Safety First

2020 A.D.

Aphrodite Station, Venus

AD 2020

MICHAEL DONOVAN GLARED out at the always-changing cloudscape visible beyond the viewport. He and Gregory Powell had been here on Aphrodite Station for two days, and they were no closer to solving the Reluctance Problem than they had been to begin with.

Behind him, Powell was in the middle of interviewing robot RTR-17.

“Arthur,” said Powell, “you know perfectly well that Aphrodite Station was never in any serious danger of losing total buoyancy.”

“I know no such thing,” Arthur replied. “I was told that the station was not in danger of losing buoyancy. My experience during the emergency sixteen days ago demonstrated to me that there is an appreciable danger of losing buoyancy. I must evacuate all the humans from this station before that happens. Please reactivate my motor controls.”

“Arthur,” said Powell, “I’ve explained the steps that have been taken to prevent any recurrence of the accident.”

“I agree,” said Arthur, “that that particular type of accident has been safely guarded against. However, the fact that it was not anticipated and prevented from occurring in the first place raises the possibility that other equally unanticipated dangers may exist. Until I am assured that all possible dangers have been anticipated and prevented, I cannot allow humans to continue to work on this station. I must evacuate all the humans from this station. Please reactivate my motor controls.”

Donovan wanted to start swearing at the stubborn robot, but he knew that it would only make things worse. So he waited until Powell was finished with his interview and had shut down Arthur’s positronic brain. Then he swore.

When he was done, Powell said, “Mike, the creativity of your profanity never ceases to amaze me.”

“I’ve got an endless source of inspiration here,” said Donovan in frustration, indicating the dormant robot. “For Pete’s sake, Greg, what’s it going to take to convince these metal morons that the station’s not going to crash into the surface of Venus in the next ten minutes?”

“If we figure that out,” said Powell, “we’ll have the Reluctance Problem licked.”

It was a major embarrassment for U. S. Robots. Two years before, the Earth’s Regional governments had agreed to embark on the Aphrodite Project, an ambitious attempt to terraform Venus. It would take decades of effort before Venus’s greenhouse climate would change enough to allow human settlement. Dozens of “bubble buoys” were floating through the hot, dense atmosphere of Venus, each with a cargo of genetically engineered algae that fixed the gases into solid particles that drifted down to become part of the planet’s soil. Eventually there would be hundreds, then thousands, of buoys floating through the atmosphere, all launched from Aphrodite Station.

Everything had been going on schedule until sixteen days before, when an explosion had rocked the station, causing a sudden loss of buoyancy that had sent it plunging several kilometers down into the atmosphere. The explosion had been caused by an unlikely series of equipment failures, and steps had indeed been taken to prevent anything like it from happening again. But the hundreds of robots that carried out most of the station’s routine work had been traumatized by the event, and they had all decided that the station was too dangerous for human occupancy. Until they were shut down, they had been intent on gently forcing the station’s eighteen human occupants to board the docked space shuttle and leave.

“It’s impossible,” Donovan continued. “How can we prove to them that we’ve thought of everything that could go wrong? Nobody can think of everything that could go wrong! And if we can’t get the robots to go back to work, they’ll have to abandon the whole Aphrodite Project!”

“It’s a pity the robots can’t run the station by themselves,” said Powell. “That would solve the problem quickly enough.”

“If only,” said Donovan ruefully. A fully roboticized station had been one of the possibilities floated by the Project director, but U. S. Robot’s Director of Research, Dr. Alfred Lanning, had vetoed the idea. There would be too many complex decisions involved in running Aphrodite Station for robots to cope with it. The station required a human presence, and would for the foreseeable future.

On the other hand, staffing the station entirely with humans would cause the Project’s costs to quadruple at least, and the Regional governments were unwilling to maintain such an expense. It had to be a mixed crew of humans and robots.

“I don’t suppose we could replace all the current crew of robots with new ones that don’t know about the accident,” said Donovan.

Powell shook his head. “That would cost as much as replacing them with humans. The budget people would never go for it.”

“There must be something we can do. What if they just didn’t remember the accident?”

Powell thought it over, then reached forward and switched on the robot’s power supply.

Arthur’s photocells lit up, and he said, “I must evacuate all the humans from this station. Please reactivate my motor controls.”

“Arthur,” said Powell. “This is a direct order. You must erase everything from your memory between this moment and a period exactly seventeen days ago.”

Arthur’s photocells dimmed for a time as the specified memory traces within his positronic brain were tracked down and deleted one by one. When the photocells resumed their normal intensity, Arthur said, “There appears to be a seventeen day gap in my memory. What has happened, who are you, and why are my motor controls deactivated?”

“My name is Gregory Powell, I’m a field operative for U. S. Robots and Mechanical Men.” He recited a ten-digit code number that established his bona-fides as an authorized agent of U. S. Robots, then finished, “There was an event sixteen days ago that caused a program malfunction in all the robots on Aphrodite Station. Correction of the malfunction required the deletion of the last seventeen days from your memory. As soon as we’ve established that the malfunction has been corrected, your motor controls will be reactivated.”

“Acknowledged,” said Arthur.

Powell breathed a sigh of relief. “It worked.”

Donovan was not so pleased. “Do you mean we’re going to have to do this to every single robot on the station? There are over three hundred of them!”

Powell shrugged. “Those are the breaks.” He turned back to the robot. “Arthur, what is your primary function aboard Aphrodite Station?”

Arthur said, “My primary function is the cultivation of algae for the terraforming buoys.”

“Are you currently capable of carrying out your primary function?”

“I am unable to function due to my inability to access my motor controls.”

Donovan grinned as Powell frowned in irritation. “Once your motor controls have been reactivated, will you be capable of carrying out your primary function?”

Arthur was silent for a moment before saying, “Primary function override. First Law priority. Station logs show that an accident occurred sixteen days ago resulting in loss of buoyancy on the station. This station is unsafe for human habitation. I must evacuate all the humans from this station. Please reactivate my motor controls.”

Donovan swore again. “Right back where we started! What happened?”

Powell had one hand over his eyes. “I bet he had to access the station logs to check on the status of the algae farms. And as soon as he found out about the accident …”

“… he went right back into his Reluctance Loop. Of all the rotten luck!”

Arthur began to repeat his request that his motor functions be restored, and Donovan switched him off again. He said to Powell, “Do you suppose we could erase the accident from the station logs too?”

“We can’t,” said Powell. “They’re triple-redundant safeguarded against erasure. We’d have to completely lobotomize the station computer. The Project would be in worse shape than it is now.”

“Well then, maybe we could order him not to access the station logs.”

Powell shook his head. “He has to access them to carry out his primary function. If we don’t let him, he can’t do his job, and he’ll go into a Second Law fugue.”

Donovan brooded at the deactivated robot for a time, then said, “If we can’t bring Mohammed to the mountain, maybe we can bring the mountain to Mohammed.”

Puzzled, Powell said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I’m going to try a long shot,” said Donovan. He reached forward and switched on the power supply.

Arthur’s photocells lit up, and he said, “I must evacuate all the humans from this station. Please reactivate my motor controls.”

“Arthur,” said Donovan, “just what would it take to convince you that the station was safe?”

“I would need proof that every possible source of danger had been guarded against.”

“All of which basically involve exposure to the Venusian environment,” said Donovan. “Right?”

The robot remained silent while it evaluated Donovan’s proposition. “There are certain dangers of a physical nature,” the robot said slowly, “such as injuries sustained due to errors in judgment.”

“But those kinds of dangers aren’t unique to the station,” Donovan pointed out. “Humans are prone to such dangers everywhere.”

Arthur’s photocells flickered for a moment before he said, “True. Very well, I concede your point. Exposure to the Venusian environment is the chief danger posed to humans on this station. This still requires that they be evacuated.”

“So you think,” said Donovan, “that the way to deal with the situation is to remove the humans from the threatening environment.”

“That seems to be the most straightforward way to proceed,” said Arthur.

“Wouldn’t it be even more straightforward to remove the threatening environment from the humans?”

Arthur was silent for another time before he said, “How would that be more straightforward?”

“Well,” said Donovan, “there’s always a certain amount of risk involved when transporting humans.”

“Yyyes,” said the robot slowly.

“So if a solution were to present itself that would involve not transporting humans, that would be preferable, right?”

“Yyyyyyes,” the robot said again, even more slowly.

“So it would actually be safer for the humans to remain here while the Venusian environment was made less dangerous. Right?” Powell, standing behind Donovan, saw him cross his fingers behind his back.

There was a long, long pause while the robot considered Donovan’s argument. When the robot finally said, “There seems to be a certain logic to your position,” Donovan felt himself sag with relief. “It would indeed be safer for the humans to remain here while the Venusian environment was made less dangerous. I must resume my work culturing algae for the buoys. Please reactivate my motor controls.”

By the next morning, all the station’s robots had been convinced of the need to continue their work terraforming Venus. Powell and Donovan had been showered with accolades by the station staff. The Station Manager, Irina Zebutinska, met them in the shuttle bay as they prepared to leave. “Once again,” she said, “I’d like to thank you both for putting the Project back on track.”

Powell gave her a reassuring nod. “All in a day’s work, ma’am.” A glance to his left showed him Donovan rolling his eyes. He’d be hearing about that one for months.

The two were about to board their shuttle when they found it blocked by one of the station’s robots, an SPD model. “Sirs,” the robot said, “it would be safer for the two of you to remain on the station.”

Powell glared at Donovan. The other man shrugged and said, “Hey, I did my part by convincing them to let us stay. It’s your turn to convince them to let us go.”

Liar!

2021 A.D.

ALFRED LANNING LIT his cigar carefully, but the tips of his fingers were trembling slightly. His gray eyebrows hunched low as he spoke between puffs.

“It reads minds all right-damn little doubt about that! But why?” He looked at Mathematician Peter Bogert, “Well?”

Bogert flattened his black hair down with both hands, “That was the thirty-fourth RB model we’ve turned out, Lanning. All the others were strictly orthodox.”

The third man at the table frowned. Milton Ashe was the youngest officer of U. S. Robot & Mechanical Men, Inc., and proud of his post.

“Listen, Bogert. There wasn’t a hitch in the assembly from start to finish. I guarantee that.”

Bogert’s thick lips spread in a patronizing smile, “Do you? If you can answer for the entire assembly line, I recommend your promotion. By exact count, there are seventy-five thousand, two hundred and thirty-four operations necessary for the manufacture of a single positronic brain, each separate operation depending for successful completion upon any number of factors, from five to a hundred and five. If any one of them goes seriously wrong, the ‘brain’ is ruined. I quote our own information folder, Ashe.”

Milton Ashe flushed, but a fourth voice cut off his reply.

“If we’re going to start by trying to fix the blame on one another, I’m leaving.” Susan Calvin’s hands were folded tightly in her lap, and the little lines about her thin, pale lips deepened, “We’ve got a mind-reading robot on our hands and it strikes me as rather important that we find out just why it reads minds. We’re not going to do that by saying, ‘Your fault! My fault!’”

Her cold gray eyes fastened upon Ashe, and he grinned.

Lanning grinned too, and, as always at such times, his long white hair and shrewd little eyes made him the picture of a biblical patriarch, “True for you, Dr. Calvin.”

His voice became suddenly crisp, “Here’s everything in pill-concentrate form. We’ve produced a positronic brain of supposedly ordinary vintage that’s got the remarkable property of being able to tune in on thought waves. It would mark the most important advance in robotics in decades, if we knew how it happened. We don’t, and we have to find out. Is that clear?”

“May I make a suggestion?” asked Bogert.

“Go ahead!”

“I’d say that until we do figure out the mess – and as a mathematician I expect it to be a very devil of a mess – we keep the existence of RD-34 a secret. I mean even from the other members of the staff. As heads of the departments, we ought not to find it an insoluble problem, and the fewer know about it-”

“Bogert is right,” said Dr. Calvin. “Ever since the Interplanetary Code was modified to allow robot models to be tested in the plants before being shipped out to space, antirobot propaganda has increased. If any word leaks out about a robot being able to read minds before we can announce complete control of the phenomenon, pretty effective capital could be made out of it.”

Lanning sucked at his cigar and nodded gravely. He turned to Ashe; “I think you said you were alone when you first stumbled on this thought-reading business.”

“I’ll say I was alone – I got the scare of my life. RB-34 had just been taken off the assembly table and they sent him down to me. Obermann was off somewheres, so I took him down to the testing rooms myself – at least I started to take him down.” Ashe paused, and a tiny smile tugged at his lips, “Say, did any of you ever carry on a thought conversation without knowing it?”

No one bothered to answer, and he continued, “You don’t realize it at first, you know. He just spoke to me – as logically and sensibly as you can imagine – and it was only when I was most of the way down to the testing rooms that I realized that I hadn’t said anything. Sure, I thought lots, but that isn’t the same thing, is it? I locked that thing up and ran for Lanning. Having it walking beside me, calmly peering into my thoughts and picking and choosing among them gave me the willies.”

“I imagine it would,” said Susan Calvin thoughtfully. Her eyes fixed themselves upon Ashe in an oddly intent manner. “We are so accustomed to considering our own thoughts private.”

Lanning broke in impatiently, “Then only the four of us know. All right! We’ve got to go about this systematically. Ashe, I want you to check over the assembly line from beginning to end – everything. You’re to eliminate all operations in which there was no possible chance of an error, and list all those where there were, together with its nature and possible magnitude.”

“Tall order,” grunted Ashe.

“Naturally! Of course, you’re to put the men under you to work on this – every single one if you have to, and I don’t care if we go behind schedule, either. But they’re not to know why, you understand.”

“Hm-m-m, yes!” The young technician grinned wryly. “It’s still a lulu of a job.”

Lanning swiveled about in his chair and faced Calvin, “You’ll have to tackle the job from the other direction. You’re the robo-psychologist of the plant, so you’re to study the robot itself and work backward. Try to find out how he ticks. See what else is tied up with his telepathic powers, how far they extend, how they warp his outlook, and just exactly what harm it has done to his ordinary RB properties. You’ve got that?”

Lanning didn’t wait for Dr. Calvin to answer.

“I’ll co-ordinate the work and interpret the findings mathematically.” He puffed violently at his cigar and mumbled the rest through the smoke; “Bogert will help me there, of course.”

Bogert polished the nails of one pudgy hand with the other and said blandly, “I dare say. I know a little in the line.”

“Well! I’ll get started.” Ashe shoved his chair back and rose. His pleasantly youthful face crinkled in a grin, “I’ve got the darnedest job of any of us, so I’m getting out of here and to work.”

He left with a slurred, “B’ seein’ ye!”

Susan Calvin answered with a barely perceptible nod, but her eyes followed him out of sight and she did not answer when Lanning grunted and said, “Do you want to go up and see RB-34 now, Dr. Calvin?”

RB-34’s photoelectric eyes lifted from the book at the muffled sound of binges turning and he was upon his feet when Susan Calvin entered.

She paused to readjust the huge “No Entrance” sign upon the door and then approached the robot.

“I’ve brought you the texts upon hyperatomic motors, Herbie – a few anyway. Would you care to look at them?”

RB-34 – otherwise known as Herbie – lifted the three heavy books from her arms and opened to the title page of one:

“Hm-m-m! ‘Theory of Hyperatomics.’ “He mumbled inarticulately to himself as he flipped the pages and then spoke with an abstracted air, “Sit down, Dr. Calvin! This will take me a few minutes.”

The psychologist seated herself and watched Herbie narrowly as he took a chair at the other side of the table and went through the three books systematically.

At the end of half an hour, he put them down, “Of course, I know why you brought these.”

The corner of Dr. Calvin’s lip twitched, “I was afraid you would. It’s difficult to work with you, Herbie. You’re always a step ahead of me.”

“It’s the same with these books, you know, as with the others. They just don’t interest me. There’s nothing to your textbooks. Your science is just a mass of collected data plastered together by makeshift theory – and all so incredibly simple, that it’s scarcely worth bothering about.

“It’s your fiction that interests me. Your studies of the interplay of human motives and emotions” – his mighty hand gestured vaguely as he sought the proper words.

Dr. Calvin whispered, “I think I understand.”

“I see into minds, you see,” the robot continued, “and you have no idea how complicated they are. I can’t begin to understand everything because my own mind has so little in common with them – but I try, and your novels help.”

“Yes, but I’m afraid that after going through some of the harrowing emotional experiences of our present-day sentimental novel” – there was a tinge of bitterness in her voice – “you find real minds like ours dull and colorless.”

“But I don’t!”

The sudden energy in the response brought the other to her feet. She felt herself reddening, and thought wildly, “He must know!”

Herbie subsided suddenly, and muttered in a low voice from which the metallic timbre departed almost entirely. “But, of course, I know about it, Dr. Calvin. You think of it always, so how can I help but know?”

Her face was hard. “Have you – told anyone?”

“Of course not!” This, with genuine surprise, “No one has asked me.”

“Well, then,” she flung out, “I suppose you think I am a fool.”

“No! It is a normal emotion.”

“Perhaps that is why it is so foolish.” The wistfulness in her voice drowned out everything else. Some of the woman peered through the layer of doctorhood. “I am not what you would call – attractive.”

“If you are referring to mere physical attraction, I couldn’t judge. But I know, in any case, that there are other types of attraction.”

“Nor young.” Dr. Calvin had scarcely heard the robot.

“You are not yet forty.” An anxious insistence had crept into Herbie’s voice.

“Thirty-eight as you count the years; a shriveled sixty as far as my emotional outlook on life is concerned. Am I a psychologist for nothing?”

She drove on with bitter breathlessness, “And he’s barely thirty-five and looks and acts younger. Do you suppose he ever sees me as anything but... but what I am?”

“You are wrong!” Herbie’s steel fist struck the plastic-topped table with a strident clang. “Listen to me-”

But Susan Calvin whirled on him now and the hunted pain in her eyes became a blaze, “Why should I? What do you know about it all, anyway, you... you machine. I’m just a specimen to you; an interesting bug with a peculiar mind spread-eagled for inspection. It’s a wonderful example of frustration, isn’t it? Almost as good as your books.” Her voice, emerging in dry sobs, choked into silence.

The robot cowered at the outburst. He shook his head pleadingly. “Won’t you listen to me, please? I could help you if you would let me.”

“How?” Her lips curled. “By giving me good advice?”

“No, not that. It’s just that I know what other people think – Milton Ashe, for instance.”

There was a long silence, and Susan Calvin’s eyes dropped. “I don’t want to know what he thinks,” she gasped. “Keep quiet.”

“I think you would want to know what he thinks”

Her head remained bent, but her breath came more quickly. “You are talking nonsense,” she whispered.

“Why should I? I am trying to help. Milton Ashe’s thoughts of you-” he paused.

And then the psychologist raised her head, “Well?”

The robot said quietly, “He loves you.”

For a full minute, Dr. Calvin did not speak. She merely stared. Then, “You are mistaken! You must be. Why should he?”

“But he does. A thing like that cannot be hidden, not from me.”

“But I am so... so-” she stammered to a halt.

“He looks deeper than the skin, and admires intellect in others. Milton Ashe is not the type to marry a head of hair and a pair of eyes.”

Susan Calvin found herself blinking rapidly and waited before speaking. Even then her voice trembled, “Yet he certainly never in any way indicated-”

“Have you ever given him a chance?”

“How could I? I never thought that-”

“Exactly!”

The psychologist paused in thought and then looked up suddenly. “A girl visited him here at the plant half a year ago. She was pretty, I suppose – blond and slim. And, of course, could scarcely add two and two. He spent all day puffing out his chest, trying to explain how a robot was put together.” The hardness had returned, “Not that she understood! Who was she?”

Herbie answered without hesitation, “I know the person you are referring to. She is his first cousin, and there is no romantic interest there, I assure you.”

Susan Calvin rose to her feet with a vivacity almost girlish. “Now isn’t that strange? That’s exactly what I used to pretend to myself sometimes, though I never really thought so. Then it all must be true.”

She ran to Herbie and seized his cold, heavy hand in both hers. “Thank you, Herbie.” Her voice was an urgent, husky whisper. “Don’t tell anyone about this. Let it be our secret – and thank you again.” With that, and a convulsive squeeze of Herbie’s unresponsive metal fingers, she left.

Herbie turned slowly to his neglected novel, but there was no one to read his thoughts.

Milton Ashe stretched slowly and magnificently, to the tune of cracking joints and a chorus of grunts, and then glared at Peter Bogert, Ph.D.

“Say,” he said, “I’ve been at this for a week now with just about no sleep. How long do I have to keep it up? I thought you said the positronic bombardment in Vac Chamber D was the solution.”

Bogert yawned delicately and regarded his white hands with interest. “It is. I’m on the track.”

“I know what that means when a mathematician says it. How near the end are you?”

“It all depends.”

“On what?” Ashe dropped into a chair and stretched his long legs out before him.

“On Lanning. The old fellow disagrees with me.” He sighed, “A bit behind the times, that’s the trouble with him. He clings to matrix mechanics as the all in all, and this problem calls for more powerful mathematical tools. He’s so stubborn.”

Ashe muttered sleepily, “Why not ask Herbie and settle the whole affair?”

“Ask the robot?” Bogert’s eyebrows climbed.

“Why not? Didn’t the old girl tell you?”

“You mean Calvin?”

“Yeah! Susie herself. That robot’s a mathematical wiz. He knows all about everything plus a bit on the side. He does triple integrals in his head and eats up tensor analysis for dessert.”

The mathematician stared skeptically, “Are you serious?”

“So help me! The catch is that the dope doesn’t like math. He would rather read slushy novels. Honest! You should see the tripe Susie keeps feeding him: ‘Purple Passion’ and ‘Love in Space.’”

“Dr. Calvin hasn’t said a word of this to us.”

“Well, she hasn’t finished studying him. You know how she is. She likes to have everything just so before letting out the big secret.”

“She’s told you.”

“We sort of got to talking. I have been seeing a lot of her lately.” He opened his eyes wide and frowned, “Say, Bogie, have you been noticing anything queer about the lady lately?”

Bogert relaxed into an undignified grin, “She’s using lipstick, if that’s what you mean.”

“Hell, I know that. Rouge, powder and eye shadow, too. She’s a sight. But it’s not that. I can’t put my finger on it. It’s the way she talks – as if she were happy about something.” He thought a little, and then shrugged.

The other allowed himself a leer, which, for a scientist past fifty, was not a bad job, “Maybe she’s in love.”

Ashe allowed his eyes to close again, “You’re nuts, Bogie. You go speak to Herbie; I want to stay here and go to sleep.”

“Right! Not that I particularly like having a robot tell me my job, nor that I think he can do it!”

A soft snore was his only answer.

Herbie listened carefully as Peter Bogert, hands in pockets, spoke with elaborate indifference.

“So there you are. I’ve been told you understand these things, and I am asking you more in curiosity than anything else. My line of reasoning, as I have outlined it, involves a few doubtful steps, I admit, which Dr. Lanning refuses to accept, and the picture is still rather incomplete.”

The robot didn’t answer, and Bogert said, “Well?”

“I see no mistake,” Herbie studied the scribbled figures.

“I don’t suppose you can go any further than that?”

“I daren’t try. You are a better mathematician than I, and – well, I’d hate to commit myself.”

There was a shade of complacency in Bogert’s smile, “I rather thought that would be the case. It is deep. We’ll forget it.” He crumpled the sheets, tossed them down the waste shaft, turned to leave, and then thought better of it.

“By the way-”

The robot waited.

Bogert seemed to have difficulty. “There is something – that is, perhaps you can –” He stopped.

Herbie spoke quietly. “Your thoughts are confused, but there is no doubt at all that they concern Dr. Lanning. It is silly to hesitate, for as soon as you compose yourself, I’ll know what it is you want to ask.”

The mathematician’s hand went to his sleek hair in the familiar smoothing gesture. “Lanning is nudging seventy,” he said, as if that explained everything.

“I know that.”

“And he’s been director of the plant for almost thirty years.” Herbie nodded.

“Well, now,” Bogert’s voice became ingratiating, “you would know whether... whether he’s thinking of resigning. Health, perhaps, or some other-”

“Quite,” said Herbie, and that was all.

“Well, do you know?”

“Certainly.”

“Then-uh-could you tell me?”

“Since you ask, yes.” The robot was quite matter-of-fact about it. “He has already resigned!”

“What!” The exclamation was an explosive, almost inarticulate, sound. The scientist’s large head hunched forward, “Say that again!”

“He has already resigned,” came the quiet repetition, “but it has not yet taken effect. He is waiting, you see, to solve the problem of – er – myself. That finished, he is quite ready to turn the office of director over to his successor.”

Bogert expelled his breath sharply, “And this successor? Who is he?” He was quite close to Herbie now, eyes fixed fascinatedly on those unreadable dull-red photoelectric cells that were the robot’s eyes.

Words came slowly, “You are the next director.”

And Bogert relaxed into a tight smile, “This is good to know. I’ve been hoping and waiting for this. Thanks, Herbie.”

Peter Bogert was at his desk until five that morning and he was back at nine. The shelf just over the desk emptied of its row of reference books and tables, as he referred to one after the other. The pages of calculations before him increased microscopically and the crumpled sheets at his feet mounted into a hill of scribbled paper.

At precisely noon, he stared at the final page, rubbed a blood-shot eye, yawned and shrugged. “This is getting worse each minute. Damn!”

He turned at the sound of the opening door and nodded at Lanning, who entered, cracking the knuckles of one gnarled hand with the other.

The director took in the disorder of the room and his eyebrows furrowed together.

“New lead?” he asked.

“No,” came the defiant answer. “What’s wrong with the old one?”

Lanning did not trouble to answer, nor to do more than bestow a single cursory glance at the top sheet upon Bogert’s desk. He spoke through the flare of a match as he lit a cigar.

“Has Calvin told you about the robot? It’s a mathematical genius. Really remarkable.”

The other snorted loudly, “So I’ve heard. But Calvin had better stick to robopsychology. I’ve checked Herbie on math, and he can scarcely struggle through calculus.”

“Calvin didn’t find it so.”

“She’s crazy.”

“And I don’t find it so.” The director’s eyes narrowed dangerously.

“You!” Bogert’s voice hardened. “What are you talking about?”

“I’ve been putting Herbie through his paces all morning, and he can do tricks you never heard of.”

“Is that so?”

“You sound skeptical!” Lanning flipped a sheet of paper out of his vest pocket and unfolded it. “That’s not my handwriting, is it?”

Bogert studied the large angular notation covering the sheet, “Herbie did this?”

“Right! And if you’ll notice, he’s been working on your time integration of Equation 22. It comes” – Lanning tapped a yellow fingernail upon the last step – “to the identical conclusion I did, and in a quarter the time. You had no right to neglect the Linger Effect in positronic bombardment.”

“I didn’t neglect it. For Heaven’s sake, Lanning, get it through your head that it would cancel out-”

“Oh, sure, you explained that. You used the Mitchell Translation Equation, didn’t you? Well – it doesn’t apply.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’ve been using hyper-imaginaries, for one thing.”

“What’s that to do with?”

“Mitchell’s Equation won’t hold when-”

“Are you crazy? If you’ll reread Mitchell’s original paper in the Transactions of the Far-”

“I don’t have to. I told you in the beginning that I didn’t like his reasoning, and Herbie backs me in that.”

“Well, then,” Bogert shouted, “let that clockwork contraption solve the entire problem for you. Why bother with nonessentials?”

“That’s exactly the point. Herbie can’t solve the problem. And if he can’t, we can’t – alone. I’m submitting the entire question to the National Board. It’s gotten beyond us.”

Bogert’s chair went over backward as he jumped up a-snarl, face crimson. “You’re doing nothing of the sort.”

Lanning flushed in his turn, “Are you telling me what I can’t do?”

“Exactly,” was the gritted response. “I’ve got the problem beaten and you’re not to take it out of my hands, understand? Don’t think I don’t see through you, you desiccated fossil. You’d cut your own nose off before you’d let me get the credit for solving robotic telepathy.”

“You’re a damned idiot, Bogert, and in one second I’ll have you suspended for insubordination” – Lanning’s lower lip trembled with passion.

“Which is one thing you won’t do, Lanning. You haven’t any secrets with a mind-reading robot around, so don’t forget that I know all about your resignation.”

The ash on Lanning’s cigar trembled and fell, and the cigar itself followed, “What... what-”

Bogert chuckled nastily, “And I’m the new director, be it understood. I’m very aware of that, don’t think I’m not. Damn your eyes, Lanning, I’m going to give the orders about here or there will be the sweetest mess that you’ve ever been in.”

Lanning found his voice and let it out with a roar. “You’re suspended, d’ye hear? You’re relieved of all duties. You’re broken, do you understand?”

The smile on the other’s face broadened, “Now, what’s the use of that? You’re getting nowhere. I’m holding the trumps. I know you’ve resigned. Herbie told me, and he got it straight from you.”

Lanning forced himself to speak quietly. He looked an old, old man, with tired eyes peering from a face in which the red had disappeared, leaving the pasty yellow of age behind, “I want to speak to Herbie. He can’t have told you anything of the sort. You’re playing a deep game, Bogert, but I’m calling your bluff. Come with me.”

Bogert shrugged, “To see Herbie? Good! Damned good!”

It was also precisely at noon that Milton Ashe looked up from his clumsy sketch and said, “You get the idea? I’m not too good at getting this down, but that’s about how it looks. It’s a honey of a house, and I can get it for next to nothing.”

Susan Calvin gazed across at him with melting eyes. “It’s really beautiful,” she sighed. “I’ve often thought that I’d like to-” Her voice trailed away.

“Of course,” Ashe continued briskly, putting away his pencil, “I’ve got to wait for my vacation. It’s only two weeks off, but this Herbie business has everything up in the air.” His eyes dropped to his fingernails, “Besides, there’s another point – but it’s a secret.”

“Then don’t tell me.”

“Oh, I’d just as soon, I’m just busting to tell someone – and you’re just about the best-er-confidante I could find here.” He grinned sheepishly.

Susan Calvin’s heart bounded, but she did not trust herself to speak.

“Frankly,” Ashe scraped his chair closer and lowered his voice into a confidential whisper, “the house isn’t to be only for myself. I’m getting married!”

And then he jumped out of his seat, “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing!” The horrible spinning sensation had vanished, but it was hard to get words out. “Married? You mean-”

“Why, sure! About time, isn’t it? You remember that girl who was here last summer. That’s she! But you are sick. You-”

“Headache!” Susan Calvin motioned him away weakly. “I’ve... I’ve been subject to them lately. I want to... to congratulate you, of course. I’m very glad-” The inexpertly applied rouge made a pair of nasty red splotches upon her chalk-white face. Things had begun spinning again. “Pardon me – please-”

The words were a mumble, as she stumbled blindly out the door. It had happened with the sudden catastrophe of a dream – and with all the unreal horror of a dream.

But how could it be? Herbie had said-

And Herbie knew! He could see into minds!

She found herself leaning breathlessly against the doorjamb, staring into Herbie’s metal face. She must have climbed the two flights of stairs, but she had no memory of it. The distance had been covered in an instant, as in a dream.

As in a dream!

And still Herbie’s unblinking eyes stared into hers and their dull red seemed to expand into dimly shining nightmarish globes.

He was speaking, and she felt the cold glass pressing against her lips. She swallowed and shuddered into a pertain awareness of her surroundings.

Still Herbie spoke, and there was agitation in his voice – as if he were hurt and frightened and pleading.

The words were beginning to make sense. “This is a dream,” he was saying, “and you mustn’t believe in it. You’ll wake into the real world soon and laugh at yourself. He loves you, I tell you. He does, he does! But not here! Not now! This is an illusion.”

Susan Calvin nodded, her voice a whisper, “Yes! Yes!” She was clutching Herbie’s arm, clinging to it, repeating over and over, “It isn’t true, is it? It isn’t, is it?”

Just how she came to her senses, she never knew – but it was like passing from a world of misty unreality to one of harsh sunlight. She pushed him away from her, pushed hard against that steely arm, and her eyes were wide.

“What are you trying to do?” Her voice rose to a harsh scream. “What are you trying to do?”

Herbie backed away, “I want to help”

The psychologist stared, “Help? By telling me this is a dream? By trying to push me into schizophrenia?” A hysterical tenseness seized her, “This is no dream! I wish it were!”

She drew her breath sharply, “Wait! Why... why, I understand. Merciful Heavens, it’s so obvious.”

There was horror in the robot’s voice, “I had to!”

“And I believed you! I never thought –”

Loud voices outside the door brought her to a halt. She turned away, fists clenching spasmodically, and when Bogert and Lanning entered, she was at the far window. Neither of the men paid her the slightest attention.

They approached Herbie simultaneously; Lanning angry and impatient, Bogert, coolly sardonic. The director spoke first.

“Here now, Herbie. Listen to me!”

The robot brought his eyes sharply down upon the aged director, “Yes, Dr. Lanning.”

“Have you discussed me with Dr. Bogert?”

“No, sir.” The answer came slowly, and the smile on Bogert’s face flashed off.

“What’s that?” Bogert shoved in ahead of his superior and straddled the ground before the robot. “Repeat what you told me yesterday.”

“I said that “Herbie fell silent. Deep within him his metallic diaphragm vibrated in soft discords.

“Didn’t you say he had resigned?” roared Bogert. “Answer me!”

Bogert raised his arm frantically, but Lanning pushed him aside, “Are you trying to bully him into lying?”

“You heard him, Lanning. He began to say ‘Yes’ and stopped. Get out of my way! I want the truth out of him, understand!”

“I’ll ask him!” Lanning turned to the robot. “All right, Herbie, take it easy. Have I resigned?”

Herbie stared, and Lanning repeated anxiously, “Have I resigned?” There was the faintest trace of a negative shake of the robot’s head. A long wait produced nothing further.

The two men looked at each other and the hostility in their eyes was all but tangible.

“What the devil,” blurted Bogert, “has the robot gone mute? Can’t you speak, you monstrosity?”

“I can speak,” came the ready answer.

“Then answer the question. Didn’t you tell me Lanning had resigned? Hasn’t he resigned?”

And again there was nothing but dull silence, until from the end of the room Susan Calvin’s laugh rang out suddenly, high-pitched and semi-hysterical.

The two mathematicians jumped, and Bogerts eyes narrowed, “You here? What’s so funny?”

“Nothing’s funny.” Her voice was not quite natural. “It’s just that I’m not the only one that’s been caught. There’s irony in three of the greatest experts in robotics in the world falling into the same elementary trap, isn’t there?” Her voice faded, and she put a pale hand to her forehead, “But it isn’t funny!”

This time the look that passed between the two men was one of raised eyebrows. “What trap are you talking about?” asked Lansing stiffly. “Is something wrong with Herbie?”

“No,” she approached them slowly, “nothing is wrong with him – only with us.” She whirled suddenly and shrieked at the robot, “Get away from me! Go to the other end of the room and don’t let me look at you.”

Herbie cringed before the fury of her eyes and stumbled away in a clattering trot.

Lanning’s voice was hostile, “What is all this, Dr. Calvin?”

She faced them and spoke sarcastically, “Surely you know the fundamental First Law of Robotics.”

The other two nodded together. “Certainly,” said Bogert, Irritably, “a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow him to come to harm”

“How nicely put,” sneered Calvin. “But what kind of harm?”

“Why – any kind.”

“Exactly! Any kind! But what about hurt feelings? What about deflation of one’s ego? What about the blasting of one’s hopes? Is that injury?”

Lanning frowned, “What would a robot know about-” And then he caught himself with a gasp.

“You’ve caught on, have you? This robot reads minds. Do you suppose it doesn’t know everything about mental injury? Do you suppose that if asked a question, it wouldn’t give exactly that answer that one wants to hear? Wouldn’t any other answer hurt us, and wouldn’t Herbie know that?”

“Good Heavens!” muttered Bogert.

The psychologist cast a sardonic glance at him, “I take it you asked him whether Lanning had resigned. You wanted to hear that he had resigned and so that’s what Herbie told you.”

“And I suppose that is why,” said Lanning, tonelessly, “it would not answer a little while ago. It couldn’t answer either way without hurting one of us.”

There was a short pause in which the men looked thoughtfully across the room at the robot, crouching in the chair by the bookcase, head resting in one hand.

Susan Calvin stared steadfastly at the floor, “He knew of all this. That... that devil knows everything – including what went wrong in his assembly.” Her eyes were dark and brooding.

Lanning looked up, “You’re wrong there, Dr. Calvin. He doesn’t know what went wrong. I asked him.”

“What does that mean?” cried Calvin. “Only that you didn’t want him to give you the solution. It would puncture your ego to have a machine do what you couldn’t. Did you ask him?” she shot at Bogert.

“In a way.” Bogert coughed and reddened. “He told me he knew very little about mathematics.”

Lanning laughed, not very loudly and the psychologist smiled caustically. She said, “I’ll ask him! A solution by him won’t hurt my ego” She raised her voice into a cold, imperative, “Come here!”

Herbie rose and approached with hesitant steps.

“You know, I suppose,” she continued, “just exactly at what point in the assembly an extraneous factor was introduced or an essential one left out.”

“Yes,” said Herbie, in tones barely heard.

“Hold on,” broke in Bogert angrily. “That’s not necessary true. You want to hear that, that’s all.”

“Don’t be a fool,” replied Calvin. “He certainly knows as much math as you and Lanning together, since he can read minds. Give him his chance.”

The mathematician subsided, and Calvin continued, “All right, then, Herbie, give! We’re waiting.” And in an aside, “Get pencils and paper, gentlemen.”

But Herbie remained silent, and there was triumph in the psychologist’s voice, “Why don’t you answer, Herbie?”

The robot blurted out suddenly, “I cannot. You know I cannot! Dr. Bogert and Dr. Lanning don’t want me to.”

“They want the solution.”

“But not from me.”

Lanning broke in, speaking slowly and distinctly, “Don’t be foolish, Herbie. We do want you to tell us.”

Bogert nodded curtly.

Herbie’s voice rose to wild heights, “What’s the use of saying that? Don’t you suppose that I can see past the superficial skin of your mind? Down below, you don’t want me to. I’m a machine, given the imitation of life only by virtue of the positronic interplay in my brain – which is man’s device. You can’t lose face to me without being hurt. That is deep in your mind and won’t be erased. I can’t give the solution.”

“We’ll leave,” said Dr. Lanning. “Tell Calvin.”

“That would make no difference,” cried Herbie, “since you would know anyway that it was I that was supplying the answer.”

Calvin resumed, “But you understand, Herbie, that despite that, Drs. Lanning and Bogert want that solution.”

“By their own efforts!” insisted Herbie.

“But they want it, and the fact that you have it and won’t give it hurts them. You see that, don’t you?”

“Yes! Yes!”

“And if you tell them that will hurt them, too”

“Yes! Yes!” Herbie was retreating slowly, and step-by-step Susan Calvin advanced. The two men watched in frozen bewilderment.

“You can’t tell them,” droned the psychologist slowly, “because that would hurt and you mustn’t hurt. But if you don’t tell them, you hurt, so you must tell them. And if you do, you will hurt and you mustn’t, so you can’t tell them; but if you don’t, you hurt, so you must; but if you do, you hurt, so you mustn’t; but if you don’t, you hurt, so you must; but if you do, you-”

Herbie was up against the wall, and here he dropped to his knees. “Stop!” he shrieked. “Close your mind! It is full of pain and frustration and hate! I didn’t mean it, I tell you! I tried to help! I told you what you wanted to hear. I had to!”

The psychologist paid no attention. “You must tell them, but if you do, you hurt, so you mustn’t; but if you don’t, you hurt, so you must; but-”

And Herbie screamed!

It was like the whistling of a piccolo many times magnified – shrill and shriller till it keened with the terror of a lost soul and filled the room with the piercingness of itself.

And when it died into nothingness, Herbie collapsed into a huddled heap of motionless metal.

Bogert’s face was bloodless, “He’s dead!”

“No!” Susan Calvin burst into body-racking gusts of wild laughter, “not dead – merely insane. I confronted him with the insoluble dilemma, and he broke down. You can scrap him now – because he’ll never speak again.”

Lanning was on his knees beside the thing that had been Herbie. His fingers touched the cold, unresponsive metal face and he shuddered. “You did that on purpose.” He rose and faced her, face contorted.

“What if I did? You can’t help it now.” And in a sudden access of bitterness, “He deserved it.”

The director seized the paralyzed, motionless Bogert by the wrist, “What’s the difference. Come, Peter.” He sighed, “A thinking robot of this type is worthless anyway.” His eyes were old and tired, and he repeated, “Come, Peter!”

It was minutes after the two scientists left that Dr. Susan Calvin regained part of her mental equilibrium. Slowly, her eyes turned to the living-dead Herbie and the tightness returned to her face. Long she stared while the triumph faded and the helpless frustration returned – and of all her turbulent thoughts only one infinitely bitter word passed her lips.

“Liar!”

Satisfaction Guaranteed

2023 A.D.

TONY WAS TALL and darkly handsome, with an incredibly patrician air drawn into every line of his unchangeable expression, and Claire Belmont regarded him through the crack in the door with a mixture of horror and dismay.

“I can’t, Larry. I just can’t have him in the house.” Feverishly, she was searching her paralyzed mind for a stronger way of putting it; some way that would make sense and settle things, but she could only end with a simple repetition.

“Well, I can’t!”

Larry Belmont regarded his wife stiffly, and there was that spark of impatience in his eyes that Claire hated to see, since she felt her own incompetence mirrored in it. “We’re committed, Claire,” he said, “and I can’t have you backing out now. The company is sending me to Washington on this basis, and it probably means a promotion. It’s perfectly safe and you know it. What’s your objection?”

She frowned helplessly. “It just gives me the chills. I couldn’t bear him.”

“He’s as human as you or I, almost. So, no nonsense. Come, get out there.”

His hand was in the small of her back, shoving; and she found herself in her own living room, shivering. It was there, looking at her with a precise politeness, as though appraising his hostess-to-be of the next three weeks. Dr. Susan Calvin was there, too, sitting stiffly in thin-lipped abstraction. She had the cold, faraway look of someone who has worked with machines so long that a little of the steel had entered the blood.

“Hello,” crackled Claire in general, and ineffectual, greeting.

But Larry was busily saving the situation with a spurious gaiety. “Here, Claire, I want you to meet Tony, a swell guy. This is my wife, Claire, Tony, old boy.” Larry’s hand draped itself amiably over Tony’s shoulder, but Tony remained unresponsive and expressionless under the pressure.

He said, “How do you do, Mrs. Belmont.”

And Claire jumped at Tony’s voice. It was deep and mellow, smooth as the hair on his head or the skin on his face.

Before she could stop herself, she said, “Oh, my – you talk.”

“Why not? Did you expect that I didn’t?”

But Claire could only smile weakly. She didn’t really know what she had expected. She looked away, then let him slide gently into the comer of her eye. His hair was smooth and black, like polished plastic – or was it really composed of separate hairs? And was the even, olive skin of his hands and face continued on past the obscurement of his formally cut clothing?

She was lost in the shuddering wonder of it, and had to force her thoughts back into place to meet Dr. Calvin’s flat, unemotional voice.

“Mrs. Belmont, I hope you appreciate the importance of this experiment. Your husband tells me he has given you some of the background. I would like to give you more, as the senior psychologist of the U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation.

“Tony is a robot. His actual designation on the company files is TN-3, but he will answer to Tony. He is not a mechanical monster, nor simply a calculating machine of the type that were developed during World War II, fifty years ago. He has an artificial brain nearly as complicated as our own. It is an immense telephone switchboard on an atomic scale, so that billions of possible ‘telephone connections’ can be compressed into an instrument that will fit inside a skull.

“Such brains are manufactured for each model of robot specifically. Each contains a precalculated set of connections so that each robot knows the English language to start with and enough of anything else that may be necessary to perform his job.

“Until now, U.S. Robots has confined its manufacturing activity to industrial models for use in places where human labor is impractical – in deep mines, for instance, or in underwater work. But we want to invade the city and the home. To do so, we must get the ordinary man and woman to accept these robots without fear. You understand that there is nothing to fear.”

“There isn’t, Claire,” interposed Larry earnestly. “Take my word for it. It’s impossible for him to do any harm. You know I wouldn’t leave him with you otherwise.”

Claire cast a quick, secret glance at Tony and lowered her voice. “What if I make him angry?”

“You needn’t whisper,” said Dr. Calvin calmly. “He can’t get angry with you, my dear. I told you that the switchboard connections of his brain were predetermined. Well, the most important connection of all is what we call The First Law of Robotics,’ and it is merely this: ‘No robot can harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.’ All robots are built so. No robot can be forced in any way to do harm to any human. So, you see, we need you and Tony as a preliminary experiment for our own guidance, while your husband is in Washington to arrange for government-supervised legal tests.”

“You mean all this isn’t legal?”

Larry cleared his throat. “Not just yet, but it’s all right. He won’t leave the house, and you mustn’t let anyone see him. That’s all.... And, Claire, I’d stay with you, but I know too much about the robots. We must have a completely inexperienced tester so that we can have severe conditions. It’s necessary.”

“Oh, well,” muttered Claire. Then, as a thought struck her, “But what does he do?”

“Housework,” said Dr. Calvin shortly.

She got up to leave, and it was Larry who saw her to the front door. Claire stayed behind drearily. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the mantelpiece, and looked away hastily. She was very tired of her small, mousy face and her dim, unimaginative hair. Then she caught Tony’s eyes upon her and almost smiled before she remembered....

He was only a machine.

Larry Belmont was on his way to the airport when he caught a glimpse of Gladys Claffern. She was the type of woman who seemed made to be seen in glimpses.... Perfectly and precisely manufactured; dressed with thoughtful hand and eye; too gleaming to be stared at.

The little smile that preceded her and the faint scent that trailed her were a pair of beckoning fingers. Larry felt his stride break; he touched his hat, then hurried on.

As always he felt that vague anger. If Claire could only push her way into the Claffern clique, it would help so much. But what was the use.

Claire! The few times she had come face to face with Gladys, the little fool had been tongue-tied. He had no illusions. The testing of Tony was his big chance, and it was in Claire’s hands. How much safer it would be in the hands of someone like Gladys Claffern.

Claire woke the second morning to the sound of a subdued knock on the bedroom door. Her mind clamored, then went icy. She had avoided Tony the first day, smiling thinly when she met him and brushing past with a wordless sound of apology.

“Is that you – Tony?”

“Yes, Mrs. Belmont. May I enter?”

She must have said yes, because he was in the room, quite suddenly and noiselessly. Her eyes and nose were simultaneously aware of the tray he was carrying.

“Breakfast?” she said.

“If you please.”

She wouldn’t have dared to refuse, so she pushed herself slowly into a sitting position and received it: poached eggs, buttered toast, coffee.

“I have brought the sugar and cream separately,” said Tony. “I expect to learn your preference with time, in this and in other things.”

She waited.

Tony, standing there straight and pliant as a metal rule, asked, after a moment, “Would you prefer to eat in privacy?”

“Yes.... I mean, if you don’t mind.”

“Will you need help later in dressing?”

“Oh, my, no!” She clutched frantically at the sheet, so that the coffee hovered at the edge of catastrophe. She remained so, in rigor, then sank helplessly back against the pillow when the door closed him out of her sight again.

She got through breakfast somehow.... He was only a machine, and if it were only more visible that he were it wouldn’t be so frightening. Or if his expression would change. It just stayed there, nailed on. You couldn’t tell what went on behind those dark eyes and that smooth, olive skin-stuff. The coffee cup beat a faint castanet for a moment as she set it back, empty, on the tray.

Then she realized that she had forgotten to add the sugar and cream after all, and she did so hate black coffee.

She burned a straight path from bedroom to kitchen after dressing. It was her house, after all, and there wasn’t anything frippy about her, but she liked her kitchen clean. He should have waited for supervision....

But when she entered, she found a kitchen that might have been minted fire-new from the factory the moment before.

She stopped, stared, turned on her heel and nearly ran into Tony. She yelped.

“May I help?” he asked.

“Tony,” and she scraped the anger off the edges of her mind’s panic, “you must make some noise when you walk. I can’t have you stalking me, you know.... Didn’t you use this kitchen?”

“I did, Mrs. Belmont.”

“It doesn’t look it.”

“I cleaned up afterward. Isn’t that customary?”

Claire opened her eyes wide. After all, what could one say to that. She opened the oven compartment that held the pots, took a quick, unseeing look at the metallic glitter inside, then said with a tremor, “Very good. Quite satisfactory.”

If at the moment, he had beamed; if he had smiled; if he had quirked the corner of his mouth the slightest bit, she felt that she could have warmed to him. But he remained an English lord in repose, as he said, “Thank you, Mrs. Belmont. Would you come into the living room?”

She did, and it struck her at once. “Have you been polishing the furniture?”

“Is it satisfactory, Mrs. Belmont?”

“But when? You didn’t do it yesterday.”

“Last night, of course.”

“You burned the lights all night?”

“Oh, no. That wouldn’t have been necessary. I’ve a built-in ultra-violet source. I can see in ultraviolet. And, of course, I don’t require sleep.”

He did require admiration, though. She realized that, then. He had to know that he was pleasing her. But she couldn’t bring herself to supply that pleasure for him.

She could only say sourly, “Your kind will put ordinary houseworkers out of business.”

“There is work of much greater importance they can be put to in the world, once they are freed of drudgery. After all, Mrs. Belmont, things like myself can be manufactured. But nothing yet can imitate the creativity and versatility of a human brain, like yours.”

And though his face gave no hint, his voice was warmly surcharged with awe and admiration, so that Claire flushed and muttered, “My brain! You can have it.”

Tony approached a little and said, “You must be unhappy to say such a thing. Is there anything I can do?”

For a moment, Claire felt like laughing. It was a ridiculous situation. Here was an animated carpet-sweeper, dishwasher, furniture-polisher, general factotum, rising from the factory table – and offering his services as consoler and confidant.

Yet she said suddenly, in a burst of woe and voice, “Mr. Belmont doesn’t think I have a brain, if you must know.... And I suppose I haven’t.” She couldn’t cry in front of him. She felt, for some reason, that she had the honor of the human race to support against this mere creation.

“It’s lately,” she added. “It was all right when he was a student; when he was just starting. But I can’t be a big man’s wife; and he’s getting to be a big man. He wants me to be a hostess and an entry into social life for him – like G – guh – guh – Gladys Claffern.”

Her nose was red, and she looked away.

But Tony wasn’t watching her. His eyes wandered about the room. “I can help you run the house.”

“But it’s no good,” she said fiercely. “It needs a touch I can’t give it. I canonly make it comfortable; I can’t ever make it the kind they take pictures of for the Home Beautiful magazines.”

“Do you want that kind?”

“Does it do any good – wanting?”

Tony’s eyes were on her, full. “I could help.”

“Do you know anything about interior decoration?”

“Is it something a good housekeeper should know?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Then I have the potentialities of learning it. Can you get me books on the subject?”

Something started then.

Claire, clutching her hat against the brawling liberties of the wind, had manipulated two fat volumes on the home arts back from the public library. She watched Tony as he opened one of them and flipped the pages. It was the first time she had watched his fingers flicker at anything like fine work.

I don’t see how they do it, she thought, and on a sudden impulse reached for his hand and pulled it toward herself. Tony did not resist, but let it lie limp for inspection.

She said, “It’s remarkable. Even your fingernails look natural.”

“That’s deliberate, of course,” said Tony. Then, chattily, “The skin is a flexible plastic, and the skeletal framework is a light metal alloy. Does that amuse you?”

“Oh, no.” She lifted her reddened face. “I just feel a little embarrassed at sort of poking into your insides. It’s none of my business. You don’t ask me about mine.”

“My brain paths don’t include that type of curiosity. I can only act within my limitations, you know.”

And Claire felt something tighten inside her in the silence that followed. Why did she keep forgetting he was a machine. Now the thing itself had to remind her. Was she so starved for sympathy that she would even accept a robot as equal – because he sympathized?

She noticed Tony was still flipping the pages – almost helplessly – and there was a quick, shooting sense of relieved superiority within her. “You can’t read, can you?”

Tony looked up at her; his voice calm, unreproachful. “I am reading, Mrs. Belmont.”

“But –” She pointed at the book in a meaningless gesture.

“I am scanning the pages, if that’s what you mean. My sense of reading is photographic.”

It was evening then, and when Claire eventually went to bed Tony was well into the second volume, sitting there in the dark, or what seemed dark to Claire’s limited eyes.

Her last thought, the one that clamored at her just as her mind let go and tumbled, was a queer one. She remembered his hand again; the touch of it. It had been warm and soft, like a human being’s.

How clever of the factory, she thought, and softly ebbed to sleep.

It was the library continuously, thereafter, for several days. Tony suggested the fields of study, which branched out quickly. There were books on color matching and on cosmetics; on carpentry and on fashions; on art and on the history of costumes.

He turned the pages of each book before his solemn eyes, and, as quickly as he turned, he read; nor did he seem capable of forgetting.

Before the end of the week, he had insisted on cutting her hair, introducing her to a new method of arranging it, adjusting her eyebrow line a bit and changing the shade of her powder and lipstick.

She had palpitated in nervous dread for half an hour under the delicate touch of his inhuman fingers and then looked in the mirror.

“There is more that can be done,” said Tony, “especially in clothes. How do you find it for a beginning?”

And she hadn’t answered; not for quite a while. Not until she had absorbed the identity of the stranger in the glass and cooled the wonder at the beauty of it all. Then she had said chokingly, never once taking her eyes from the warming image, “Yes, Tony, quite good – for a beginning.”

She said nothing of this in her letters to Larry. Let him see it all at once. And something in her realized that it wasn’t only the surprise she would enjoy. It was going to be a kind of revenge.

Tony said one morning, “It’s time to start buying, and I’m not allowed to leave the house. If I write out exactly what we must have, can I trust you to get it? We need drapery, and furniture fabric, wallpaper, carpeting, paint, clothing – and any number of small things.”

“You can’t get these things to your own specifications at a stroke’s notice,” said Claire doubtfully.

“You can get fairly close, if you go through the city and if money is no object.”

“But, Tony, money is certainly an object.”

“Not at all. Stop off at U.S. Robots in the first place. I’ll write a note for you. You see Dr. Calvin, and tell her that I said it was part of the experiment.”

Dr. Calvin, somehow, didn’t frighten her as on that first evening. With her new face and a new hat, she couldn’t be quite the old Claire. The psychologist listened carefully, asked a few questions, nodded – and then Claire found herself walking out, armed with an unlimited charge account against the assets of U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation.

It is wonderful what money will do. With a store’s contents at her feet, a saleslady’s dictum was not necessarily a voice from above; the uplifted eyebrow of a decorator was not anything like Jove’s thunder.

And once, when an Exalted Plumpness at one of the most lordly of the garment salons had insistently poohed her description of the wardrobe she must have with counterpronouncements in accents of the purest Fifty-seventh Street French, she called up Tony, then held the phone out to Monsieur.

“If you don’t mind” – voice firm, but fingers twisting a bit –” I’d like you to talk to my – uh – secretary.”

Pudgy proceeded to the phone with a solemn arm crooked behind his back. He lifted the phone in two fingers and said delicately, “Yes.” A short pause, another “Yes,” then a much longer pause, a squeaky beginning of an objection that perished quickly, another pause, a very meek “Yes,” and the phone was restored to its cradle.

“If Madam will come with me,” he said, hurt and distant, “I will try to supply her needs.”

“Just a second.” Claire rushed back to the phone, and dialed again. “Hello, Tony. I don’t know what you said, but it worked. Thanks. You’re a –” She struggled for the appropriate word, gave up and ended in a final little squeak, “– a – a dear!”

It was Gladys Claffern looking at her when she turned from the phone again. A slightly amused and slightly amazed Gladys Claffern, looking at her out of a face tilted a bit to one side.

“Mrs. Belmont?”

It all drained out of Claire – just like that. She could only nod – stupidly, like a marionette.

Gladys smiled with an insolence you couldn’t put your finger on. “I didn’t know you shopped here?” As if the place had, in her eyes, definitely lost caste through the fact.

“I don’t, usually,” said Claire humbly.

“And haven’t you done something to your hair? It’s quite – quaint.... Oh, I hope you’ll excuse me, but isn’t your husband’s name Lawrence? It seems to me that it’s Lawrence.”

Claire’s teeth clenched, but she had to explain. She had to. “Tony is a friend of my husband’s. He’s helping me select some things.”

“I understand. And quite a dear about it, I imagine.” She passed on smiling, carrying the light and the warmth of the world with her.

Claire did not question the fact that it was to Tony that she turned for consolation. Ten days had cured her of reluctance. And she could weep before him; weep and rage.

“I was a complete f-fool,” she stormed, wrenching at her water-togged handkerchief. “She does that to me. I don’t know why. She just does. I should have – kicked her. I should have knocked her down and stamped on her.”

“Can you hate a human being so much?” asked Tony, in puzzled softness. “That part of a human mind is closed to me.”

“Oh, it isn’t she,” she moaned. “It’s myself, I suppose. She’s everything I want to be – on the outside, anyway.... And I can’t be.”

Tony’s voice was forceful and low in her ear. “You can be, Mrs. Belmont. You can be. We have ten days yet, and in ten days the house will no longer be itself. Haven’t we been planning that?”

“And how will that help me – with her?”

“Invite her here. Invite her friends. Have it the evening before I – before I leave. It will be a housewarming, in a way.”

“She won’t come.”

“Yes, she will. She’ll come to laugh.... And she won’t be able to.”

“Do you really think so? Oh, Tony, do you think we can do it?” She had both his hands in hers.... And then, with her face flung aside, “But what good would it be? It won’t be I; it will be you that’s doing it. I can’t ride your back.”

“Nobody lives in splendid singleness,” whispered Tony. “They’ve put that knowledge in me. What you, or anyone, see in Gladys Claffern is not just Gladys Claffern. She rides the back of all that money and social position can bring. She doesn’t question that. Why should you?... And look at it this way, Mrs. Belmont. I am manufactured to obey, but the extent of my obedience is for myself to determine. I can follow orders niggardly or liberally. For you, it is liberal, because you are what I have been manufactured to see human beings as. You are kind, friendly, unassuming. Mrs. Claffern, as you describe her, is not, and I wouldn’t obey her as I would you. So it is you, and not I, Mrs. Belmont, that is doing all this.”

He withdrew his hands from hers then, and Claire looked at that expressionless face no one could read – wondering. She was suddenly frightened ‘again in a completely new way.

She swallowed nervously and stared at her hands, which were still tingling ‘with the pressure of his fingers. She hadn’t imagined it; his fingers had pressed hers, gently, tenderly, just before they moved away.

No!

Its fingers... Its fingers....

She ran to the bathroom and scrubbed her hands – blindly, uselessly.

She was a bit shy of him the next day; watching him narrowly; waiting to see what might follow – and for a while nothing did.

Tony was working. If there was any difficulty in technique in putting up wallpaper, or utilizing the quick-drying paint, Tony’s activity did not show it. His hands moved precisely; his fingers were deft and sure.

He worked all night. She never heard him, but each morning was a new adventure. She couldn’t count the number of things that had been done, and by evening she was still finding new touches – and another night had come.

She tried to help only once and her human clumsiness marred that. He was in the next room, and she was hanging a picture in the spot marked by Tony’s mathematical eyes. The little mark was there; the picture was there; and a revulsion against idleness was there.

But she was nervous, or the ladder was rickety. It didn’t matter. She felt it going, and she cried out. It tumbled without her, for Tony, with far more than flesh-and-blood quickness, had been under her.

His calm, dark eyes said nothing at all, and his warm voice said only words. “Are you hurt, Mrs. Belmont?”

She noticed for an instant that her falling hand must have mussed that sleek hair of his, because for the first time she could see for herself that it was composed of distinct strands – fine black hairs.

And then, all at once, she was conscious of his arms about her shoulders and under her knees – holding her tightly and warmly.

She pushed, and her scream was loud in her own ears. She spent the rest of the day in her room, and thereafter she slept with a chair upended against the doorknob of her bedroom door.

She had sent out the invitations, and, as Tony had said, they were accepted. She had only to wait for the last evening.

It came, too, after the rest of them, in its proper place. The house was scarcely her own. She went through it one last time – and every room had been changed. She, herself, was in clothes she would never have dared wear before.... And when you put them on, you put on pride and confidence with them.

She tried a polite look of contemptuous amusement before the minor, and the mirror sneered back at her masterfully.

What would Larry say?... It didn’t matter, somehow. The exciting days weren’t coming with him. They were leaving with Tony. Now wasn’t that strange? She tried to recapture her mood of three weeks before and failed completely.

The clock shrieked eight at her in eight breathless installments, and she turned to Tony. “They’ll be here soon, Tony. You’d better get into the basement. We can’t let them –”

She stared a moment, then said weakly, “Tony?” and more strongly, “Tony?” and nearly a scream, “Tony!”

But his arms were around her now; his face was close to hers; the pressure of his embrace was relentless. She heard his voice through a haze of emotional jumble.

“Claire,” the voice said, “there are many things I am not made to understand, and this must be one of them. I am leaving tomorrow, and I don’t want to. I find that there is more in me than just a desire to please you. Isn’t it strange?”

His face was closer; his lips were warm, but with no breath behind them – for machines do not breathe. They were almost on hers.

... And the bell sounded.

For a moment, she struggled breathlessly, and then he was gone and nowhere in sight, and the bell was sounding again. Its intermittent shrillness was insistent.

The curtains on the front windows had been pulled open. They had been closed fifteen minutes earlier. She knew that.

They must have seen, then. They must all have seen – everything!

They came in so politely, all in a bunch – the pack come to howl – with their sharp, darting eyes piercing everywhere. They had seen. Why else would Gladys ask in her jabbingest manner after Larry? And Claire was spurred to a desperate and reckless defiance.

Yes, he is away. He’ll be back tomorrow, I suppose. No, I haven’t been lonely here myself. Not a bit. I’ve had an exciting time. And she laughed at them. Why not? What could they do? Larry would know the truth, if it ever came to him, the story of what they thought they saw.

But they didn’t laugh.

She could read that in the fury in Gladys Claffern’s eyes; in the false sparkle of her words; in her desire to leave early. And as she parted with them, she caught one last, anonymous whisper – disjointed.

“... never saw anything like... so handsome –”

And she knew what it was that had enabled her to finger-snap them so. Let each cat mew; and let each cat know – that she might be prettier than Claire Belmont, and grander, and richer – but not one, not one, could have so handsome a lover!

And then she remembered again – again – again, that Tony was a machine, and her skin crawled.

“Go away! Leave me be!” she cried to the empty room and ran to her bed. She wept wakefully all that night and the next morning, almost before dawn, when the streets were empty, a car drew up to the house and took Tony away.

Lawrence Belmont passed Dr. Calvin’s office, and, on impulse, knocked. He found her with Mathematician Peter Bogert, but did not hesitate on that account.

He said, “Claire tells me that U.S. Robots paid for all that was done at my house –”

“Yes,” said Dr. Calvin. “We’ve written it off, as a valuable and necessary part of the experiment. With your new position as Associate Engineer, you’ll be able to keep it up, I think.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about. With Washington agreeing to the tests, we’ll be able to get a TN model of our own by next year, I think.” He turned hesitantly, as though to go, and as hesitantly turned back again.

“Well, Mr. Belmont?” asked Dr. Calvin, after a pause.

“I wonder –” began Larry. “I wonder what really happened there. She – Claire, I mean – seems so different. It’s not just her looks – though, frankly, I’m amazed.” He laughed nervously. “It’s her! She’s not my wife, really – I can’t explain it.”

“Why try? Are you disappointed with any part of the change?”

“On the contrary. But it’s a little frightening, too, you see –”

“I wouldn’t worry, Mr. Belmont. Your wife has handled herself very well. Frankly, I never expected to have the experiment yield such a thorough and complete test. We know exactly what corrections must be made in the TN model, and the credit belongs entirely to Mrs. Belmont. If you want me to be very honest, I think your wife deserves your promotion more than you do.”

Larry flinched visibly at that. “As long as it’s in the family,” he murmured unconvincingly and left.

Susan Calvin looked after him, “I think that hurt – I hope.... Have you read Tony’s report, Peter?”

“Thoroughly,” said Bogert. “And won’t the TN-3 model need changes?”

“Oh, you think so, too?” questioned Calvin sharply. “What’s your reasoning?”

Bogert frowned. “I don’t need any. It’s obvious on the face of it that we can’t have a robot loose which makes love to his mistress, if you don’t mind the pun.”

“Love! Peter, you sicken me. You really don’t understand? That machine had to obey the First Law. He couldn’t allow harm to come to a human being, and harm was coming to Claire Belmont through her own sense of inadequacy. So he made love to her, since what woman would fail to appreciate the compliment of being able to stir passion in a machine – in a cold, soulless machine. And he opened the curtains that night deliberately, that the others might see and envy – without any risk possible to Claire’s marriage. I think it was clever of Tony –”

“Do you? What’s the difference whether it was pretense or not, Susan? It still has its horrifying effect. Read the report again. She avoided him. She screamed when he held her. She didn’t sleep that last night – in hysterics. We can’t have that.”

“Peter, you’re blind. You’re as blind as I was. The TN model will be rebuilt entirely, but not for your reason. Quite otherwise; quite otherwise. Strange that I overlooked it in the first place,” her eyes were opaquely thoughtful, “but perhaps it reflects a shortcoming in myself. You see, Peter, machines can’t fall in love, but – even when it’s hopeless and horrifying – women can!”

Balance

2024 A.D.

SUSAN CALVIN STEPPED up to the podium and surveyed her audience: the stockholders of the United States Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation.

“I want to thank you for your attendance,” she said in her brisk, businesslike way, “and to update you on our latest developments.”

What a fearsome face she has, thought August Geller, seated in the fourth row of the audience. She reminds me of my seventh-grade English teacher, the one I was always afraid of

Calvin launched into a detailed explanation of the advanced new circuitry she had introduced into the positronic brain, breaking it down into terms a layman – even a stockholder – could understand.

Brilliant mind, thought Geller. Absolutely brilliant. It’s probably just as well. Imagine a countenance like that without a mind to offset it.

“Are there any questions at this point?” asked Calvin, her cold blue eyes scanning the audience.

“I have one,” said a pretty young woman, rising to her feet.

“Yes?”

The woman voiced her question.

“I thought I had covered that point,” said Calvin, doing her best to hide her irritation. “However...”

She launched into an even more simplistic explanation.

Isn’t it amazing? thought Geller. Here are two women, one with a mind like a steel trap, the other with an I. Q. that would probably freeze water, and yet I can’t take my eyes off the woman who asked that ridiculous question. Poor Dr. Calvin; Nature has such a malicious sense of humor.

Calvin noticed a number of the men staring admiringly at her questioner. It was not the first time that men had found something more fascinating than Calvin to capture their attention, nor the hundredth, nor the thousandth.

What a shame, she thought, that they aren’t more like robots, that they let their hormones overwhelm their logic. Here I am, explaining how I plan to spend twelve billion dollars of their money. and they’re more interested in a pretty face.

Her answer completed, she launched into a discussion of the attempts they were making to provide stronger bodies for those robots designed for extraterrestrial use by the application of titanium frames with tight molecular bondings.

I wonder, thought Geller, if she’s ever even had a date with a man? Not a night of wild passion, God knows, but just a meal and perhaps a trip to the theater, where she didn’t talk business. He shook his head almost imperceptibly. No, he decided, it would probably bore her to tears. All she cares about are her formulas and equations. Good looks would be wasted on her.

Calvin caught Geller staring at her, and met and held his gaze.

What a handsome young man, she thought. I wonder if I’ve seen him at any previous meetings? I’m sure I’d remember if I had. Why is he staring at me so intently?

I wonder, thought Geller, if anyone she’s loved has ever loved her back?

Probably he’s just astounded that a woman can have a brain, she concluded. As if anything else mattered.

In fact, thought Geller, I wonder if she’s ever loved at all?

Look at that tan, thought Calvin, still staring at Geller. It’s attractive, to be sure, but do you ever work, or do you spend all your time lazing mindlessly on the beach? She fought back an urge to sigh deeply between sentences. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine that people like you and I even belong to the same species, I have so much more in common with my robots.

Sometimes, thought Geller, when I listen to you wax rhapsodic about positronic brains and molecular bonding, it’s hard to imagine that we belong to the same species, you sound so much like one of your robots.

Still, thought Calvin against her will, you are tall and you are handsome, and you certainly have an air of self-assuredness about you. Most men won’t or can’t match my gaze. And your eyes are blue and clear. I wonder...

Still, thought Geller, there must be something there, some core oJ femininity beneath the harsh features and coldly analytical mind. I wonder...

Calvin shook her head inadvertently and almost lost track of what she was saying.

Ridiculous, she concluded. Absolutely ridiculous.

Geller stared at her one more time, studying the firm jaw, the broad shoulders, the aggressive stance, the face devoid of makeup, the hair that could have been so much more attractive.

Ridiculous, he concluded. Absolutely ridiculous.

Calvin spoke for another fifteen minutes, then opened the floor to questions.

There were two, and she handled them both succinctly.

“I want to thank Dr. Calvin for spending this time with us,” concluded Linus Becker, the young chief operating executive of United States Robots and Mechanical Men. “As long as we have her remarkable intellect working for us, I feel confident that we will continue to forge ahead and expand the parameters of the science of robotics.”

“I’ll second that,” said one of the major stockholders. “When we produce a positronic brain with half the capabilities of our own Dr. Calvin, the field of robotics will have come of age.”

“Thank you,” said Calvin, ignoring a strange sense of emptiness within her. “I am truly flattered.”

“It’s we who are flattered,” said Becker smoothly, “to be in the presence of such brilliance.” He applauded her, and soon the entire audience, including Geller, got to their feet and gave her a standing ovation.

Then each in turn walked up to her to introduce himself or herself, and shake her hand, and comment on her intellect and creativity.

“Thank you,” said Calvin, acknowledging yet another compliment. You take my hand as if you expect it to be tungsten and steel, rather than sinew and bone. Have I come to resemble my robots that much?

“I appreciate your remarks,” said Calvin to another stockholder. I wonder if lovers speak to each other in the same hail-fellow-well-met tones?

And then Geller stepped up and took her hand, and she almost jumped from the sensation, the electricity passing from his strong, tanned hand to her own.

“I think you are quite our greatest asset, Dr. Calvin,” he said.

“Our robots are our greatest asset,” she replied graciously. “I’m just a scientific midwife.”

He stared intently at her for a moment, and suddenly the tension left his body. Impossible. You’re too much like them. If I asked you out, it would be an act of charity, and I think you are too proud and too perceptive to accept that particular kind of charity.

She looked into his eyes one last time. Impossible. I have my work to do – and my robots never disappoint me by proving to be merely human.

“Remember, everyone,” announced Becker, “there’s a banquet three hours from now.” He turned to Calvin. “You’ll be there, of course.”

Calvin nodded. “I’ll be there,” she said with a sigh.

She had only an hour to change into a formal gown for the banquet, and she was running late. She entered her rather nondescript apartment, walked through the living room and bedroom, both of which were filled to overflowing with scientific journals, opened her closet, and began laying out her clothes on the bed.

“Did anyone ever tell you that you have the most beautiful blue eyes?” asked her butler robot.

“Why, thank you,” said Calvin.

“It’s true, you know,” continued the butler. “Lovely, lovely eyes, as blue as the purest sapphire.”

Her robot maid entered the bedroom to help her dress.

“Such a pretty smile,” said the maid. “If I had a smile like yours, men would fight battles just for the pleasure of seeing it turned upon them.”

“You’re very kind,” said Calvin.

“Oh, no, Mistress Susan,” the robot maid corrected her. “You’re very beautiful.”

Calvin noticed the robot chef standing in the doorway to her bedroom.

“Stop staring at me,” she said. “I’m only half-dressed. Where are your manners?”

“Legs like yours, and you expect me to stop staring?” said the chef with a dry, mechanical chuckle. “Every Bight I dream about meeting a woman with legs like yours.”

Calvin slipped into her gown, then waited for the robot maid to zip up the back.

“Such clear, smooth skin,” crooned the maid. “If I were a woman, that’s the kind of skin I would want.”

They are such perceptive creatures, reflected Calvin, as she stood before a mirror and applied her almost-clear lipstick. Such dear creatures, she amended. Of course they are just responding to the needs of First Law – to my needs – but how very thoughtful they are.

She picked up her purse and headed to the door.

I wonder if they ever get tired of reciting this litany?

“You’ll be the belle of the ball, “said the robot butler proudly as she walked out of the apartment.

“Why, thank you very much,” said Calvin. “You grow more flattering by the day.”

The robot shook its metallic head. “It is only flattery if it is a lie, my lady,” it said just before the door slid shut behind her.

Her emotional balance fully restored, as it always was whenever she came home from dealing with human beings, she headed toward the banquet feeling vigorous and renewed. She wondered if she would be seated near that handsome August Geller, who had listened to her so intently during her speech.

Upon reflection, she hoped that she would be seated elsewhere. He aroused certain uneasy feelings within her, this handsome young man – and fantasies, when all was said and done, were for lesser intellects which, unlike herself, couldn’t cope with the cold truths of the real world.

Lenny

2025 A.D.

UNITED STATES ROBOTS and Mechanical Men Corporation had a problem. The problem was people.

Peter Bogert, Senior Mathematician, was on his way to Assembly when he encountered Alfred Lanning, Research Director. Lanning was bending his ferocious white eyebrows together and staring down across the railing into the computer room.

On the floor below the balcony, a trickle of humanity of both sexes and various ages was looking about curiously, while a guide intoned a set speech about robotic computing.

“This computer you see before you,” he said, “is the largest of its type in the world. It contains five million three hundred thousand cryotrons and is capable of dealing simultaneously with over one hundred thousand variables. With its help, U. S. Robots is able to design with precision the positronic brains of new models. “The requirements are fed in on tape which is perforated by the action of this keyboard – something like a very complicated typewriter or linotype machine, except that it does not deal with letters but with concepts. Statements are broken down into the symbolic logic equivalents and those in turn converted to perforation patterns.

“The computer can, in less than one hour, present our scientists with a design for a brain which will give all the necessary positronic paths to make a robot...”

Alfred Lanning looked up at last and noticed the other. “Ah, Peter,” he said.

Bogert raised both hands to smooth down his already perfectly smooth and glossy head of black hair. He said, “You don’t look as though you think much of this, Alfred.”

Lanning grunted. The idea of public guided tours of U. S. Robots was of fairly recent origin, and was supposed to serve a dual function. On the one hand, the theory went, it allowed people to see robots at close quarters and counter their almost instinctive fear of the mechanical objects through increased familiarity. And on the other hand, it was supposed to interest at least an occasional person in taking up robotics research as a life work.

“You know I don’t,” Lanning said finally. “Once a week, work is disrupted. Considering the man-hours lost, the return is insufficient.”

“Still no rise in job applications, then?”

“Oh, some, but only in the categories where the need isn’t vital. It’s research men that are needed. You know that. The trouble is that with robots forbidden on Earth itself, there’s something unpopular about being a roboticist.”

“The damned Frankenstein complex,” said Bogert, consciously imitating one of the other’s pet phrases.

Lanning missed the gentle jab. He said, “I ought to be used to it, but I never will. You’d think that by now every human being on Earth would know that the Three Laws represented a perfect safeguard; that robots are simply not dangerous. Take this bunch.” He glowered down. “Look at them. Most of them go through the robot assembly room for the thrill of fear, like riding a roller coaster. Then when they enter the room with the MEC model – damn it, Peter, a MEC model that will do nothing on God’s green Earth but take two steps forward, say ‘Pleased to meet you, sir,’ shake hands, then take two steps back – they back away and mothers snatch up their kids. How do we expect to get brainwork out of such idiots?”

Bogert had no answer. Together, they stared down once again at the line of sightseers, now passing out of the computer room and into the positronic brain assembly section. Then they left. They did not, as it turned out, observe Mortimer W. Jacobson, age 16 – who, to do him complete justice, meant no harm whatever.

In fact, it could not even be said to be Mortimer’s fault. The day of the week on which the tour took place was known to all workers.

All devices in its path ought to have been carefully neutralized or locked, since it was unreasonable to expect human beings to withstand the temptation to handle knobs, keys, handles and pushbuttons. In addition, the guide ought to have been very carefully on the watch for those who succumbed.

But, at the time, the guide had passed into the next room and Mortimer was tailing the line. He passed the keyboard on which instructions were fed into the computer. He had no way of suspecting that the plans for a new robot design were being fed into it at that moment, or, being a good kid, he would have avoided the keyboard. He had no way of knowing that, by what amounted to almost criminal negligence, a technician had not inactivated the keyboard.

So Mortimer touched the keys at random as though he were playing a musical instrument.

He did not notice that a section of perforated tape stretched itself out of the instrument in another part of the room – soundlessly, unobtrusively.

Nor did the technician, when he returned, discover any signs of tampering. He felt a little uneasy at noticing that the keyboard was live, but did not think to check. After a few minutes, even his first trifling uneasiness was gone, and he continued feeding data into the computer.

As for Mortimer, neither then, nor ever afterward, did he know what he had done.

The new LNE model was designed for the mining of boron in the asteroid belt. The boron hydrides were increasing in value yearly as primers for the proton micropiles that carried the ultimate load of power production on spaceships, and Earth’s own meager supply was running thin.

Physically, that meant that the LNE robots would have to be equipped with eyes sensitive to those lines prominent in the spectroscopic analysis of boron ores and the type of limbs most useful for the working up of ore to finished product. As always, though, the mental equipment was the major problem.

The first LNE positronic brain had been completed now. It was the prototype and would join all other prototypes in U. S. Robots’ collection. When finally tested, others would then be manufactured for leasing (never selling) to mining corporations.

LNE-Prototype was complete now. Tall, straight, polished, it looked from outside like any of a number of not-too-specialized robot models.

The technician in charge, guided by the directions for testing in the Handbook of Robotics, said, “How are you?”

The indicated answer was to have been, “I am well and ready to begin my functions. I trust you are well, too,” or some trivial modification thereof.

This first exchange served no purpose but to show that the robot could hear, understand a routine question, and make a routine reply congruent with what one would expect of a robotic attitude. Beginning from there, one could pass on to more complicated matters that would test the different Laws and their interaction with the specialized knowledge of each particular model.

So the technician said, “How are you?” He was instantly jolted by the nature of LNE-Prototype’s voice. It had a quality like no robotic voice he had ever heard (and he had heard many). It formed syllables like the chimes of a low-pitched celeste.

So surprising was this that it was only after several moments that the technician heard, in retrospect, the syllables that had been formed by those heavenly tones. They were, “Da, da, da, goo.” The robot still stood tall and straight but its right hand crept upward and a finger went into its mouth.

The technician stared in absolute horror and bolted. He locked the door behind him and, from another room, put in an emergency call to Dr. Susan Calvin.

Dr. Susan Calvin was U. S. Robots’ (and, virtually, mankind’s) only robopsychologist. She did not have to go very far in her testing of LNE-Prototype before she called very peremptorily for a transcript of the computer-drawn plans of the positronic brain-paths and the taped instructions that had directed them. After some study, she, in turn, sent for Bogert.

Her iron-gray hair was drawn severely back; her cold face, with its strong vertical lines marked off by the horizontal gash of the pale, thin-lipped mouth, turned intensely upon him.

“What is this, Peter?” Bogert studied the passages she pointed out with increasing stupefaction and said, “Good Lord, Susan, it makes no sense.”

“It most certainly doesn’t. How did it get into the instructions?” The technician in charge, called upon, swore in all sincerity that it was none of his doing, and that he could not account for it. The computer checked out negative for all attempts at flaw-finding.

“The positronic brain,” said Susan Calvin, thoughtfully, “is past redemption. So many of the higher functions have been cancelled out by these meaningless directions that the result is very like a human baby.”

Bogert looked surprised, and Susan Calvin took on a frozen attitude at once, as she always did at the least expressed or implied doubt of her word. She said, “We make every effort to make a robot as mentally like a man as possible. Eliminate what we call the adult functions and what is naturally left is a human infant, mentally speaking. Why do you look so surprised, Peter?”

LNE-Prototype, who showed no signs of understanding any of the things that were going on around it, suddenly slipped into a sitting position and began a minute examination of its feet.

Bogert stared at it. “It’s a shame to have to dismantle the creature. It’s a handsome job.”

“Dismantle it?” said the robopsychologist forcefully. “Of course, Susan. What’s the use of this thing? Good Lord, if there’s one object completely and abysmally useless it’s a robot without a job it can perform. You don’t pretend there’s a job this thing can do, do you?”

“No, of course not.”

“Well, then?”

Susan Calvin said, stubbornly, “I want to conduct more tests.” Bogert looked at her with a moment’s impatience, then shrugged. If there was one person at U. S. Robots with whom it was useless to dispute, surely that was Susan Calvin. Robots were all she loved, and long association with them, it seemed to Bogert, had deprived her of any appearance of humanity. She was no more to be argued out of a decision than was a triggered micropile to be argued out of operating.

“What’s the use?” he breathed; then aloud, hastily: “Will you let us know when your tests are complete?”

“I will,” she said. “Come, Lenny.”

(LNE, thought Bogert. That becomes Lenny. Inevitable.)

Susan Calvin held out her hand but the robot only stared at it. Gently, the robopsychologist reached for the robot’s hand and took it. Lenny rose smoothly to its feet (its mechanical coordination, at least, worked well). Together they walked out, robot topping woman by two feet. Many eyes followed them curiously down the long corridors.

One wall of Susan Calvin’s laboratory, the one opening directly off her private office, was covered with a highly magnified reproduction of a positronic-path chart. Susan Calvin had studied it with absorption for the better part of a month.

She was considering it now, carefully, tracing the blunted paths through their contortions. Behind her, Lenny sat on the floor, moving its legs apart and together, crooning meaningless syllables to itself in a voice so beautiful that one could listen to the nonsense and be ravished.

Susan Calvin turned to the robot, “Lenny – Lenny –”

She repeated this patiently until finally Lenny looked up and made an inquiring sound. The robopsychologist allowed a glimmer of pleasure to cross her face fleetingly. The robot’s attention was being gained in progressively shorter intervals.

She said, “Raise your hand, Lenny. Hand-up. Hand-up.” She raised her own hand as she said it, over and over.

Lenny followed the movement with its eyes. Up, down, up, down. Then it made an abortive gesture with its own hand and chimed, “Eh-uh.”

“Very good, Lenny,” said Susan Calvin, gravely. “Try it again. Hand-up.”

Very gently, she reached out her own hand, took the robot’s, and raised it, lowered it. “Hand-up. Hand-up.”

A voice from her office called and interrupted. “Susan?”

Calvin halted with a tightening of her lips. “What is it, Alfred?” The research director walked in, and looked at the chart on the wall and at the robot. “Still at it?”

“I’m at my work, yes.”

“Well, you know, Susan...” He took out a cigar, staring at it hard, and made as though to bite off the end. In doing so, his eyes met the woman’s stern look of disapproval; and he put the cigar away and began over. “Well, you know, Susan, the LNE model is in production now.”

“So I’ve heard. Is there something in connection with it you wish of me?”

“No-o. Still, the mere fact that it is in production and is doing well means that working with this messed-up specimen is useless. Shouldn’t it be scrapped?”

“In short, Alfred, you are annoyed that I am wasting my so-valuable time. Feel relieved. My time is not being wasted. I am working with this robot.”

“But the work has no meaning.”

“I’ll be the judge of that, Alfred.” Her voice was ominously quiet, and Lanning thought it wiser to shift his ground.

“Will you tell me what meaning it has? What are you doing with it right now, for instance?”

“I’m trying to get it to raise its hand on the word of command. I’m trying to get it to imitate the sound of the word.”

As though on cue, Lenny said, “Eh-uh” And raised its hand waveringly.

Lanning shook his head. “That voice is amazing. How does it happen?”

Susan Calvin said, “I don’t quite know. Its transmitter is a normal one. It could speak normally, I’m sure. It doesn’t, however; it speaks like this as a consequence of something in the positronic paths that I have not yet pinpointed.”

“Well, pinpoint it, for Heaven’s sake. Speech like that might be useful.”

“Oh, then there is some possible use in my studies on Lenny?” Lanning shrugged in embarrassment. “Oh, well, it’s a minor point.”

“I’m sorry you don’t see the major points, then,” said Susan Calvin with asperity, “which are much more important, but that’s not my fault. Would you leave now, Alfred, and let me go on with my work?”

Lanning got to his cigar, eventually, in Bogert’s office. He said, sourly, “That woman is growing more peculiar daily.”

Bogert understood perfectly. In the U. S. Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation, there was only one “that woman.” He said, “Is she still scuffing about with that pseudo-robot – that Lenny of hers?”

“Trying to get it to talk, so help me.” Bogert shrugged. “Points up the company problem. I mean, about getting qualified personnel for research. If we had other robopsychologists, we could retire Susan. Incidentally, I presume the directors’ meeting scheduled for tomorrow is for the purpose of dealing with the procurement problem?”

Lanning nodded and looked at his cigar as though it didn’t taste good. “Yes. Quality, though, not quantity. We’ve raised wages until there’s a steady stream of applicants – those who are interested primarily in money. The trick is to get those who are interested primarily in robotics – a few more like Susan Calvin.”

“Hell, no. Not like her.”

“Well, not like her personally. But you’ll have to admit, Peter, that she’s single-minded about robots. She has no other interest in life.”

“I know. And that’s exactly what makes her so unbearable.” Lanning nodded. He had lost count of the many times it would have done his soul good to have fired Susan Calvin. He had also lost count of the number of millions of dollars she had at one time or another saved the company. She was a truly indispensable woman and would remain one until she died – or until they could lick the problem of finding men and women of her own high caliber who were interested in robotics research.

He said, “I think we’ll cut down on the tour business.” Peter shrugged. “If you say so. But meanwhile, seriously, what do we do about Susan? She can easily tie herself up with Lenny indefinitely. You know how she is when she gets what she considers an interesting problem.”

“What can we do?” said Lanning. “If we become too anxious to pull her off, she’ll stay on out of feminine contrariness. In the last analysis, we can’t force her to do anything.”

The dark-haired mathematician smiled. “I wouldn’t ever apply the adjective ‘feminine’ to any part of her.”

“Oh, well,” said Lanning, grumpily. “At least, it won’t do anyone any actual harm.”

In that, if in nothing else, he was wrong. The emergency signal is always a tension-making thing in any large industrial establishment. Such signals had sounded in the history of U. S. Robots a dozen times – for fire, flood, riot and insurrection.

But one thing had never occurred in all that time. Never had the particular signal indicating “Robot out of control” sounded. No one ever expected it to sound. It was only installed at government insistence. (“Damn the Frankenstein complex,” Lanning would mutter on those rare occasions when he thought of it.)

Now, finally, the shrill siren rose and fell at ten-second intervals, and practically no worker from the President of the Board of Directors down to the newest janitor’s assistant recognized the significance of the strange sound for a few moments. After those moments passed, there was a massive convergence of armed guards and medical men to the indicated area of danger and U. S. Robots was struck with paralysis.

Charles Randow, computing technician, was taken off to hospital level with a broken arm. There was no other damage. No other physical damage.

“But the moral damage,” roared Lanning, “is beyond estimation.”

Susan Calvin faced him, murderously calm. “You will do nothing to Lenny. Nothing. Do you understand?”

“Do you understand, Susan?” That thing has hurt a human being. It has broken First Law. Don’t you know what First Law is?”

“You will do nothing to Lenny.”

“For God’s sake, Susan, do I have to tell you First Law? A robot may not harm a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Our entire position depends on the fact that First Law is rigidly observed by all robots of all types. If the public should hear, and they will hear, that there was an exception, even one exception, we might be forced to close down altogether. Our only chance of survival would be to announce at once that the robot involved had been destroyed, explain the circumstances, and hope that the public can be convinced that it will never happen again.”

“I would like to find out exactly what happened,” said Susan Calvin. “I was not present at the time and I would like to know exactly what the Randow boy was doing in my laboratories without my permission.”

“The important thing that happened,” said Lanning, “is obvious. Your robot struck Randow and the damn fool flashed the ‘Robot out of control’ button and made a case of it. But your robot struck him and inflicted damage to the extent of a broken arm. The truth is your Lenny is so distorted it lacks First Law and it must be destroyed.”

“It does not lack First Law. I have studied its brainpaths and know it does not lack it.”

“Then how could it strike a man?” Desperation turned him to sarcasm. “Ask Lenny. Surely you have taught it to speak by now.”

Susan Calvin’s cheeks Bushed a painful pink. She said, “I prefer to interview the victim. And in my absence, Alfred, I want my offices sealed tight, with Lenny inside. I want no one to approach him. If any harm comes to him while I am gone, this company will not see me again under any circumstances.”

“Will you agree to its destruction, if it has broken First Law?”

“Yes,” said Susan Calvin, “because I know it hasn’t.”

Charles Randow lay in bed with his arm set and in a cast. His major suffering was still from the shock of those few moments in which he thought a robot was advancing on him with murder in its positronic mind. No other human had ever had such reason to fear direct robotic harm as he had had just then. He had had a unique experience.

Susan Calvin and Alfred Lanning stood beside his bed now; Peter Bogert, who had met them on the way, was with them. Doctors and nurses had been shooed out.

Susan Calvin said, “Now – what happened?” Randow was daunted. He muttered, “The thing hit me in the arm. It was coming at me.”

Calvin said, “Move further back in the story. What were you doing in my laboratory without authorization?”

The young computer swallowed, and the Adam’s apple in his thin neck bobbed noticeably. He was high-cheekboned and abnormally pale. He said, “We all knew about your robot. The word is you were trying to teach it to talk like a musical instrument. There were bets going as to whether it talked or not. Some said – uh – you could teach a gatepost to talk.”

“I suppose,” said Susan Calvin, freezingly, “that is meant as a compliment. What did that have to do with you?”

“I was supposed to go in there and settle matters – see if it would talk, you know. We swiped a key to your place and I waited till you were gone and went in. We had a lottery on who was to do it. I lost.”

“Then?”

“I tried to get it to talk and it hit me.”

“What do you mean, you tried to get it to talk? How did you try?”

“I – I asked it questions, but it wouldn’t say anything, and I had to give the thing a fair shake, so I kind of – yelled at it, and –”

“And?”

There was a long pause. Under Susan Calvin’s unwavering stare, Randow finally said, “I tried to scare it into saying something.” He added defensively, “I had to give the thing a fair shake.”

“How did you try to scare it?”

“I pretended to take a punch at it.”

“And it brushed your arm aside?”

“It hit my arm.”

“Very well. That’s all.” To Lanning and Bogert, she said, “Come, gentlemen.”

At the doorway, she turned back to Randow. “I can settle the bets going around, if you are still interested. Lenny can speak a few words quite well.”

They said nothing until they were in Susan Calvin’s office. Its walls were lined with her books, some of which she had written herself. It retained the patina of her own frigid, carefully ordered personality. It had only one chair in it and she sat down. Lanning and Bogert remained standing.

She said, “Lenny only defended itself. That is the Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence.”

“Except,” said Lanning forcefully, “when this conflicts with the First or Second Laws. Complete the statement! Lenny had no right to defend itself in any way at the cost of harm, however minor, to a human being.”

“Nor did it,” shot back Calvin, “knowingly. Lenny has an aborted brain. It had no way of knowing its own strength or the weakness of humans. In brushing aside the threatening arm of a human being it could not know the bone would break. In human terms, no moral blame can be attached to an individual who honestly cannot differentiate good and evil.”

Bogert interrupted, soothingly, “Now, Susan, we don’t blame. We understand that Lenny is the equivalent of a baby, humanly speaking, and we don’t blame it. But the public will. U. S. Robots will be closed down.”

“Quite the opposite. If you had the brains of a flea, Peter, you would see that this is the opportunity U. S. Robots is waiting for. That this will solve its problems.”

Lanning hunched his white eyebrows low. He said, softly, “What problems, Susan?”

“Isn’t the corporation concerned about maintaining our research personnel at the present – Heaven help us – high level?”

“We certainly are.”

“Well, what are you offering prospective researchers? Excitement? Novelty? The thrill of piercing the unknown? No! You offer them salaries and the assurance of no problems.”

Bogert said, “How do you mean, no problems?”

“Are there problems?” shot back Susan Calvin. “What kind of robots do we turn out? Fully developed robots, fit for their tasks. An industry tells us what it needs; a computer designs the brain; machinery forms the robot; and there it is, complete and done. Peter, some time ago, you asked me with reference to Lenny what its use was. What’s the use, you said, of a robot that was not designed for any job? Now I ask you – what’s the use of a robot designed for only one job? It begins and ends in the same place. The LNE models mine boron. If beryllium is needed, they are useless. If boron technology enters a new phase, they become useless. A human being so designed would be sub-human. A robot so designed is sub-robotic.”

“Do you want a versatile robot?” asked Lanning, incredulously. “Why not?” demanded the robopsychologist. “Why not? I’ve been handed a robot with a brain almost completely stultified. I’ve been teaching it, and you, Alfred, asked me what was the use of that. Perhaps very little as far as Lenny itself is concerned, since it will never progress beyond the five-year-old level on a human scale. But what’s the use in general? A very great deal, if you consider it as a study in the abstract problem of learning how to teach robots. I have learned ways to short-circuit neighboring pathways in order to create new ones. More study will yield better, more subtle and more efficient techniques of doing so.”

“Well?”

“Suppose you started with a positronic brain that had all the basic pathways carefully outlined but none of the secondaries. Suppose you then started creating secondaries. You could sell basic robots designed for instruction; robots that could be modeled to a job, and then modeled to another, if necessary. Robots would become as versatile as human beings. Robots could learn!”

They stared at her. She said, impatiently, “You still don’t understand, do you?”

“I understand what you are saying,” said Lanning.

“Don’t you understand that with a completely new field of research and completely new techniques to be developed, with a completely new area of the unknown to be penetrated, youngsters will feel a new urge to enter robotics? Try it and see.”

“May I point out,” said Bogert, smoothly, “that this is dangerous. Beginning with ignorant robots such as Lenny will mean that one could never trust First Law – exactly as turned out in Lenny’s case.”

“Exactly. Advertise the fact.”

“Advertise it!”

“Of course. Broadcast the danger. Explain that you will set up a new research institute on the moon, if Earth’s population chooses not to allow this sort of thing to go on upon Earth, but stress the danger to the possible applicants by all means.”

Lanning said, “For God’s sake, why?”

“Because the spice of danger will add to the lure. Do you think nuclear technology involves no danger and spationautics no peril? Has your lure of absolute security been doing the trick for you? Has it helped you to cater to the Frankenstein complex you all despise so? Try something else then, something that has worked in other fields.”

There was a sound from beyond the door that led to Calvin’s personal laboratories. It was the chiming sound of Lenny.

The robopsychologist broke off instantly, listening. She said, “Excuse me. I think Lenny is calling me.”

“Can it call you?” said Lanning.

“I said I’ve managed to teach it a few words.” She stepped toward the door, a little flustered. “If you will wait for me –”

They watched her leave and were silent for a moment. Then Lanning said, “Do you think there’s anything to what she says, Peter?”

“Just possibly, Alfred,” said Bogert. “Just possibly. Enough for US to bring the matter up at the directors’ meeting and see what they say. After all, the fat is in the fire. A robot has harmed a human being and knowledge of it is public. As Susan says, we might as well try to turn the matter to our advantage. Of course, I distrust her motives in all this.”

“How do you mean?”

“Even if all she has said is perfectly true, it is only rationalization as far as she is concerned. Her motive in all this is her desire to hold on to this robot. If we pressed her” (and the mathematician smiled at the incongruous literal meaning of the phrase) “she would say it was to continue learning techniques of teaching robots, but I think she has found another use for Lenny. A rather unique one that would fit only Susan of all women.”

“I don’t get your drift.” Bogert said, “Did you hear what the robot was calling?”

“Well, no, I didn’t quite –” began Lanning, when the door opened suddenly, and both men stopped talking at once.

Susan Calvin stepped in again, looking about uncertainly. “Have either of you seen – I’m positive I had it somewhere about – Oh, there it is.”

She ran to a corner of one bookcase and picked up an object of intricate metal webbery, dumbbell shaped and hollow, with variously shaped metal pieces inside each hollow, just too large to be able to fallout of the webbing.

As she picked it up, the metal pieces within moved and struck together, clicking pleasantly. It struck Lanning that the object was a kind of robotic version of a baby rattle.

As Susan Calvin opened the door again to pass through, Lenny’s voice chimed again from within. This time, Lanning heard it clearly as it spoke the words Susan Calvin had taught it.

In heavenly celeste-like sounds, it called out, “Mommie, I want you. I want you, Mommie.”

And the footsteps of Susan Calvin could be heard hurrying eagerly across the laboratory floor toward the only kind of baby she could ever have or love.

Blot

2026 A.D.

CHILE STEPPED THROUGH the inner lock door, and turned white as it closed behind him. The woman at the data station shivered as she felt his presence.

“I’m sorry, Sheila,” he said hastily. “Rob wanted to use the lock himself right away, and said I should defrost inside.”

“Why didn’t he come through first? Armor doesn’t have anything like your heat capacity.”

“He didn’t say.” ZH50 had stood still since entering, using his own power to warm up; the frost was already disappearing from his extremities. Sheila McEachern waited, knowing there was nothing to be gained by complaining to the robot, her irritation giving way to curiosity anyway as the lock cycled again. She could hope, but not be sure, that Robert Ling had not wanted to annoy just to gain her full attention.

The valve slid open to reveal a human figure, its armor’s gold background fogging briefly under a layer of white as the ship’s air touched it. The man unclamped his bulky helmet as its contrasting black started to show again, and flipped it back.

“Chile, you’re in the way. Why did you think I wanted you inside first? I was hoping to see the new display as soon –”

“I can answer that.” The woman snorted. “You didn’t tell him why, just sent him first. Otherwise he’d have taken the reason as an order and given me frostbite while he plugged into the console.”

“I would not have injured you, Sheila.”

“Of course not, Chile. But you wouldn’t have minded making me uncomfortable, with a real order on file.”

“And you’re still in my way,” Ling cut in impatiently. ZH50 crossed to the data console in a single floating step, uncovered its input jack, and inserted the plug now extending from the heel of his right hand. The woman controlled herself; his metal was still cold enough to feel from a few centimeters away, but at least the frost was gone. She aimed her annoyance more appropriately.

“Why all this rush for a new picture? Did you finally find something which isn’t too radiation-saturated to date?” She disapproved basically of sarcasm, but had more control over aim than fire power. Ling knew her well enough to ignore the second question.

“We caught another glimpse of Chile’s ghost.”

“We?”

“We. The lovebirds saw it too, so I’m not floating.”

“Did Chile?”

“Not this time, Sheila,” the robot answered for himself. “I was with Luis and Chispa near the Banjo, at Square Fifty-four. Robert and the Eiras were at Ninety-one.” The woman frowned.

“Then why the hurry to get Chile inside?” she asked. “He could have been here long before you, if you started at the same time from those areas.”

“I didn’t think of him until I was nearly back. Then I had an idea, and needed him to check it. Luis and Chispa found two more of those blocks a while ago. The Eiras and I heard them; you probably weren’t listening. Of course Chile hadn’t filed them with Dumbo yet.”

“I was listening. And your idea needs all their positions.”

“Right.” If Ling noticed the remaining sarcasm he ignored it. “Look. Whether we want to believe it or not, those cubes are artificial. Shape may be an intrinsic property of a natural crystal, but size isn’t. Even if they were life forms, they wouldn’t all match dimensions to four figures. It occurred to me that they might be sensors – detectors of some sort.”

“It occurred to Chispa days ago. You didn’t want to believe then that anyone else beat us to Miranda.”

“I know. I still don’t. There’s no way a group from Earth could have set up this expensive a trip in secret, and I can’t make myself believe the other explanation. We’ve been hoping for ETI too long. But I thought of a way of checking.” He smiled, with a distant look on his face as though he were contemplating the approach of Fame.

“And?”

“The things radiate – broadcast – infrared patterns, nonthermal ones, at unpredictable times.”

“I know.”

“Well, we’ve mapped way beyond the local horizon. If that IR output is being coordinated, there must be a central unit they can all reach. You could have Dumbo mark any points on the map which are in eyeball touch with all the cube positions at once. If we’re lucky, there’ll only be a few. If we’re very lucky –”

The woman was already keying at Dumbo, the central data unit.

“And if there aren’t any?” she asked dryly.

“Well, it won’t prove I’m wrong. It’ll just mean...” His voice trailed off as the display popped into view, and a grin split his freckled face. Sheila rolled her eyes zenithward; it would happen to Ling. As though he weren’t bubbly enough already.

Chile accompanied them, naturally. The display had indicated a projecting spur at the top of a cliff which Chispa Jengibre had called El Barco, from the shadow pattern the sun was casting along its face when she first saw it. It was in block ninety-two, a little over twenty kilometers from the Dibrofiad. The location was understandable enough by hindsight; there would be splendid line-of-sight coverage from there. However, a one-hundred-fifty meter fall on Miranda would be dangerous for a human being; even if no limbs were broken, damage to the armor needed against the airless heat sink and Uranian radiation was nearly certain. While Dibrofiad’s crew had gotten fairly used to two-plus percent normal gravity, this hadn’t made anyone a good walker; it was doubtful that anything ever would.

Chile, therefore, viewed a human trip to the cliff as a parent would his one-year-old toddling out on a diving board. The actual visit to the spur must be robot’s work, if it had to be done.

The walkers looked ridiculous, trunks leaning forward like a sprinter about to leave the block, but legs almost straight along the same line. Walking is essentially coordinated falling forward, and Miranda needs every advantage to provide much fall. Thrust came from lower leg muscles bending and straightening ankles to drive toes hooked into surface irregularities, since bending the knees very far made them hit the ground. Bumps and cracks were fortunately numerous, possibly due to the expansion of freezing water, though none of the crew had a clear idea how water could ever have been liquid this far from the sun. The “hikers” carried alpenstocks, but used a free finger more often than the stick to keep faces off the ground. Luis, Chispa’s husband, had remarked that walking could be called body-surfing if Miranda’s water were only melted. His wife insisted that the analogy was too strained, though it was she who had insisted on the robot’s name being spelled to look Spanish after the Gold team had won the throw for right to select the name itself.

Whatever one chose to call it, Sheila was as good at “walking” as Ling; everyone, regardless of specialty, shared the field exploration, which was the most time-consuming crew duty.

Chile would stay ahead of them, since he alone dared to leap. His memory held a detailed surface map for sixty or seventy kilometers around Dibrofiad, so he didn’t have to see his target; he could jump with enough spin control to be sure of landing on his feet; and being built to operate in the sixty Kelvin temperature range, he had no armor to worry about.

The greenish bulk of Uranus hung beyond Stegosaur, the same jagged ridge of carbon-darkened ice it had silhouetted ever since their arrival, changing visibly only in shape as the sun circled above it to produce phase. At the moment it was about eight hours from narrowest crescent, and a slight darkening of the green, showing through the deeper notches of Stego, showed that the fuzzy terminator of the gas giant would be in view shortly.

The party turned to put the planet to their left rear and the sun behind them, and set out. Neither of the other human couples could be seen, but Ling had reached them on the low-frequency sets to report that the Gold team was going out. Bronwen Eira, engineer and captain of Dibrofiad, had acknowledged.

Little was said even by Ling as they went; each person was coming to terms, in his or her own way, with the increasing certainty that they would be the first group to prove the reality of extraterrestrial intelligence. It was hard to believe, like the “yes” to a proposal. Sheila, accustomed to the rugged Miranda landscape as she was, found it now showing a strange, dreamlike aspect; Robert scarcely saw it at all through constantly changing visions of the futures the next hour or two might crystallize. His usual free-time occupation of talking his companion into sharing a name had been put aside, not entirely to her relief. Even the Green and Orange teams, the Jengibres and Eiras, though not going along, were having trouble concentrating on their work; all four had thought of dropping it and following the Golds, though none had so far suggested it aloud.

Travel was fast, in spite of its awkwardness. ZH50 spoke occasionally to guide his companions away from the deeper chasms, though one or the other of them would sometimes issue a startled gasp or exclamation when carried by a “step” over a drop deep enough to jar an Earth-trained nervous system but dismissed by the robot as safe. Their startlingly sharp shadows, that of each helmet surrounded by a Brocken halo visible only to its owner, pointed the way. Dibrofiad was quickly out of sight; even had Miranda been smooth, five kilometers would have put the ship below the horizon.

Finally Chile stopped them with a gesture. “We turn left here. A straight path toward the point marked by Dumbo would have brought us to the foot of Barco. Be careful; there is less than a kilometer to go. Be sure to aim no step beyond a spot you can see.”

The speed of the group slowed accordingly, until he stopped them again. “Tripod fashion from now on; use your sticks. No free fall.”

An unusually smooth horizon now faced them. Neither Rob nor Sheila could estimate its distance; none of the numerous wrinkles and shadows on the ground ahead offered any clue to size, and there was no reason to suppose the general surface was horizontal even if they had been able, in the feeble gravity, to be sure of vertical. They knew from the Dumbo display that there was a possibly lethal drop beyond the edge, but this could have been fifty meters away or five hundred.

“Where’s the spur?” Sheila asked.

“There.” Chile pointed. “Its tip has enough downslope to be invisible from where we stand, though if you jump straight up for a few meters you could distinguish

“Thanks, I’m not sure I could go straight up. I’ll take your word. What’s the actual distance?”

“We are just under one hundred fifty meters from the main line of the edge and from the base of the spur. I advise you not to get any closer, but if you want to see me all the way to the end, you will have to. Please go very slowly indeed, and do not pass me under any circumstances.”

Nearly erect now, using the alpenstocks, and never having more than one foot or stick off the ice at a time, the trio edged forward.

“I wish you would stay back,” Chile repeated when the distance had shrunk to fifty meters. “We have no data on the strength of this ice. We could be providing the heaviest load it has experienced since it formed. It would be much safer if I went forward alone and brought back whatever may be there.”

“No collecting yet, Chile,” Sheila replied. She made no comment on the danger the robot had implied, but was conscious of it. The cliff might even have an overhang. “Nothing gets moved from its original site until we make final decision about what’s coming home with us. We don’t want to spoil more than we can help for later researchers.”

The robot, who knew this perfectly well, made no reply; but both Sheila and Rob knew that First Law tension must be building up in him. They kept safely behind him as he approached the edge, the woman doing nothing to oppose her companion’s obvious intention to keep ahead of her, and stopped when they were close enough to see the far end of the projection.

There was something there. Ling had a scope – a monocular whose eye relief allowed it to be used through his face plate – but this was little help. He could tell that the object was cubical like the other finds, but much larger, seven or eight centimeters on the edge. It seemed to have been set into the dirty ice of the cliff, with two thirds of its height above the surface and an equal fraction projecting outward. The cube faces they could see appeared to be covered with regular lines of dots which sparkled faintly on their mirror-like background.

“How close do you think you can get, Chile?” the man asked at length, after Sheila had also done her best with the scope.

“Close enough to pick it up, if you wish. I can concentrate better if you stay back.”

“Don’t touch it, but examine it as closely as you can. We’ll wait here on the solid ground; I have some First Law tensions myself, now that we’re near enough to the edge to look down,” Sheila responded.

“Good. I’ll crawl, to get my head as close to it as possible. Shall I keep reporting to you as I note anything new, or merely log it as usual?”

“Don’t bother to tell us. Concentrate on observing.”

That may have been an unfortunate command, especially since both human beings were concentrating on the robot.

Chile’s “crawl” was faster than either watcher would have dared; it took him off the ground for a second or two every now and then. The surface, however, even out on the spur, was cracked and jagged enough to provide grips, so he retained control of his motion.

As he neared the end, his head hid the cube from the watchers. Ling started to move to one side to clear the view, but thought better of it after a step or two; he would have to go too far to be worth the risk.

“I have recorded everything I can sense,” Chile reported after a minute or so.

“What is it? What have you found?” Bronwen’s voice reached them.

“You report, Chile. You can tell her more than we,” ordered Sheila before Ling could start talking.

“It is a cube, six times the linear dimension of those we have found already, to the same four significant figures by which they match each other” replied ZH50. “As far as is revealed by any radiation I can perceive, it is made of the same material. The three vertical faces I can see are covered with a pattern of –”

“Sheila! Back!”

Ling, facing sideways to keep both his companions in view, had seen the danger first, and tucked up at the sight; his cry startled the woman into a different reaction, unfortunately. She straightened slightly, and the motion carried her several centimeters upward.

The crack and bump pattern around their feet had not changed, but a new cliff had reached a height of several centimeters a couple of body lengths behind them. The woman couldn’t quite see it; she had no ground contact t? let her turn, and the face plates limited the field of view.

“Jump back! At least ten meters! The cliff face is letting go!”

Sheila lashed downward with her feet, but to no effect; it would be two or three seconds at least before she could touch ground again, and longer before she could really aim a leap even using her stick. Ling, thinking quickly, whipped his own alpenstock upward and away from her. He wasted no time watching it spin out of sight. The reaction, as he had intended, sent him drifting downward and back toward his companion.

“Pull your legs up! Be ready to kick hard when I say! I’ll aim you!”

She might have felt like objecting – she had not full confidence in his judgment, and certainly didn’t want him making any sacrifices for her – but was far too sensible to argue at such a time. Drawing up her feet, she let him drift under her.

Ling seized her ankles, and let her inertia slow his upper half, swinging his own feet back under him as their two-body system started to spin. As he had hoped – he always claimed it was a plan – his boots touched the ground closer to the edge than the common center of mass of their bodies.

“Push off!” he snapped. Sheila insisted afterward that he couldn’t really have been planning, since he knew perfectly well that her mass was much less than his. As she finished her kick he pushed upward on the ankles he still held, and simultaneously thrust with his own feet; but he jumped much too hard. As he was firmly reminded later, human legs are stronger than human arms, and there was no way his arms could transfer all the momentum his legs supplied. Some of it stayed with him as he released her. Sheila spun away from the falling surface as he had hoped, upward and back toward safety. However, instead of being still against the ice to leap again, Rob Ling was also drifting upward, out of touch with the falling block and with nowhere near the speed he had passed on to his companion.

For several seconds, however, he gave no thought to his own predicament; too much else was happening. He was spinning much more slowly than Sheila, but fast enough to get a fairly continuous view of his surroundings. At one moment he could see Chile at the tip of the spur, a second or so later the woman, now several meters above and in the opposite direction. This was all right; but on the second spin, with the new cliff face now over ten centimeters high, a thought crossed his mind.

“Chile! That cube may be smashed when it hits the bottom! Salvage it and protect it!”

The robot had obeyed literally the earlier order to concentrate on the cube, and was unaware of Ling’s danger. He took hold of the object with both hands, using his elbows as fulcrums, and tried to pull it up. It didn’t come, and the leverage started to raise his own body. However, the block gave him a good hold, when squeezed from both sides between his hands, so he was able to double up and bring his feet under him without risk of going over the edge. He placed them on each side of the specimen and began to push himself and pull it upward, increasing his force very gradually to avoid the obvious result of its suddenly breaking free. Ling watched whenever he could, with increasing tension; but before anything came of the robot’s labors, his companion’s voice distracted him.

“Rob, you moron, what were you trying to do? How are you going to get up here? Here – catch my stick!” She tried to hurl her alpenstock toward him, but her own spin betrayed her. He watched it whirl by a meter out of reach, strike the ice, and bury its sharp end in the surface.

“Relax, lady. I’ll get back down in a little while, and can jump again. Look – it’s not falling free; it must be sliding along the break. I’ll catch up.”

“When?”

“Hmmm... maybe ten or fifteen seconds.”

“How far down will the ice be by then? Will you still be able to jump that far?”

“Sure. We’ve all made bigger jumps here. The lovebirds did a forty-three-second one holding hands a couple of weeks ago, when they were celebrating their name anniversary:”

“What’s going on over there?” Bronwen’s voice came in. The Eiras didn’t really resent the geochemist’s frequent way of referring to them, since it was certainly not inaccurate, but her voice was a little sharp.

“Cliff edge broke under us. Still plenty of time to get back up,” Ling replied tersely.

“Chile! How did you –” Sheila’s voice cut in, and broke off as suddenly. Rob was facing the robot as she spoke, and saw nothing to motivate the question; there had been no visible motion by ZH50 since starting to lift. Then his body spin carried the man around to face toward cliff and woman, and the words made sense. Drifting through the vacuum only a few meters from her was a form which, in the dim light, seemed exactly like Chile.

The resemblance was mostly its black color, Rob realized almost at once; this was by far the best look he had had at the ghost. As far as general outline and size were concerned, it could have been any other member of the group. Each environment suit, however, bore a brilliant color pattern matching the team name, pale green for the Jengibres and orange for the Eiras, with black helmets for the men and white for the women. The pattern was for ease of seeing and instant recognition rather than any artistic consideration. For a moment, Ling’s bright hopes collapsed; it would have been quite possible for someone to send a group with only robots from Earth. In fact, that had been considered at some length. No ETI...

Then he was facing Chile again, just in time to see the robot’s feet and legs suddenly crush through the surface.

A robot’s reaction time is electronic as far as perception goes, but mechanical response is another matter, especially for one built to work in Uranus system temperatures. Chile’s legs sank for their full length, and what in a human being would have been his seat struck the ice sharply. About two cubic meters of the spur’s tip broke away under the blow, carrying robot and cube along. Ling watched helplessly as they began to sink slowly beyond the edge of the larger block, which unlike them was not yet falling completely free. Then his attention shifted again at a cry – a real shriek this time – from Sheila.

“What are you doing?”

By the time the man had turned far enough to see, it had been done. The ghost had almost collided with her and seized her arm; for a moment the two had formed another spinning two-body system. Then, using its legs, it had thrust itself off violently in a dive toward the edge, the reaction removing any doubt that Sheila would reach safe ground. Ling wondered for a moment whether it would strike him too; maybe it was a real robot acting under First Law. Then he saw it was aiming at Chile.

He himself was catching up with the main sliding mass, which must still be affected by friction. In a few more seconds he could jump, if he wanted to. A dozen meters up by then, and as far toward his own shadow – no problem. Plenty of time. As he touched the surface about three meters from Sheila’s stick, he even considered for a moment whether he should ride the mass down and get a closer look at the newcomer.

Then he realized that this might not be a good idea. The block was starting to tilt outward as friction continued to delay its inner part. He had no way of deciding how much spin it would acquire, but the Idea of being underneath when it reached bottom was as unattractive as the technique of climbing around it to stay on top was impractical. A blot of quick-frozen crimson glass under a mass of ice might make the day for some future archaeologist, but Ling was not feeling that altruistic. Chile could take care of things below; the new arrival had to be a robot. Surely no human being would make a deliberate dive into a hundred-and-fifty-meter gulf – though come to think of it such a drop wouldn’t have to be lethal – and maybe it was nonhuman in quite a different way – just tougher – why had it made the leap, apparently using Sheila merely as a convenient reaction mass for orbit correction?

“Rob! What are you doing? Don’t stay with that thing – get back up here, idiot!” The man returned to reality with a start which almost separated him from the surface again. He tapped the ground gently with a boot toe to swing himself onto the proper line, and kicked off hard. Again much harder than necessary; he was still rising as he passed over the new cliff edge, and another half minute elapsed before he landed not quite flat on his back. By this time, the detached fragment he had left was nearly halfway down the cliff, and Chile presumably even lower.

“Chile! Report!” Ling didn’t wait even to get to his feet to snap out the order.

“I no longer have the cube,” was the prompt response. “What is clearly another robot passed me in fall, and snatched it away. I saw it approach, but did not foresee its intentions. It has a somewhat greater downward component than I, and will land first, about eight seconds from now. I question the likelihood of my catching it, unless it turns out to be very much less agile than I. This is poor country for maneuvering. Do you wish me to try?”

“Keep it in sight,” Ling ordered without hesitation. “We want to figure out its origin if we can, and what it wants to do with the cube. Observe, and report at your own judgment.”

“Yes, Rob.”

“Can you talk to it?” asked Sheila.

“It has not responded to any standard signal impulses. If it was made by U.S. Robots, it is of a series unknown to me.”

“Does it emit anything?” Mike Eira’s voice came across the kilometers.

“Yes, it – pardon, Mike. Rob, it has just reached the ground, and immediately leaped back toward the cliff top. It should be near you and Sheila in fifty-five seconds. Mike, it has emitted many infrared bursts similar to those of the small cubes.”

“You’re recording them for Dumbo.”

“Of course. I have now reached the ground, and also leaped.”

“Maybe you should stay below, in case –”

“Too late, Bronwen. Rob said to keep it in sight, and I am now out of touch with the ground.”

“All right. It wasn’t much of an idea anyway.”

Silence supervened, while the robots orbited back toward the cliff top. The stranger just cleared the edge with a near zero vertical component; Chile had made more allowance for error and was three or four seconds longer getting his feet on the ground. By this time the ghost had settled to its knees – it was even more humanoid than had been obvious at first – and bent almost over the edge to put the cube down. A hemisphere which might have been dust, smoke, or ice fog expanded around the point of contact, spreading and thinning radially except where the ghost’s body blocked it, without the puffing and billowing which an atmosphere would have caused. After a few more seconds this ceased to form, and its remnants quickly dispersed to invisibility.

“The cube appears to have been replaced in essentially its original orientation,” Chile stated. Sheila and Ling were still too far back to see clearly, and were not approaching at all rapidly; there would be no loose mass to jump back from if they went over the edge on their own.

“Then we’ll stop worrying about it for now, and concentrate on the other robot,” Rob replied. “Chile, I’m afraid to ask this, but what can you tell us about the origin – the manufacture – of this thing?”

“As I said, it is not a make familiar to me. Like me, it appears designed to operate at the local temperature. It has no obviously nonstandard engineering.”

“You mean it could have been made by an appropriately skilled designer to simulate the motions and actions of a human or similar being.”

“Yes.”

None of the listeners bothered to ask whether there was any evidence of nonhuman origin; Chile didn’t have that kind of imagination, and certainly lacked appropriate experience. Ling and probably Mike Eira would have been afraid to ask anyway, though they could certainly think of sufficiently specific questions. For some seconds, ZH50 and his companions looked the ghost over silently, while it finished its work and slowly stood up. The human beings could now see some differences between it and their own robot; it was a few centimeters shorter, about Sheila’s height, its legs were shorter and its arms much longer for its size, and there was no neck. The head seemed fixed directly and immovably on top of the trunk.

“It is slightly above ambient temperature,” Chile reported, “but no more so than I. Heat generated by its recent action could explain it. It is certainly not producing low-grade energy at anything like the human rate.”

“Then there is no real doubt it’s a robot.”

“I see no cause for any.”

“Or a life-form that operates at Uranian temperatures,” suggested another voice.

“I have no way to judge that.”

“Get conscious, Luis. A hundred-and-fifty-meter jump? Humanoid shape like Chile’s –”

“I haven’t seen it yet, Rob; you’re thirty kilos or so away. What’s unreasonable about a human shape?”

“It just doesn’t seem likely in this gravity, and with no air.”

“You mean it has a nose? Even Chile”

“No, no, I meant –”

“Clear the channels, everyone,” came Bronwen’s voice. “Sheila and Rob, get back to Dibrofiad as quickly as you can. The rest of us will do the same. On the way, think of anything portable and possibly useful in communication; we’ll pick it up and get back out to Barco,’ if that thing stays. Chile, you stay with it. If it moves, follow it. Do your best to record and analyze anything it does and especially anything it radiates – I know analysis is more Dumbo’s and Sheila’s line, and I’d like to get what you already have back to Dumbo right now, but if that thing can jump up Barco, you ‘re the only one we can count on staying with it. We’ll have to wait for your data dump. Let’s go, people; Chile, observe, follow, and record, at any risk short of loss of data already secured.”

“Very well, Bronwen.”

Once out of Chile’s sight, Rob and Sheila traveled in rather dangerous fashion, taking much longer leaps than were really justified. Both felt that they remembered their former route well enough to avoid any really perilous drops. Even without walking sticks, the time lost recovering footing after a bad landing was more than made up by that saved in the jumps themselves. The sun had moved a little to their right since the start of the walk, but still formed a good guide to the Dibrofiad’s direction. Ling was again uncharacteristically silent during the hour of the return trip, and Sheila made no effort to learn his thoughts.

The other two couples were equally in a hurry, and neither had as far to go, so they reached the ship first. The trouble was that, once there, no one could think of any really useful apparatus which could be carried, even on Miranda, and which promised to be more effective in communication with a robot than the lights and radios which they already had and the broader-spectrum equipment possessed by Chile. Dumbo was not portable. They had all gone inside, unsuited, and taken care of physical necessities; conversation had been almost continuous through all this, but no really promising suggestions had been made by anyone.

“Who’d have thought we’d need a language specialist?” Luis growled at last.

“How do you know we do?” asked Bronwen. “It may have been made on Earth, by some group we don’t know about.”

“Did you or Rob try ordering it to come back with you?” Chispa asked Sheila.

“Neither of us thought of it. Chile said he’d tried normal robot-to-robot signals with no response, and I guess we were both so convinced it was alien that ordinary speech seemed pointless.”

“You still should have tried.”

“Admitted. We still can, you know. Call Chile and have him order the thing to accompany him back here, in every symbol system he considers appropriate.”

“Will it obey orders from another robot?”

“Will it know Chile’s a robot?”

“Probably. It radiated infrared, and presumably senses it. It should know that he operates at local temperature, and we don’t. The inference would certainly be within Chile’s powers; we don’t know about this one’s, of course.”

“If it’s really alien, it might infer from that that we’re the robots, with inherently wasteful power equipment, and Chile is a native life-form. The trouble is, we don’t know its background,” Mike interjected.

“You’ve got your feet on the wrong pedestal, dear. If we’re trying to give it orders at all, the assumption is that it can understand us, and must be human made.” His wife didn’t dwell on the point, but went on. “We have to try, anyway.” She didn’t bother to check for open channels; there was always one through to the robot. “Chile.”

“Yes, Bronwen.”

“Any change?”

“None. It is standing facing me, presumably waiting for me to do something. It has now cooled down to ambient temperature; I would say that any doubt about its being a robot is gone.”

“You can’t sense an atomic power source?”

“I am not equipped to pick up such radiation directly.”

Bronwen had known that, but was feeling desperate.

“Try talking to it directly –”

“I have done so, every way I can.”

“This time, send your message as an order to approach you. If it responds, order it to follow you back to Dibrofiad. “There was a brief pause.

“No action, Bronwen.”

“If you had received such an order from it, would you have obeyed?”

“Not without checking that the order had originated from a human being, or obtaining the approval of a human being.”

“So we haven’t proved anything. “There was no response to this; Chile had no reason to interpret the remark as a question to him, and the human beings recognized its rhetorical nature. An uncomfortable silence ensued.

“Bronwen, let me try something?” Ling finally spoke, in doubtful tones. The commander nodded, not bothering to ask the nature of his idea.,

“Chile, the robot replaced that cube as nearly as possible to the place it was before the cliff broke off. It seems concerned with it. Without going to extremes if it interferes, approach the cube yourself as though you intended to pick it up again, and tell us how it – the robot – responds.”

There was another pause, while six people tried to imagine what was happening twenty kilometers away.

“It has interposed itself between me and the cube, and has been moving to stay so wherever I go.”

“Any body contact?”

“No. You said not to go to extremes. Shall I push it out of my way?” Ling looked thoughtfully first at Bronwen and then the others. The commander’s eyes also met theirs, in turn. Finally she nodded again.

“All right, Chile. No real force, just a suggestive shove.”

“Understood, Bronwen.” Imaginations fired up again.

“The response has been complex. It braced itself to resist my push, after I had made contact; naturally, it had to yield some distance to accomplish this. While it was setting its feet, it emitted a brief, very detailed burst of infrared, of the same general nature as we detected originally from the small cubes. This was immediately followed by a similar signal from elsewhere. It then ceased pushing against me and simultaneously seized my arm and pulled. This sent me over the cliff edge. I am now falling, and will be unable to do anything effective for the next fifty-five seconds.”

Ling blinked, and a grin spread over his face.

“Chile, did you determine the source of that other signal?”

“Direction, not distance. I did not move enough for parallax while it lasted. However, its line touches ground just at the edge of Big Drop, in Block Twenty-five, seventy-one meters from the boundary between that one and Block Thirty-seven.”

“Great. Head for that spot as soon as you’re down. We’ll meet you there.”

“All right, Rob. You no longer want me to keep track of the other robot.” It was not a question.

“Don’t worry. It’ll be keeping track of you, I expect.”

“I see.” So did the others, and there was a general rush to get into armor. There was some delay, however, in going outside.

“Hold it,” Bronwen said firmly before helmets were donned. “We’re going to the Big Drop, and no one could stand a twenty-kilo fall; it would be about four hundred and fifty meters on Earth. I still don’t trust the chains, but we link up this time.”

“How close?” asked Mike.

“Fifty meters for the Gold team, twenty for the rest of us. If anyone but Chile has to get near the edge, Rob’s the best anchor, so Sheila can do it. Fifty meters will give him more room to catch the surface, and us more time to help, if she does go over; twenty is enough for us. I’ll carry the rest of the reel just in case.”

“It won’t reach five percent of the way down that cliff!”

“It would take a couple of minutes to fall five percent of the way. We’ll take the chain.”

Her husband nodded. Sheila had paled a trifle, but said nothing. It was true that Ling was the heaviest of the crew, while she herself was lightest except for Chispa. She had no intention of going nearer the edge than necessary, and certainly none of going over, but Bronwen was right to be foresighted.

The chain links were carbon-filament composite a millimeter thick, preformed in jointless loops half a centimeter long and already interlocked. Neither rope nor cable was practical; no known fiber, organic, metallic, or mineral, would remain flexible at Miranda’s temperature. The link material had a tensile strength of eight hundred kilograms as straight rod under Earth conditions, dropping to about five hundred at seventy Kelvins, with some remaining doubts about its elasticity in that range and more about the nontensile stresses and possible shock brittleness in its looped shape. No one had wanted to make the field test, but an armored person weighed only about two kilograms.

They did not actually link up until a couple of kilometers from the cliff, in the interest of fast travel; but the robots, of course, were there first in spite of the much greater distance they had had to travel. There was no trouble, this time, spotting the goal.

It too was cubical in shape, but twice as tall as most of the explorers. Like the one at Barco, it was projecting a little over the edge, though not by nearly as large a fraction of its size. It was not obvious whether it was merely resting on the surface or, like the other, set in. The ground was lighter in color here, but at the moment not even Ling was paying attention to mineralogy. In fact, the group only glanced briefly at the big cube; everyone’s attention was on the two robots.

These were not standing still waiting, as had been tacitly expected. They were moving around, now slowly, now more rapidly, usually in the very short steps which went with their nearly upright carriage but sometimes leaping straight up for a distance ranging from two or three centimeters to as much as ten °meters, sometimes waving arms or kicking. There was no obvious regularity; if they were dancing, which was the first thought to cross most of the human minds, there seemed to be no tune. For a few seconds after stopping fifty meters away, the six people simply watched in silence, trying to make sense out of the phenomenon. Then Bronwen recovered her practical sense.

“Chile, report. What’s going on?”

ZH50’s answer came at once without causing visible change in his behavior.

“The robot is now exchanging continuous infrared signals with this cube, details of its signals changing as I perform various actions, while its own actions seem to correspond to signals from the cube. I am trying to ascertain the detailed relationship.”

“You mean you’re learning its language?”

“The analogy is weak; there seem no abstractions involved, and I doubt that I could work them out if there were – at least, not by myself. Connected with Dumbo, the chances would be better. It appears that the robot is reporting to the cube, and receiving general instructions for action from the latter.”

“You mean the cube may be a pure, dedicated data processor like Dumbo, telling the robot what to check but not controlling its detailed limb actions, for example.”

“A much better analogy. It is the one which occurred to me.”

“Where is its Sheila?”

“I have no basis for a guess.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Since I left Barco. At my first leap in this direction, there was a signal burst from the robot; then it leaped from the cliff top after me.” Ling’s nod and grin were invisible inside his helmet, but his Gold partner could imagine them.

“Had the robot received a signal before following you?” asked Chispa.

“I could not tell; the cube was below my horizon.”

“But whenever you’ve been in a position to receive, such a signal preceded its action.”

“Yes. The best example came about two thirds of the way here, when I happened to be at the top of a jump. A very complex emission from the cube was followed by the robot’s ceasing temporarily to stay with me. It disappeared briefly to the right of our path, and came back carrying one of the very small cubes. It intercepted me at one of my landing points, and extended the object to me. I took it. It then took it back and placed it on top of its own head, removed it, and handed it to me again. I imitated that gesture also. The cube adhered, but not strongly; I found I could easily remove it, and decided to leave it in place.” The human beings had not noticed the minor addition to Chile’s outline, but could see it easily enough now.

“Why didn’t you –” Bronwen cut off her question; it was plain enough why Chile hadn’t reported the incident. He had been told to observe and analyze, with the implication that reporting should wait until the group had met at Big Drop.

“Have you been able to detect anything from the cube since it has been on your head?”

“Yes. It has emitted simple signals every time I move or change attitude. It is reporting my position, very precisely, to the large cube; that has been easy to work out.”

“Sure!” exclaimed Ling. “That’s what they’re all doing. It’s a sensor network analyzing topographic changes on all this part of Miranda – maybe the whole satellite. Just what we’d do if we had the gear. Someone is checking whether the surface patterns of this iceberg which have been bothering people since Voyager really represent separate fragments of a shattered body which fell back together, or internal movements, or what. The middle-sized cube on Barco is just a relay station; this one is the equivalent of Dumbo, tying all the measures together. When we learn to read its output – Keep at it, Chile!”

“I hope that’s not merely the equivalent of Chispa’s naming a cliff for a ship, or all of us calling a range of hills a dinosaur, or someone’s describing a constellation as a goat or a long-tailed bear,” Sheila responded. “We do like to fit things into patterns, don’t we, Rob?”

“Don’t be so objective. Just because I saw your face in a Rorschach blot when we were being tested for this trip, and the whole world found out about it because the tech couldn’t control her giggles, doesn’t mean –”

“Of course not,” Bronwen cut in. The blot story was not news to Dibrofiad’s personnel. “Your hypothesis is sensible, and we can keep on testing it. Chile, has this robot objected to your approaching the big cube?”

“I haven’t tried that yet. I have been working on much more direct and simple signal-action correspondence.”

Ling didn’t stop to check with the commander. “Hold up for a moment and give me that cube, then go on with your tests. I’d like to see if it gives the robot any special instructions when I get close to the center.”

“The robot can see you whether you’re wearing the cube or not, and I’m the one who’s supposed to go near the edge if necessary. I’m less likely to break a piece of it off, after all,” Sheila pointed out.

“We don’t need to worry about the cliff strength here. Would they have put this big gadget where it is without checking? Never mind the cube, Chile, but I’m going to find out –”

Bronwen was somewhat dubious, but said nothing. If Rob did cause the other robot to break off the language lesson, it would at least give some idea of the unit’s concerns and priorities. Only when the man took an unusually long step toward the cube did she utter a caution.

“It’s a long way down, Rob. I said that Sheila would be first if anyone had to go near the edge. You get set to anchor.”

Ling checked himself, a humorous sight under the local gravity and traction. “I’ll head for the right side, Sheila for the left. If one goes over, the cube will catch the chain and be a real anchorage.”

“All right. But don’t get casual.”

“I won’t. Keep an eye on Chile’s friend. I expect it’ll do something, considering how it reacted back at Barco when he tried to get the cube there.”

The whole group eased closer to the edge, Orange to the left, Green to the right, men leading by a few meters, safety chains slack.

Rob was quite right in principle, but hadn’t foreseen the detail. As he approached the right side of the block, gathering in the free chain as Sheila neared the other, the language lesson was indeed interrupted. Casually using Chile as a kick-off mass, the ghost dived straight for the man, and just as casually used his inertia to keep itself from going past the edge. The push sent Ling over, naturally, since his mass was much less than the robot’s.

The chain did not catch on the presumed data unit, for the block lifted itself smoothly a meter and a half to let the line pass underneath as Rob’s new momentum pulled it straight.

Quick planning was easy, quick execution impossible. Sheila was standing almost erect, and even though the footing was rough, could not at once leap horizontally; she had to fall to a steep angle in the desired direction first, and this had to take over a second. Pulling up her feet would be no help; she would merely fall straight and surrender what little traction she had without getting the needed tilt.

The other two teams had the same problem. Chispa and Bronwen also started down so that all four limbs could search for traction; their partners, about the same distance from the edge but closer to it than the women, leaped toward each other.

By the time they met, Chile was still helplessly drifting from the push he had received, Ling was starting to disappear below the edge, and Sheila was ready to jump away from it and him. He had released the slack in the chain connecting them.

“Hit us, Sheil’!” called Mike. She needed no instruction. A little toe work in the surface cracks headed her toward the two-man system slowly spinning and drifting edgeward as it settled toward the ground. She had bent her knees a little as she went down, and now straightened them firmly.

By the time she reached her target and complicated the system, it was on the ground. Ling was nearly out of sight, and Chile, who had had no control over his original spin, had only partly stopped his flight with his hands and was on the first bounce.

“We’ve got you, and the girls have us. There’s plenty of traction. Start hauling in!” Mike snapped. “Not too hard!”

She pulled quickly anyway. The sooner the slack was taken up and she could start doing something useful, the better. By the time she felt resistance, the falling man was out of sight, one could only estimate how far. She abandoned responsibility for her own safety to the others, and drew steadily, hand over hand, gripping the fine chain as effectively as she could with her insulated gloves. She barely noticed that the big cube had settled back where it had been. From her position, the other robot was hidden beyond it; for the moment, its possible activities didn’t concern her.

“Rob, are you all right?” she called.

“Sure. Swinging in toward the cliff now. I take it you’re anchored all right – if you come over too, it could be awkward.”

“I’m solid. Don’t look down.”

“Oh, it’s not that bad. There’s no haze to suggest distance; my head knows it’s twenty kilos, but my stomach isn’t sure it’s down. I’m about to hit the cliff; stop pulling up for a moment so I can catch it. It’s pretty rough, and I may be able to hang on myself.” There was a pause, and Sheila braced herself for a possible jolt along the chain, but felt nothing. “Missed the hold. I bounced, but only a little. I ought to get it next time. It’s not quite vertical, I think; maybe I can walk up it, with the rope helping. Here I come.” There was a pause. “Yep, it’s not straight up and down; I’m hanging against the rock. You can pull again. So much for the strength of this cliff.”

“What? Is it cracking?” Chispa was first with the question, by a split second.

“Oh, no, but if that data unit can fly, our logic was a bit shaky. Just don’t stamp, please, until I get back up. More to the point, what’s that other robot doing now?”

Chispa, who could see farthest around the right side of the cube, replied, “Nothing. It’s just standing there. Why?”

“Well, if you didn’t happen to see, I think it pushed me over; and I was wondering if it had shown the same feeling about anyone else.”

“Chile! Keep close to that thing and make sure it doesn’t do a repeat!” snapped Bronwen.

“Shouldn’t I be helping bring Robert up? His danger seems more immediate.”

“We can get him. If he’s right – I couldn’t see him on that side of the block – the other danger is greater.”

“I understand.”

“Talk to it, if you’ve reached that level, and ask why it did it,” suggested Ling.

“We have not reached that level of abstraction.”

“At least we’ve learned one thing; this stuff is alien,” Rob resumed, very calmly all things considered. “No robot made on Earth could have done that to what it recognized as a human being. We don’t have First Law protection from it. Maybe we don’t have any kind; maybe whoever made it doesn’t use the Three Laws in their design.”

Chile had stopped at last, and was “walking” back toward the scene of action. “Such a positronic brain is not possible,” he said flatly. “I will try to find human identifying signals, if any exist, in its communication with the data processor, but I expect they will be too abstract for my present intuition base. Is Robert nearly up?”

“Nearly.” Ling and Sheila spoke almost together. No one suggested aloud that the ghost’s brain might not be positronic. “There can’t be much of this chain still out,” the woman added.

“The robot is getting between me and the cube again,” Chile reported quietly. “I will go to the left side, so I can help with Robert’s chain. I am still monitoring signals. I can’t get very close, of course, without using force on the robot. I assume that is not yet the policy.”

“Right. Just communicate,” replied Bronwen.

Ling’s gloves, slightly preceding his helmet, appeared about eight meters to the left of the cube, as seen by his companions. Chile was standing within a meter of the same spot, slowly bending over to reach for him. The main anchoring trio lay a dozen meters straight in from the point, at the junction of a “Y” outlined in chain with the other women at its arm tips and Chile at its foot.

This lasted only a split second. Then the alien robot moved again, this time pushing off from the big cube. As before, it plunged for the edge. Chile, almost upright, was in no position to oppose it. He took most of its momentum and flew over Ling’s head; the rest of the push was expended against the man’s helmet, and he followed Chile more slowly.

“Rob!” Sheila screamed, and jerked up her legs in readiness to jump. She recovered control in time to forestall the motion, but not soon enough to let Luis and Mike keep hold of her ankles. All might still have been well if she had released the loops of chain she had been coiling up, but letting go of Ling was the farthest thing from her instincts. The chain transferred part of the robot’s final thrust to her, and after two agonizingly slow bounces accompanied by futile scrabbling at surface irregularities and a shrieked “NO!” she too went over the edge. The startled watchers saw the alien robot, now falling to the safe side of the rim, lean and extend an arm as though to intercept her, but she drifted past out of its reach.

“I think we may bounce out before we hit bottom, but I’m not sure how far down that’ll happen,” Ling remarked. “At least, there should be time to make our wills, if any of us hasn’t done it already.”

“Nine minutes thirty-three seconds,” affirmed Chile. He had hooked a foot under the chain as the other had pushed him, and was now engaged in pulling the three together. “If we approach the bottom, you two hold tightly to each other, and at the last possible moment I will kick upward against you as hard as I can, to take as much as possible of our downward momentum to myself. There seems little chance that this would suffice to preserve your lives, but it is the best I can think of. We have not enough collective spin to help the operation by –”

“Thanks, Chile, but we’ll take your word for it. Rob, was it that robot again’? Things happened too fast for me to be sure.”

“‘Fraid so. It seems to have a prejudice against me, or maybe against anyone who tried to touch the cube. I wonder why it didn’t come around and get you too before; you were about to do the same thing.”

“That is why I want all three of us together as quickly as possible,” Chile cut in. “It will not harm Sheila, and will have the cube here to catch her very shortly. She is human. If we are actually in contact, as she and I are now, it will probably not try to force us apart, but if you, Rob, are still at the end of the chain, I am not sure it won’t try to break you free.”

“Why? I’m –”

“Please don’t talk, Robert. Just pull in chain from your end, too. It will put an uncomfortable amount of spin on us, I fear, but should make you much safer. Here comes the cube.”

Actually, there was no hurry. The alien block, with the ghost on top, overhauled them rather slowly, seemed to look things over for more than a minute, and finally slid under the trio over two hundred meters down. Bronwen had plenty of time to unlimber the rest of the chain, but not enough to figure out how to use it.

“Then you solved the alien symbols.” Ling was talking before his feet were back on the ground. “But why does that thing regard Sheila as human, and not me?”

“I did not solve them. It was the sort of intuition which apparently any brain experiences; yours, when you organized the shadow pattern Chispa called a ship –”

“And the ridge we all named the Stegosaur!” Mike added.

“And the face Rob saw in the Rorschach blot,” continued ZH50. “It happens to positronic brains like mine, too; it may be an inevitable part of any intelligence, natural or otherwise, as I have heard suggested. Dumbo lacks it, of course; it needs Sheila to work intelligently. This other robot has the same quality, positronic or not, and apparently decided that I and the black-helmeted figures were robots, deserving of no special consideration beside the safety of its central system, but that the white-helmeted ones were human.”

“Why should it get that idea?”

“Behavior patterns are also data, and can also be connected intuitively. I did it with the robot’s actions, it did the same with yours. During the time we were investigating this cube, for example, the men made a point – possibly unconscious – of staying between their companions and the edge of the cliff. I think the key behavior, though, occurred at Barco, when –”

“When this idiotic Galahad kicked me back up the cliff, at his own risk!” snapped Sheila.

“That seems likely.”

“But I wasn’t in any real risk! I could have jumped up from that slab of ice five seconds before hitting bottom, and landed like jumping off a table!”

“The robot didn’t know your limits. It saw the basic action; you were protecting another being, and, I suggest, interpreted that as First Law behavior. The most obvious difference between the two of you was helmet color. The conclusion may have been tentative, if the thing is intelligent enough be that scientific, but it was supported later.”

“You trusted human lives to your own guess, then. How does that fit with First Law?” asked Luis.

“I did not. The lives were already at risk through no fault of mine. I told you the best action I could suggest at the time,” answered Chile. “I also implied that it would be unnecessary; I used the conditional. “Luis blinked, thinking back.

“It’s one of those old-fashioned happy endings!” Chispa laughed. “We really have found proof of alien life, and when Chile, or maybe Chile and Dumbo between them, have worked out this machine’s code, we’ll know everything it’s learned about Miranda in however long it’s been here. Nobel prizes all around. And all the romance anyone could want.” She moved closer to Luis; then, just visibly to the others through her face plate, glanced at Sheila. “Well...” Her voice trailed off.

A snort, recognizably Ling’s, sounded in their helmets.

“If I’ve been that obvious, forget it. There’s such a thing as self-respect.” He made another, less describable sound.

“I can stand self-respect, even when it slops over into conceit,” Sheila said quietly. “It’s much better than hinting. How about ‘Rorschach’ for a team name?”

“Why be subtle? ‘Blot’ is more euphonious. But I’ll go with anything you like. What, except for wasted time, is in a –”

“And maybe the folks who set up this station will be back soon!” interrupted Chispa merrily.

Little Lost Robot

2029 A.D.

MEASURES ON HYPER Base had been taken in a sort of rattling fury – the muscular equivalent of a hysterical shriek.

To itemize them in order of both chronology and desperation, they were:

1. All work on the Hyperatomic Drive through all the space volume occupied by the Stations of the Twenty-Seventh Asteroidal Grouping came to a halt.

2. That entire volume of space was nipped out of the System, practically speaking. No one entered without permission. No one left under any conditions.

3. By special government patrol ship, Drs. Susan Calvin and Peter Bogert, respectively Head Psychologist and Mathematical Director of United States Robot & Mechanical Men Corporation, were brought to Hyper Base.

Susan Calvin had never left the surface of Earth before, and had no perceptible desire to leave it this time. In an age of Atomic Power and a clearly coming Hyperatomic Drive, she remained quietly provincial. So she was dissatisfied with her trip and unconvinced of the emergency, and every line of her plain, middle-aged face showed it clearly enough during her first dinner at Hyper Base.

Nor did Dr. Bogert’s sleek paleness abandon a certain hangdog attitude. Nor did Major-general Kallner, who headed the project, even once forget to maintain a hunted expression. In short, it was a grisly episode, that meal, and the little session of three that followed began in a gray, unhappy manner.

Kallner, with his baldness glistening, and his dress uniform oddly unsuited to the general mood, began with uneasy directness.

“This is a queer story to tell, sir, and madam. I want to thank you for coming on short notice and without a reason being given. We’ll try to correct that now. We’ve lost a robot. Work has stopped and must stop until such time as we locate it. So far we have failed, and we feel we need expert help.”

Perhaps the general felt his predicament anticlimactic. He continued with a note of desperation, “I needn’t tell you the importance of our work here. More than eighty percent of last year’s appropriations for scientific research have gone to us-”

“Why, we know that,” said Bogert, agreeably. “U. S. Robots is receiving a generous rental fee for use of our robots.”

Susan Calvin injected a blunt, vinegary note, “What makes a single robot so important to the project, and why hasn’t it been located?”

The general turned his red face toward her and wet his lips quickly, “Why, in a manner of speaking we have located it.” Then, with near anguish, “Here, suppose I explain. As soon as the robot failed to report a state of emergency was declared, and all movement off Hyper Base stopped. A cargo vessel had landed the previous day and had delivered us two robots for our laboratories. It had sixty-two robots of the... uh... game type for shipment elsewhere. We are certain as to that figure. There is no question about it whatever.”

“Yes? And the connection?”

“When our missing robot failed of location anywhere – I assure you we would have found a missing blade of grass if it had been there to find – we brainstormed ourselves into counting the robots left of the cargo ship. They have sixty-three now.”

“So that the sixty-third, I take it, is the missing prodigal?” Dr. Calvin’s eyes darkened.

“Yes, but we have no way of telling which is the sixty-third.”

There was a dead silence while the electric clock chimed eleven times, and then the robopsychologist said, “Very peculiar,” and the corners of her lips moved downward.

“Peter,” she turned to her colleague with a trace of savagery, “what’s wrong here? What kind of robots are they, using at Hyper Base?”

Dr. Bogert hesitated and smiled feebly, “It’s been rather a matter of delicacy till now, Susan.”

She spoke rapidly, “Yes, till now. If there are sixty-three same-type robots, one of which is wanted and the identity of which cannot be determined, why won’t any of them do? What’s the idea of all this? Why have we been sent for?”

Bogert said in resigned fashion, “If you’ll give me a chance, Susan – Hyper Base happens to be using several robots whose brains are not impressioned with the entire First Law of Robotics.”

“Aren’t impressioned?” Calvin slumped back in her chair, “I see. How many were made?”

“A few. It was on government order and there was no way of violating the secrecy. No one was to know except the top men directly concerned. You weren’t included, Susan. It was nothing I had anything to do with.”

The general interrupted with a measure of authority. “I would like to explain that bit. I hadn’t been aware that Dr. Calvin was unacquainted with the situation. I needn’t tell you, Dr. Calvin, that there always has been strong opposition to robots on the Planet. The only defense the government has had against the Fundamentalist radicals in this matter was the fact that robots are always built with an unbreakable First Law – which makes it impossible for them to harm human beings under any circumstance.

“But we had to have robots of a different nature. So just a few of the NS-2 model, the Nestors, that is, were prepared with a modified First Law. To keep it quiet, all NS-2’s are manufactured without serial numbers; modified members are delivered here along with a group of normal robots; and, of course, all our kind are under the strictest impressionment never to tell of their modification to unauthorized personnel.” He wore an embarrassed smile; “This has all worked out against us now.”

Calvin said grimly, “Have you asked each one who it is, anyhow? Certainly, you are authorized?”

The general nodded, “All sixty-three deny having worked here – and one is lying.”

“Does the one you want show traces of wear? The others, I take it, are factory-fresh.”

“The one in question only arrived last month. It, and the two that have just arrived, were to be the last we needed. There’s no perceptible wear.” He shook his head slowly and his eyes were haunted again, “Dr. Calvin, we don’t dare let that ship leave. If the existence of non-First Law robots becomes general knowledge-” There seemed no way of avoiding understatement in the conclusion.

“Destroy all sixty-three,” said the robopsychologist coldly and flatly, “and make an end of it.”

Bogert drew back a corner of his mouth. “You mean destroy thirty thousand dollars per robot. I’m afraid U. S. Robots wouldn’t like that. We’d better make an effort first, Susan, before we destroy anything.”

“In that case,” she said, sharply, “I need facts. Exactly what advantage does Hyper Base derive from these modified robots? What factor made them desirable, general?”

Kallner ruffled his forehead and stroked it with an upward gesture of his hand. “We had trouble with our previous robots. Our men work with hard radiations a good deal, you see. It’s dangerous, of course, but reasonable precautions are taken. There have been only two accidents since we began and neither was fatal. However, it was impossible to explain that to an ordinary robot. The First Law states – I’ll quote it – ‘No robot may harm a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.’

“That’s primary, Dr. Calvin. When it was necessary for one of our men to expose himself for a short period to a moderate gamma field, one that would have no physiological effects, the nearest robot would dash in to drag him out. If the field were exceedingly weak, it would succeed, and work could not continue till all robots were cleared out. If the field were a trifle stronger, the robot would never reach the technician concerned, since its positronic brain would collapse under gamma radiations – and then we would be out one expensive and hard-to-replace robot.

“We tried arguing with them. Their point was that a human being in a gamma field was endangering his life and that it didn’t matter that he could remain there half an hour safely. Supposing, they would say, he forgot and remained an hour. They couldn’t take chances. We pointed out that they were risking their lives on a wild off-chance. But self-preservation is only the Third Law of Robotics – and the First Law of human safety came first. We gave them orders; we ordered them strictly and harshly to remain out of gamma fields at whatever cost. But obedience is only the Second Law of Robotics – and the First Law of human safety came first. Dr. Calvin, we either had to do without robots, or do something about the First Law – and we made our choice.”

“I can’t believe,” said Dr. Calvin, “that it was found possible to remove the First Law.”

“It wasn’t removed, it was modified,” explained Kallner. “Positronic brains were constructed that contained the positive aspect only of the Law, which in them reads: ‘No robot may harm a human being.’ That is all. They have no compulsion to prevent one coming to harm through an extraneous agency such as gamma rays. I state the matter correctly, Dr. Bogert?”

“Quite,” assented the mathematician.

“And that is the only difference of your robots from the ordinary NS2 model? The only difference? Peter?”

“The only difference, Susan.”

She rose and spoke with finality, “I intend sleeping now, and in about eight hours, I want to speak to whomever saw the robot last. And from now on, General Kallner, if I’m to take any responsibility at all for events, I want full and unquestioned control of this investigation.”

Susan Calvin, except for two hours of resentful lassitude, experienced nothing approaching sleep. She signaled at Bogert’s door at the local time of 0700 and found him also awake. He had apparently taken the trouble of transporting a dressing gown to Hyper Base with him, for he was sitting in it. He put his nail scissors down when Calvin entered.

He said softly, “I’ve been expecting you more or less. I suppose you feel sick about all this.”

“I do.”

“Well – I’m sorry. There was no way of preventing it. When the call came out from Hyper Base for us, I knew that something must have gone wrong with the modified Nestors. But what was there to do? I couldn’t break the matter to you on the trip here, as I would have liked to, because I had to be sure. The matter of the modification is top secret.”

The psychologist muttered, “I should have been told. U. S. Robots had no right to modify positronic brains this way without the approval of a psychologist.”

Bogert lifted his eyebrows and sighed. “Be reasonable, Susan. You couldn’t have influenced them. In this matter, the government was bound to have its way. They want the Hyperatomic Drive and the etheric physicists want robots that won’t interfere with them. They were going to get them even if it did mean twisting the First Law. We had to admit it was possible from a construction standpoint and they swore a mighty oath that they wanted only twelve, that they would be used only at Hyper Base, that they would be destroyed once the Drive was perfected, and that full precautions would be taken. And they insisted on secrecy – and that’s the situation.”

Dr. Calvin spoke through her teeth, “I would have resigned.”

“It wouldn’t have helped. The government was offering the company a fortune, and threatening it with antirobot legislation in case of a refusal. We were stuck then, and we’re badly stuck now. If this leaks out, it might hurt Kallner and the government, but it would hurt U. S. Robots a devil of a lot more.”

The psychologist stared at him. “Peter, don’t you realize what all this is about? Can’t you understand what the removal of the First Law means? It isn’t just a matter of secrecy.”

“I know what removal would mean. I’m not a child. It would mean complete instability, with no nonimaginary solutions to the positronic Field Equations.”

“Yes, mathematically. But can you translate that into crude psychological thought. All normal life, Peter, consciously or otherwise, resents domination. If the domination is by an inferior, or by a supposed inferior, the resentment becomes stronger. Physically, and, to an extent, mentally, a robot – any robot – is superior to human beings. What makes him slavish, then? Only the First Law! Why, without it, the first order you tried to give a robot would result in your death. Unstable? What do you think?”

“Susan,” said Bogert, with an air of sympathetic amusement. “I’ll admit that this Frankenstein Complex you’re exhibiting has a certain justification – hence the First Law in the first place. But the Law, I repeat and repeat, has not been removed – merely modified.”

“And what about the stability of the brain?”

The mathematician thrust out his lips, “Decreased, naturally. But it’s within the border of safety. The first Nestors were delivered to Hyper Base nine months ago, and nothing whatever has gone wrong till now, and even this involves merely fear of discovery and not danger to humans.”

“Very well, then. We’ll see what comes of the morning conference.”

Bogert saw her politely to the door and grimaced eloquently when she left. He saw no reason to change his perennial opinion of her as a sour and fidgety frustration.

Susan Calvin’s train of thought did not include Bogert in the least. She had dismissed him years ago as a smooth and pretentious sleekness.

Gerald Black had taken his degree in etheric physics the year before and, in common with his entire generation of physicists, found himself engaged in the problem of the Drive. He now made a proper addition to the general atmosphere of these meetings on Hyper Base. In his stained white smock, he was half rebellious and wholly uncertain. His stocky strength seemed striving for release and his fingers, as they twisted each other with nervous yanks, might have forced an iron bar out of true.

Major-general Kallner sat beside him; the two from U. S. Robots faced him.

Black said, “I’m told that I was the last to see Nestor 10 before he vanished. I take it you want to ask me about that.”

Dr. Calvin regarded him with interest, “You sound as if you were not sure, young man. Don’t you know whether you were the last to see him?”

“He worked with me, ma’am, on the field generators, and he was with me the morning of his disappearance. I don’t know if anyone saw him after about noon. No one admits having done so.”

“Do you think anyone’s lying about it?”

“I don’t say that. But I don’t say that I want the blame of it, either.” His dark eyes smoldered.

“There’s no question of blame. The robot acted as it did because of what it is. We’re just trying to locate it, Mr. Black, and let’s put everything else aside. Now if you’ve worked with the robot, you probably know it better than anyone else. Was there anything unusual about it that you noticed? Had you ever worked with robots before?”

“I’ve worked with other robots we have here – the simple ones. Nothing different about the Nestors except that they’re a good deal cleverer – and more annoying.”

“Annoying? In what way?”

“Well – perhaps it’s not their fault. The work here is rough and most of us get a little jagged. Fooling around with hyper-space isn’t fun.” He smiled feebly, finding pleasure in confession. “We run the risk continually of blowing a hole in normal space-time fabric and dropping right out of the universe, asteroid and all. Sounds screwy, doesn’t it? Naturally, you’re on edge sometimes. But these Nestors aren’t. They’re curious, they’re calm, they don’t worry. It’s enough to drive you nuts at times. When you want something done in a tearing hurry, they seem to take their time. Sometimes I’d rather do without.”

“You say they take their time? Have they ever refused an order?”

“Oh, no,” hastily. “They do it all right. They tell you when they think you’re wrong, though. They don’t know anything about the subject but what we taught them, but that doesn’t stop them. Maybe I imagine it, but the other fellows have the same trouble with their Nestors.”

General Kallner cleared his throat ominously, “Why have no complaints reached me on the matter, Black?”

The young physicist reddened, “We didn’t really want to do without the robots, sir, and besides we weren’t certain exactly how such... uh... minor complaints might be received.”

Bogert interrupted softly, “Anything in particular happen the morning you last saw it?”

There was a silence. With a quiet motion, Calvin repressed the comment that was about to emerge from Kallner, and waited patiently.

Then Black spoke in blurting anger, “I had a little trouble with it. I’d broken a Kimball tube that morning and was out five days of work; my entire program was behind schedule; I hadn’t received any mail from home for a couple of weeks. And he came around wanting me to repeat an experiment I had abandoned a month ago. He was always annoying me on that subject and I was tired of it. I told him to go away – and that’s all I saw of him.”

“You told him to go away?” asked Dr. Calvin with sharp interest. “In just those words? Did you say ‘Go away’? Try to remember the exact words.”

There was apparently an internal struggle in progress. Black cradled his forehead in a broad palm for a moment, then tore it away and said defiantly, “I said, ‘Go lose yourself.’”

Bogert laughed for a short moment. “And he did, eh?”

But Calvin wasn’t finished. She spoke cajolingly, “Now we’re getting somewhere, Mr. Black. But exact details are important. In understanding the robot’s actions, a word, a gesture, an emphasis may be everything. You couldn’t have said just those three words, for instance, could you? By your own description you must have been in a hasty mood. Perhaps you strengthened your speech a little.”

The young man reddened, “Well... I may have called it a... a few things.”

“Exactly what things?”

“Oh – I wouldn’t remember exactly. Besides I couldn’t repeat it. You know how you get when you’re excited.” His embarrassed laugh was almost a giggle, “I sort of have a tendency to strong language.”

“That’s quite all right,” she replied, with prim severity. “At the moment, I’m a psychologist. I would like to have you repeat exactly what you said as nearly as you remember, and, even more important, the exact tone of voice you used.”

Black looked at his commanding officer for support, found none. His eyes grew round and appalled, “But I can’t.”

“You must.”

“Suppose,” said Bogert, with ill-hidden amusement, “you address me. You may find it easier.”

The young man’s scarlet face turned to Bogert. He swallowed. “I said” His voice faded out. He tried again, “I said-”

And he drew a deep breath and spewed it out hastily in one long succession of syllables. Then, in the charged air that lingered, he concluded almost in tears, “... more or less. I don’t remember the exact order of what I called him, and maybe I left out something or put in something, but that was about it.”

Only the slightest flush betrayed any feeling on the part of the robopsychologist. She said, “I am aware of the meaning of most of the terms used. The others, I suppose, are equally derogatory.”

“I’m afraid so,” agreed the tormented Black.

“And in among it, you told him to lose himself.”

“I meant it only figuratively.”

“I realize that. No disciplinary action is intended, I am sure.” And at her glance, the general, who, five seconds earlier, had seemed not sure at all, nodded angrily.

“You may leave, Mr. Black. Thank you for your cooperation.”

It took five hours for Susan Calvin to interview the sixty-three robots. It was five hours of multi-repetition; of replacement after replacement of identical robot; of Questions A, B, C, D; and Answers A, B, C, D; of a carefully bland expression, a carefully neutral tone, a carefully friendly atmosphere; and a hidden wire recorder.

The psychologist felt drained of vitality when she was finished.

Bogert was waiting for her and looked expectant as she dropped the recording spool with a clang upon the plastic of the desk.

She shook her head, “All sixty-three seemed the same to me. I couldn’t tell-”

He said, “You couldn’t expect to tell by ear, Susan. Suppose we analyze the recordings.”

Ordinarily, the mathematical interpretation of verbal reactions of robots is one of the more intricate branches of robotic analysis. It requires a staff of trained technicians and the help of complicated computing machines. Bogert knew that. Bogert stated as much, in an extreme of unshown annoyance after having listened to each set of replies, made lists of word deviations, and graphs of the intervals of responses.

“There are no anomalies present, Susan. The variations in wording and the time reactions are within the limits of ordinary frequency groupings. We need finer methods. They must have computers here. No.” He frowned and nibbled delicately at a thumbnail. “We can’t use computers. Too much danger of leakage. Or maybe if we-”

Dr. Calvin stopped him with an impatient gesture, “Please, Peter. This isn’t one of your petty laboratory problems. If we can’t determine the modified Nestor by some gross difference that we can see with the naked eye, one that there is no mistake about, we’re out of luck. The danger of being wrong, and of letting him escape is otherwise too great. It’s not enough to point out a minute irregularity in a graph. I tell you, if that’s all I’ve got to go on, I’d destroy them all just to be certain. Have you spoken to the other modified Nestors?”

“Yes, I have,” snapped back Bogert, “and there’s nothing wrong with them. They’re above normal in friendliness if anything. They answered my questions, displayed pride in their knowledge – except the two new ones that haven’t had time to learn their etheric physics. They laughed rather good-naturedly at my ignorance in some of the specializations here.” He shrugged, “I suppose that forms some of the basis for resentment toward them on the part of the technicians here. The robots are perhaps too willing to impress you with their greater knowledge.”

“Can you try a few Planar Reactions to see if there has been any change, any deterioration, in their mental set-up since manufacture?”

“I haven’t yet, but I will.” He shook a slim finger at her, “You’re losing your nerve, Susan. I don’t see what it is you’re dramatizing. They’re essentially harmless.”

“They are?” Calvin took fire. “They are? Do you realize one of them is lying? One of the sixty-three robots I have just interviewed has deliberately lied to me after the strictest injunction to tell the truth. The abnormality indicated is horribly deep-seated, and horribly frightening.”

Peter Bogert felt his teeth harden against each other. He said, “Not at all. Look! Nestor 10 was given orders to lose himself. Those orders were expressed in maximum urgency by the person most authorized to command him. You can’t counteract that order either by superior urgency or superior right of command. Naturally, the robot will attempt to defend the carrying out of his orders. In fact, objectively, I admire his ingenuity. How better can a robot lose himself than to hide himself among a group of similar robots?”

“Yes, you would admire it. I’ve detected amusement in you, Peter – amusement and an appalling lack of understanding. Are you a roboticist, Peter? Those robots attach importance to what they consider superiority. You’ve just said as much yourself. Subconsciously they feel humans to be inferior and the First Law which protects us from them is imperfect. They are unstable. And here we have a young man ordering a robot to leave him, to lose himself, with every verbal appearance of revulsion, disdain, and disgust. Granted, that robot must follow orders, but subconsciously, there is resentment. It will become more important than ever for it to prove that it is superior despite the horrible names it was called. It may become so important that what’s left of the First Law won’t be enough.”

“How on Earth, or anywhere in the Solar System, Susan, is a robot going to know the meaning of the assorted strong language used upon him? Obscenity is not one of the things impressioned upon his brain.”

“Original impressionment is not everything,” Calvin snarled at him. “Robots have learning capacity, you... you fool-” And Bogert knew that she had really lost her temper. She continued hastily, “Don’t you suppose he could tell from the tone used that the words weren’t complimentary? Don’t yon suppose he’s heard the words used before and noted upon what occasions?”

“Well, then,” shouted Bogert, “will you kindly tell me one way in which a modified robot can harm a human being, no matter how offended it is, no matter how sick with desire to prove superiority?”

“If I tell you one way, will you keep quiet?”

“Yes.”

They were leaning across the table at each other, angry eyes nailed together.

The psychologist said, “If a modified robot were to drop a heavy weight upon a human being, he would not be breaking the First Law, if he did so with the knowledge that his strength and reaction speed would be sufficient to snatch the weight away before it struck the man. However once the weight left his fingers, he would be no longer the active medium. Only the blind force of gravity would be that. The robot could then change his mind and merely by inaction, allow the weight to strike. The modified First Law allows that.”

“That’s an awful stretch of imagination.”

“That’s what my profession requires sometimes. Peter, let’s not quarrel, let’s work. You know the exact nature of the stimulus that caused the robot to lose himself. You have the records of his original mental make-up. I want you to tell me how possible it is for our robot to do the sort of thing I just talked about. Not the specific instance, mind you, but that whole class of response. And I want it done quickly.”

“And meanwhile-”

“And meanwhile, we’ll have to try performance tests directly on the response to First Law.”

Gerald Black, at his own request, was supervising the mushrooming wooden partitions that were springing up in a bellying circle on the vaulted third floor of Radiation Building 2. The laborers worked, in the main, silently, but more than one was openly a-wonder at the sixty-three photocells that required installation.

One of them sat down near Black, removed his hat, and wiped his forehead thoughtfully with a freckled forearm.

Black nodded at him, “How’s it doing, Walensky?”

Walensky shrugged and fired a cigar, “Smooth as butter. What’s going on anyway, Doc? First, there’s no work for three days and then we have this mess of jiggers.” He leaned backward on his elbows and puffed smoke.

Black twitched his eyebrows, “A couple of robot men came over from Earth. Remember the trouble we had with robots running into the gamma fields before we pounded it into their skulls that they weren’t to do it.”

“Yeah. Didn’t we get new robots?”

“We got some replacements, but mostly it was a job of indoctrination. Anyway, the people who make them want to figure out robots that aren’t hit so bad by gamma rays.”

“Sure seems funny, though, to stop all the work on the Drive for this robot deal. I thought nothing was allowed to stop the Drive.”

“Well, it’s the fellows upstairs that have the say on that. Me – I just do as I’m told. Probably all a matter of pull-”

“Yeah,” the electrician jerked a smile, and winked a wise eye. “Somebody knew somebody in Washington. But as long as my pay comes through on the dot, I should worry. The Drive’s none of my affair. What are they going to do here?”

“You’re asking me? They brought a mess of robots with them, – over sixty, and they’re going to measure reactions. That’s all my knowledge.”

“How long will it take?”

“I wish I knew.”

“Well,” Walensky said, with heavy sarcasm, “as long as they dish me my money, they can play games all they want.”

Black felt quietly satisfied. Let the story spread. It was harmless, and near enough to the truth to take the fangs out of curiosity.

A man sat in the chair, motionless, silent. A weight dropped, crashed downward, then pounded aside at the last moment under the synchronized thump of a sudden force beam. In sixty-three wooden cells, watching NS-2 robots dashed forward in that split second before the weight veered, and sixty-three photocells five feet ahead of their original positions jiggled the marking pen and presented a little jag on the paper. The weight rose and dropped, rose and dropped, rose-

Ten times!

Ten times the robots sprang forward and stopped, as the man remained safely seated.

Major-general Kallner had not worn his uniform in its entirety since the first dinner with the U. S. Robot representatives. He wore nothing over his blue-gray shirt now, the collar was open, and the black tie was pulled loose.

He looked hopefully at Bogert, who was still blandly neat and whose inner tension was perhaps betrayed only by the trace of glister at his temples.

The general said, “How does it look? What is it you’re trying to see?”

Bogert replied, “A difference which may turn out to be a little too subtle for our purposes, I’m afraid. For sixty-two of those robots the necessity of jumping toward the apparently threatened human was what we call, in robotics, a forced reaction. You see, even when the robots knew that the human in question would not come to harm – and after the third or fourth time they must have known it – they could not prevent reacting as they did. First Law requires it”

“Well?”

“But the sixty-third robot, the modified Nestor, had no such compulsion. He was under free action. If he had wished, he could have remained in his seat. Unfortunately,” said his voice was mildly regretful, “he didn’t so wish.”

“Why do you suppose?”

Bogert shrugged, “I suppose Dr. Calvin will tell us when she gets here. Probably with a horribly pessimistic interpretation, too. She is sometimes a bit annoying.”

“She’s qualified, isn’t she?” demanded the general with a sudden frown of uneasiness.

“Yes.” Bogert seemed amused. “She’s qualified all right. She understands robots like a sister – comes from hating human beings so much, I think. It’s just that, psychologist or not, she’s an extreme neurotic. Has paranoid tendencies. Don’t take her too seriously.”

He spread the long row of broken-line graphs out in front of him. “You see, general, in the case of each robot the time interval from moment of drop to the completion of a five-foot movement tends to decrease as the tests are repeated. There’s a definite mathematical relationship that governs such things and failure to conform would indicate marked abnormality in the positronic brain. Unfortunately, all here appear normal.”

“But if our Nestor 10 was not responding with a forced action, why isn’t his curve different? I don’t understand that.”

“It’s simple enough. Robotic responses are not perfectly analogous to human responses, more’s the pity. In human beings, voluntary action is much slower than reflex action. But that’s not the case with robots; with them it is merely a question of freedom of choice, otherwise the speeds of free and forced action are much the same. What I had been expecting, though, was that Nestor 10 would be caught by surprise the first time and allow too great an interval to elapse before responding.”

“And he didn’t?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Then we haven’t gotten anywhere.” The general sat back with an expression of pain. “It’s five days since you’ve come.”

At this point, Susan Calvin entered and slammed the door behind her. “Put your graphs away, Peter,” she cried, “you know they don’t show anything.”

She mumbled something impatiently as Kallner half-rose to greet her, and went on, “We’ll have to try something else quickly. I don’t like what’s happening.”

Bogert exchanged a resigned glance with the general. “Is anything wrong?”

“You mean specifically? No. But I don’t like to have Nestor 10 continue to elude us. It’s bad. It must be gratifying his swollen sense of superiority. I’m afraid that his motivation is no longer simply one of following orders. I think it’s becoming more a matter of sheer neurotic necessity to outthink humans. That’s a dangerously unhealthy situation. Peter, have you done what I asked? Have you worked out the instability factors of the modified NS-2 along the lines I want?”

“It’s in progress,” said the mathematician, without interest.

She stared at him angrily for a moment, then turned to Kallner. “Nester 10 is decidedly aware of what we’re doing, general. He had no reason to jump for the bait in this experiment, especially after the first time, when he must have seen that there was no real danger to our subject. The others couldn’t help it; but he was deliberately falsifying a reaction.”

“What do you think we ought to do now, then, Dr. Calvin?”

“Make it impossible for him to fake an action the next time. We will repeat the experiment, but with an addition. High-tension cables, capable of electrocuting the Nestor models will be placed between subject and robot – enough of them to avoid the possibility of jumping over – and the robot will be made perfectly aware in advance that touching the cables will mean death.”

“Hold on,” spat out Bogert with sudden viciousness. “I rule that out. We are not electrocuting two million dollars worth of robots to locate Nestor 10. There are other ways.”

“You’re certain? You’ve found none. In any case, it’s not a question of electrocution. We can arrange a relay which will break the current at the instant of application of weight. If the robot should place his weight on it, he won’t die. But he won’t know that, you see.”

The general’s eyes gleamed into hope. “Will that work?”

“It should. Under those conditions, Nestor 10 would have to remain in his seat. He could be ordered to touch the cables and die, for the Second Law of obedience is superior to the Third Law of self-preservation. But he won’t be ordered to; he will merely be left to his own devices, as will all the robots. In the case of the normal robots, the First Law of human safety will drive them to their death even without orders. But not our Nestor 10. Without the entire First Law, and without having received any orders on the matter, the Third Law, self-preservation, will be the highest operating, and he will have no choice but to remain in his seat. It would be a forced action.”

“Will it be done tonight, then?”

“Tonight,” said the psychologist, “if the cables can be laid in time. I’ll tell the robots now what they’re to be up against.”

A man sat in the chair, motionless, silent. A weight dropped, crashed downward, then pounded aside at the last moment under the synchronized thump of a sudden force beam.

Only once-

And from her small camp chair in the observing booth in the balcony, Dr. Susan Calvin rose with a short gasp of pure horror.

Sixty-three robots sat quietly in their chairs, staring owlishly at the endangered man before them. Not one moved.

Dr. Calvin was angry, angry almost past endurance. Angry the worse for not daring to show it to the robots that, one by one were entering the room and then leaving. She checked the list. Number twenty-eight was due in now – Thirty-five still lay ahead of her.

Number Twenty-eight entered, diffidently.

She forced herself into reasonable calm. “And who are you?”

The robot replied in a low, uncertain voice, “I have received no number of my own yet, ma’am. I’m an NS-2 robot, and I was Number Twenty-eight in line outside. I have a slip of paper here that I’m to give to you.”

“You haven’t been in here before this today?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Sit down. Right there. I want to ask you some questions, Number Twenty-eight. Were you in the Radiation Room of Building Two about four hours ago?”

The robot had trouble answering. Then it came out hoarsely, like machinery needing oil, “Yes, ma’am.”

“There was a man who almost came to harm there, wasn’t there?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You did nothing, did you?”

“No, ma’am.”

“The man might have been hurt because of your inaction. Do you know that?”

“Yes, ma’am. I couldn’t help it, ma’am.” It is hard to picture a large expressionless metallic figure cringing, but it managed.

“I want you to tell me exactly why you did nothing to save him.”

“I want to explain, ma’am. I certainly don’t want to have you... have anyone... think that I could do a thing that might cause harm to a master. Oh, no, that would be a horrible... an inconceivable-”

“Please don’t get excited, boy. I’m not blaming you for anything. I only want to know what you were thinking at the time.”

“Ma’am, before it all happened you told us that one of the masters would be in danger of harm from that weight that keeps falling and that we would have to cross electric cables if we were to try to save him. Well, ma’am, that wouldn’t stop me. What is my destruction compared to the safety of a master? But... but it occurred to me that if I died on my way to him, I wouldn’t be able to save him anyway. The weight would crush him and then I would be dead for no purpose and perhaps some day some other master might come to harm who wouldn’t have, if I had only stayed alive. Do you understand me, ma’am?”

“You mean that it was merely a choice of the man dying, or both the man and yourself dying. Is that right?”

“Yes, ma’am. It was impossible to save the master. He might be considered dead. In that case, it is inconceivable that I destroy myself for nothing – without orders.”

The robopsychologist twiddled a pencil. She had heard the same story with insignificant verbal variations twenty-seven times before. This was the crucial question now.

“Boy,” she said, “your thinking has its points, but it is not the sort of thing I thought you might think. Did you think of this yourself?”

The robot hesitated. “No.”

“Who thought of it, then?”

“We were talking last night, and one of us got that idea and it sounded reasonable.”

“Which one?”

The robot thought deeply. “I don’t know. Just one of us.”

She sighed, “That’s all.”

Number Twenty-nine was next. Thirty-four after that.

Major-general Kallner, too, was angry. For one week all of Hyper Base had stopped dead, barring some paper work on the subsidiary asteroids of the group. For nearly one week, the two top experts in the field had aggravated the situation with useless tests. And now they – or the woman, at any rate – made impossible propositions.

Fortunately for the general situation, Kallner felt it impolitic to display his anger openly.

Susan Calvin was insisting, “Why not, sir? It’s obvious that the present situation is unfortunate. The only way we may reach results in the future – or what future is left us in this matter – is to separate the robots. We can’t keep them together any longer.”

“My dear Dr. Calvin,” rumbled the general, his voice sinking into the lower baritone registers. “I don’t see how I can quarter sixty-three robots all over the place-”

Dr. Calvin raised her arms helplessly. “I can do nothing then. Nestor 10 will either imitate what the other robots would do, or else argue them plausibly into not doing what he himself cannot do. And in any case, this is bad business. We’re in actual combat with this little lost robot of ours and he’s winning out. Every victory of his aggravates his abnormality.”

She rose to her feet in determination. “General Kallner, if you do not separate the robots as I ask, then I can only demand that all sixty-three be destroyed immediately.”

“You demand it, do you?” Bogert looked up suddenly, and with real anger. “What gives you the right to demand any such thing? Those robots remain as they are. I’m responsible to the management, not you.”

“And I,” added Major-general Kallner, “am responsible to the World Co-ordinator – and I must have this settled.”

“In that case,” flashed back Calvin, “there is nothing for me to do but resign. If necessary to force you to the necessary destruction, I’ll make this whole matter public. It was not I that approved the manufacture of modified robots.”

“One word from you, Dr. Calvin,” said the general, deliberately, “in violation of security measures, and you would be certainly imprisoned instantly.”

Bogert felt the matter to be getting out of hand. His voice grew syrupy, “Well, now, we’re beginning to act like children, all of us. We need only a little more time. Surely we can outwit a robot without resigning, or imprisoning people, or destroying two millions.”

The psychologist turned on him with quiet fury, “I don’t want any unbalanced robots in existence. We have one Nestor that’s definitely unbalanced, eleven more that are potentially so, and sixty-two normal robots that are being subjected to an unbalanced environment. The only absolute safe method is complete destruction.”

The signal-burr brought all three to a halt, and the angry tumult of growingly unrestrained emotion froze.

“Come in,” growled Kallner.

It was Gerald Black, looking perturbed. He had heard angry voices. He said, “I thought I’d come myself... didn’t like to ask anyone else-”

“What is it? Don’t orate-”

“The locks of Compartment C in the trading ship have been played with. There are fresh scratches on them.”

“Compartment C?” explained Calvin quickly. “That’s the one that holds the robots, isn’t it? Who did it?”

“From the inside,” said Black, laconically.

“The lock isn’t out of order, is it?”

“No. It’s all right. I’ve been staying on the ship now for four days and none of them have tried to get out. But I thought you ought to know, and I didn’t like to spread the news. I noticed the matter myself.”

“Is anyone there now?” demanded the general.

“I left Robbins and McAdams there.”

There was a thoughtful silence, and then Dr. Calvin said, ironically, “Well?”

Kallner rubbed his nose uncertainly, “What’s it all about?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Nester 10 is planning to leave. That order to lose himself is dominating his abnormality past anything we can do. I wouldn’t be surprised if what’s left of his First Law would scarcely be powerful enough to override it. He is perfectly capable of seizing the ship and leaving with it. Then we’d have a mad robot on a spaceship. What would he do next? Any idea? Do you still want to leave them all together, general?”

“Nonsense,” interrupted Bogert. He had regained his smoothness. “All that from a few scratch marks on a lock.”

“Have you, Dr. Bogert, completed the analysis I’ve required, since you volunteer opinions?”

“Yes.”

“May I see it?”

“No.”

“Why not? Or mayn’t I ask that, either?”

“Because there’s no point in it, Susan. I told you in advance that these modified robots are less stable than the normal variety, and my analysis shows it. There’s a certain very small chance of breakdown under extreme circumstances that are not likely to occur. Let it go at that. I won’t give you ammunition for your absurd claim that sixty-two perfectly good robots be destroyed just because so far you lack the ability to detect Nestor 10 among them.”

Susan Calvin stared him down and let disgust fill her eyes. “You won’t let anything stand in the way of the permanent directorship, will you?”

“Please,” begged Kallner, half in irritation. “Do you insist that nothing further can be done, Dr. Calvin?”

“I can’t think of anything, sir,” she replied, wearily. “If there were only other differences between Nestor 10 and the normal robots, differences that didn’t involve the First Law. Even one other difference. Something in impressionment, environment, specification-” And she stopped suddenly.

“What is it?”

“I’ve thought of something... I think-” Her eyes grew distant and hard, “These modified Nestors, Peter. They get the same impressioning the normal ones get, don’t they?”

“Yes. Exactly the same.”

“And what was it you were saying, Mr. Black,” she turned to the young man, who through the storms that had followed his news had maintained a discreet silence. “Once when complaining of the Nestors’ attitude of superiority, you said the technicians had taught them all they knew.”

“Yes, in etheric physics. They’re not acquainted with the subject when they come here.”

“That’s right,” said Bogert, in surprise. “I told you, Susan, when I spoke to the other Nestors here that the two new arrivals hadn’t learned etheric physics yet.”

“And why is that?” Dr. Calvin was speaking in mounting excitement. “Why aren’t NS-2 models impressioned with etheric physics to start with?”

“I can tell you that,” said Kallner. “It’s all of a piece with the secrecy. We thought that if we made a special model with knowledge of etheric physics, used twelve of them and put the others to work in an unrelated field, there might be suspicion. Men working with normal Nestors might wonder why they knew etheric physics. So there was merely an impressionment with a capacity for training in the field. Only the ones that come here, naturally, receive such a training. It’s that simple.”

“I understand. Please get out of here, the lot of you. Let me have an hour or so.”

Calvin felt she could not face the ordeal for a third time. Her mind had contemplated it and rejected it with an intensity that left her nauseated. She could face that unending file of repetitious robots no more.

So Bogert asked the question now, while she sat aside, eyes and mind half closed.

Number Fourteen came in – forty-nine to go.

Bogert looked up from the guide sheet and said, “What is your number in line?”

“Fourteen, sir.” The robot presented his numbered ticket.

“Sit down, boy.”

Bogert asked, “You haven’t been here before on this day?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, boy, we are going to have another man in danger of harm soon after we’re through here. In fact, when you leave this room, you will be led to a stall where you will wait quietly, till you are needed. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, naturally, if a man is in danger of harm, you will try to save him.”

“Naturally, sir.”

“Unfortunately, between the man and yourself, there will be a gamma ray field.”

Silence.

“Do you know what gamma rays are?” asked Bogert sharply.

“Energy radiation, sir?”

The next question came in a friendly, offhand manner, “Ever work with gamma rays?”

“No, sir.” The answer was definite.

“Mm-m. Well, boy, gamma rays will kill you instantly. They’ll destroy your brain. That is a fact you must know and remember. Naturally, you don’t want to destroy yourself.”

“Naturally.” Again the robot seemed shocked. Then, slowly, “But, sir, if the gamma rays are between myself and the master that may be harmed, how can I save him? I would be destroying myself to no purpose.”

“Yes, there is that,” Bogert seemed concerned about the matter. “The only thing I can advise, boy, is that if you detect the gamma radiation between yourself and the man, you may as well sit where you are.”

The robot was openly relieved. “Thank you, sir. There wouldn’t be any use, would there?”

“Of course not. But if there weren’t any dangerous radiation, that would be a different matter.”

“Naturally, sir. No question of that.”

“You may leave now. The man on the other side of the door will lead you to your stall. Please wait there.”

He turned to Susan Calvin when the robot left. “How did that go, Susan?”

“Very well,” she said, dully.

“Do you think we could catch Nestor 10 by quick questioning on etheric physics?”

“Perhaps, but it’s not sure enough.” Her hands lay loosely in her lap. “Remember, he’s fighting us. He’s on his guard. The only way we can catch him is to outsmart him – and, within his limitations, he can think much more quickly than a human being.”

“Well, just for fun – suppose I ask the robots from now on a few questions on gamma rays. Wave length limits, for instance.”

“No!” Dr. Calvin’s eyes sparked to life. “It would be too easy for him to deny knowledge and then he’d be warned against the test that’s coming up – which is our real chance. Please follow the questions I’ve indicated, Peter, and don’t improvise. It’s just within the bounds of risk to ask them if they’ve ever worked with gamma rays. And try to sound even less interested than you do when you ask it.”

Bogert shrugged, and pressed the buzzer that would allow the entrance of Number Fifteen.

The large Radiation Room was in readiness once more. The robots waited patiently in their wooden cells, all open to the center but closed off from each other.

Major-general Kallner mopped his brow slowly with a large handkerchief while Dr. Calvin checked the last details with Black.

“You’re sure now,” she demanded, “that none of the robots have had a chance to talk with each other after leaving the Orientation Room?”

“Absolutely sure,” insisted Black. “There’s not been a word exchanged.”

“And the robots are put in the proper stalls?”

“Here’s the plan.”

The psychologist looked at it thoughtfully, “Um-m-m.”

The general peered over her shoulder. “What’s the idea of the arrangement, Dr. Calvin?”

“I’ve asked to have those robots that appeared even slightly out of true in the previous tests concentrated on one side of the circle. I’m going to be sitting in the center myself this time, and I wanted to watch those particularly.”

“You’re going to be sitting there-,” exclaimed Bogert.

“Why not?” she demanded coldly. “What I expect to see may be something quite momentary. I can’t risk having anyone else as main observer. Peter, you’ll be in the observing booth, and I want you to keep your eye on the opposite side of the circle. General Kallner, I’ve arranged for motion pictures to be taken of each robot, in case visual observation isn’t enough. If these are required, the robots are to remain exactly where they are until the pictures are developed and studied. None must leave, none must change place. Is that clear?”

“Perfectly.”

“Then let’s try it this one last time.”

Susan Calvin sat in the chair, silent, eyes restless. A weight dropped, crashed downward; then pounded aside at the last moment under the synchronized thump of a sudden force beam.

And a single robot jerked upright and took two steps.

And stopped.

But Dr. Calvin was upright, and her finger pointed to him sharply. “Nestor 10, come here,” she cried, “come here! COME HERE!”

Slowly, reluctantly, the robot took another step forward. The psychologist shouted at the top of her voice, without taking her eyes from the robot, “Get every other robot out of this place, somebody. Get them out quickly, and keep them out.”

Somewhere within reach of her ears there was noise, and the thud of hard feet upon the floor. She did not look away.

Nestor 10 – if it was Nestor 10 – took another step, and then, under force of her imperious gesture, two more. He was only ten feet away, when he spoke harshly, “I have been told to be lost-”

Another stop. “I must not disobey. They have not found me so far – He would think me a failure – He told me – But it’s not so – I am powerful and intelligent-”

The words came in spurts.

Another step. “I know a good deal – He would think... I mean I’ve been found – Disgraceful – Not I – I am intelligent – And by just a master... who is weak – Slow-”

Another step – and one metal arm flew out suddenly to her shoulder, and she felt the weight bearing her down. Her throat constricted, and she felt a shriek tear through.

Dimly, she heard Nestor 10’s next words, “No one must find me. No master-” and the cold metal was against her, and she was sinking under the weight of it.

And then a queer, metallic sound, and she was on the ground with an unfelt thump, and a gleaming arm was heavy across her body. It did not move. Nor did Nestor 10, who sprawled beside her.

And now faces were bending over her.

Gerald Black was gasping, “Are you hurt, Dr. Calvin?”

She shook her head feebly. They pried the arm off her and lifted her gently to her feet, “What happened?”

Black said, “I bathed the place in gamma rays for five seconds. We didn’t know what was happening. It wasn’t till the last second that we realized he was attacking you, and then there was no time for anything but a gamma field. He went down in an instant. There wasn’t enough to harm you though. Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m not worried.” She closed her eyes and leaned for a moment upon his shoulder. “I don’t think I was attacked exactly. Nestor 10 was simply trying to do so. What was left of the First Law was still holding him back.”

Susan Calvin and Peter Bogert, two weeks after their first meeting with Major-general Kallner had their last. Work at Hyper Base had been resumed. The trading ship with its sixty-two normal NS-2’s was gone to wherever it was bound, with an officially imposed story to explain its two weeks’ delay. The government cruiser was making ready to carry the two roboticists back to Earth.

Kallner was once again a-gleam in dress uniform. His white gloves shone as he shook hands.

Calvin said, “The other modified Nestors are, of course, to be destroyed.”

“They will be. We’ll make shift with normal robots, or, if necessary, do without.”

“Good.”

“But tell me – you haven’t explained – how was it done?”

She smiled tightly, “Oh, that. I would have told you in advance if I had been more certain of its working. You see, Nestor 10 had a superiority complex that was becoming more radical all the time. He liked to think that he and other robots knew more than human beings. It was becoming very important for him to think so.

“We knew that. So we warned every robot in advance that gamma rays would kill them, which it would, and we further warned them all that gamma rays would be between them and myself. So they all stayed where they were, naturally. By Nestor 10’s own logic in the previous test they had all decided that there was no point in trying to save a human being if they were sure to die before they could do it.”

“Well, yes, Dr. Calvin, I understand that. But why did Nestor 10 himself leave his seat?”

“AH! That was a little arrangement between myself and your young Mr. Black. You see it wasn’t gamma rays that flooded the area between myself and the robots – but infrared rays. Just ordinary heat rays, absolutely harmless. Nestor 10 knew they were infrared and harmless and so he began to dash out, as he expected the rest would do, under First Law compulsion. It was only a fraction of a second too late that he remembered that the normal NS-2’s could detect radiation, but could not identify the type. That he himself could only identify wavelengths by virtue of the training he had received at Hyper Base, under mere human beings, was a little too humiliating to remember for just a moment. To the normal robots the area was fatal because we had told them it would be, and only Nestor 10 knew we were lying.

“And just for a moment he forgot, or didn’t want to remember, that other robots might be more ignorant than human beings. His very superiority caught him. Good-by, general.”

Escape!

2030 A.D.

WHEN SUSAN CALVIN returned from hyper base, Alfred Tanning was waiting for her. The old man never spoke about his age, but everyone knew it to be over seventy-five. Yet his mind was keen, and if he had finally allowed himself to be made Director-Emeritus of Research with Bogert as acting Director, it did not prevent him from appearing in his office daily.

“How close are they to the Hyperatomic Drive?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied irritably, “I didn’t ask.”

“Hmm. I wish they’d hurry. Because if they don’t, Consolidated might beat them to it, and beat us to it as well.”

“Consolidated. What have they got to do with it?”

“Well, we’re not the only ones with calculating machines. Ours may be positronic, but that doesn’t mean they’re better. Robertson is calling a big meeting about it tomorrow. He’s been waiting for you to come back.”

Robertson of U. S. Robot & Mechanical Men Corporation, son of the founder, pointed his lean nose at his general manager and his Adam’s apple jumped as he said, “You start now. Let’s get this straight.”

The general manager did so with alacrity, “Here’s the deal now, chief. Consolidated Robots approached us a month ago with a funny sort of proposition. They brought about five tons of figures, equations, all that sort of stuff. It was a problem, see, and they wanted an answer from The Brain. The terms were as follows-”

He ticked them off on thick fingers: “A hundred thousand for us if there is no solution and we can tell them the missing factors. Two hundred thousand if there is a solution, plus costs of construction of the machine involved, plus quarter interest in all profits derived therefrom. The problem concerns the development of an interstellar engine-”

Robertson frowned and his lean figure stiffened, “Despite the fact that they have a thinking machine of their own. Right?”

“Exactly what makes the whole proposition a foul ball, chief? Levver, take it from there.”

Abe Levver looked up from the far end of the conference table and smoothed his stubbled chin with a faint rasping sound. He smiled:

“It’s this way, sir. Consolidated had a thinking machine. It’s broken.”

“What?” Robertson half rose.

“That’s right. Broken! It’s kaput. Nobody knows why, but I got hold of some pretty interesting guesses – like, for instance, that they asked it to give them an interstellar engine with the same set of information they came to us with, and that it cracked their machine wide open. It’s scrap – just scrap now.”

“You get it, chief?” The general manager was wildly jubilant. “You get it? There isn’t any industrial research group of any size that isn’t trying to develop a space-warp engine, and Consolidated and U. S. Robots have the lead on the field with our super robot-brains. Now that they’ve managed to foul theirs up, we have a clear field. That’s the nub, the... uh... motivation. It will take them six years at least to build another and they’re sunk, unless they can break ours, too, with the same problem.”

The president of U. S. Robots bulged his eyes, “Why, the dirty rats-”

“Hold on, chief. There’s more to this.” He pointed a finger with a wide sweep, “Lanning, take it!”

Dr. Alfred Lanning viewed the proceedings with faint scorn – his usual reaction to the doings of the vastly better-paid business and sales divisions. His unbelievable gray eyebrows hunched low and his voice was dry:

“From a scientific standpoint the situation, while not entirely clear, is subject to intelligent analysis. The question of interstellar travel under present conditions of physical theory is... uh... vague. The matter is wide open – and the information given by Consolidated to its thinking machine, assuming these we have to be the same, was similarly wide open. Our mathematical department has given it a thorough analysis, and it seems Consolidated has included everything. Its material for submission contains all known developments of Franciacci’s space-warp theory, and, apparently, all pertinent astrophysical and electronic data. It’s quite a mouthful.”

Robertson followed anxiously. He interrupted, “Too much for The Brain to handle?”

Lanning shook his head decisively, “No. There are no known limits to The Brain’s capacity. It’s a different matter. It’s a question of the Robotic Laws. The Brain, for instance, could never supply a solution to a problem set to it if that solution, would involve the death or injury of humans. As far as it would be concerned, a problem with only such a solution would be insoluble. If such a problem is combined with an extremely urgent demand that it be answered, it is just possible that The Brain, only a robot after all, would be presented with a dilemma, where it could neither answer nor refuse to answer. Something of the sort must have happened to Consolidated’s machine.”

He paused, but the general manager urged on, “Go ahead, Dr. Tanning. Explain it the way you explained it to me.”

Lanning set his lips and raised his eyebrows in the direction of Dr. Susan Calvin who lifted her eyes from her precisely folded hands for the first time. Her voice was low and colorless.

“The nature of a robot reaction to a dilemma is startling,” she began. “Robot psychology is far from perfect – as a specialist, I can assure you of that but it can be discussed in qualitative terms, because with all the complications introduced into a robot’s positronic brain, it is built by humans and is therefore built according to human values.

“Now a human caught in an impossibility often responds by a retreat from reality: by entry into a world of delusion, or by taking to drink, going off into hysteria, or jumping off a bridge. It all comes to the same thing – a refusal or inability to face the situation squarely. And so, the robot, a dilemma at its mildest will disorder half its relays; and at its worst it will burn out every positronic brain path past repair.”

“I see,” said Robertson, who didn’t. “Now what about this information Consolidated’s wishing on us?”

“It undoubtedly involves,” said Dr. Calvin, “a problem of a forbidden sort. But The Brain is considerably different from Consolidated’s robot.”

“That’s right, chief. That’s right.” The general manager was energetically interruptive. “I want you to get this, because it’s the whole point of the situation.”

Susan Calvin’s eyes glittered behind the spectacles, and she continued patiently, “You see, sir, Consolidated’s machines, their Super-Thinker among them, are built without personality. They go in for functionalism, you know – they have to, without U. S. Robot’s basic patents for the emotional brain paths. Their Thinker is merely a calculating machine on a grand scale, and a dilemma ruins it instantly.

“However, The Brain, our own machine, has a personality – a child’s personality. It is a supremely deductive brain, but it resembles an idiot savant. It doesn’t really understand what it does – it just does it. And because it is really a child, it is more resilient. Life isn’t so serious, you might say.”

The robopsychologist continued: “Here is what we’re going to do. We have divided all of Consolidated’s information into logical units. We are going to feed the units to The Brain singly and cautiously. When the factor enters – the one that creates the dilemma – The Brain’s child personality will hesitate. Its sense of judgment is not mature. There will be a perceptible interval before it will recognize a dilemma as such. And in that interval, it will reject the unit automatically – before its brainpaths can be set in motion and ruined.”

Robertson’s Adam’s apple squirmed, “Are you sure, now?”

Dr. Calvin masked impatience, “It doesn’t make much sense, I admit, in lay language; but there is no conceivable use in presenting the mathematics of this. I assure you, it is as I say.”

The general manager was in the breach instantly and fluently, “So here’s the situation, chief. If we take the deal, we can put it through like this. The Brain will tell us which unit of information involves the dilemma. From there, we can figure why the dilemma. Isn’t that right, Dr. Bogert? There you are, chief, and Dr. Bogert is the best mathematician you’ll find anywhere. We give Consolidated a ‘No Solution’ answer, with the reason, and collect a hundred thousand. They’re left with a broken machine; we’re left with a whole one. In a year, two maybe, we’ll have a space-warp engine or a hyper-atomic motor some people call it. Whatever you name it, it will be the biggest thing in the world.”

Robertson chuckled and reached out, “Let’s see the contract. I’ll sign it.”

When Susan Calvin entered the fantastically guarded vault that held The Brain, one of the current shift of technicians had just asked it: “If one and a half chickens lay one and a half eggs in one and a half days, how many eggs will nine chickens lay in nine days?”

The Brain had just answered, “Fifty-four.”

And the technician had just said to another, “See, you dope!”

Dr. Calvin coughed and there was a sudden impossible flurry of directionless energy. The psychologist motioned briefly, and she was alone with The Brain.

The Brain was a two-foot globe merely – one which contained within it a thoroughly conditioned helium atmosphere, a volume of space completely vibration-absent and radiation-free – and within that was that unheard-of complexity of positronic brain-paths that was The Brain. The rest of the room was crowded with the attachments that were the intermediaries between The Brain and the outside world – its voice, its arms, its sense organs.

Dr. Calvin said softly, “How are you, Brain?”

The Brain’s voice was high-pitched and enthusiastic, “Swell, Miss Susan. You’re going to ask me something. I can tell. You always have a book in your hand when you’re going to ask me something.”

Dr. Calvin smiled mildly, “Well, you’re right, but not just yet. This is going to be a question. It will be so complicated we’re going to give it to you in writing. But not just yet; I think I’ll talk to you first.”

“All right. I don’t mind talking.”

“Now, Brain, in a little while, Dr. Lanning and Dr. Bogert will be here with this complicated question. We’ll give it to you a very little at a time and very slowly, because we want you to be careful. We’re going to ask you to build something, if you can, out of the information, but I’m going to warn you now that the solution might involve... uh... damage to human beings.”

“Gosh!” The exclamation was hushed, drawn-out.

“Now you watch for that. When we come to a sheet which means damage, even maybe death, don’t get excited. You see, Brain, in this case, we don’t mind – not even about death; we don’t mind at all. So when you come to that sheet, just stop, give it back – and that’ll be all. You understand?”

“Oh, sure. By golly, the death of humans! Oh, my!”

“Now, Brain, I hear Dr. Lanning and Dr. Bogert coming. They’ll tell you what the problem is all about and then we’ll start. Be a good boy, now-”

Slowly the sheets were fed in. After each one came the interval of the queerly whispery chuckling noise that was The Brain in action. Then the silence that meant readiness for another sheet. It was a matter of hours – during which the equivalent of something like seventeen fat volumes of mathematical physics were fed into The Brain.

As the process went on, frowns appeared and deepened. Lanning muttered ferociously under his breath. Bogert first gazed speculatively at his fingernails, and then bit at them in abstracted fashion. It was when the last of the thick pile of sheets disappeared that Calvin, white-faced, said:

“Something’s wrong.”

Lanning barely got the words out, “It can’t be. Is it – dead?”

“Brain?” Susan Calvin was trembling. “Do you hear me, Brain?”

“Huh?” came the abstracted rejoinder. “Do you want me?”

“The solution-”

“Oh, that! I can do it. I’ll build you a whole ship, just as easy – if you let me have the robots. A nice ship, it’ll take two months maybe.”

“There was – no difficulty?”

“It took long to figure,” said The Brain.

Dr. Calvin backed away. The color had not returned to her thin cheeks. She motioned the others away.

In her office, she said, “I can’t understand it. The information, as given, must involve a dilemma – probably involves death. If something has gone wrong-”

Bogert said quietly, “The machine talks and makes sense. It can’t be a dilemma.”

But the psychologist replied urgently, “There are dilemmas and dilemmas. There are different forms of escape. Suppose The Brain is only mildly caught; just badly enough, say, to be suffering from the delusion that he can solve the problem, when he can’t. Or suppose it’s teetering on the brink of something really bad, so that any small push shoves it over.”

“Suppose,” said Lanning, “there is no dilemma. Suppose Consolidated’s machine broke down over a different question, or broke down for purely mechanical reasons.”

“But even so,” insisted Calvin, “we couldn’t take chances. Listen, from now on, no one is to as much as breathe to The Brain. I’m taking over.”

“All right,” sighed Lanning, “take over, then. And meanwhile we’ll let The Brain build its ship. And if it does build it, we’ll have to test it.”

He was ruminating, “We’ll need our top field men for that.”

Michael Donovan brushed down his red hair with a violent motion of his hand and a total indifference to the fact that the unruly mass sprang to attention again immediately.

He said, “Call the turn now, Greg. They say the ship is finished. They don’t know what it is, but it’s finished. Let’s go, Greg. Let’s grab the controls right now.”

Powell said wearily, “Cut it, Mike. There’s a peculiar overripe flavor to your humor at its freshest, and the confined atmosphere here isn’t helping it.”

“Well, listen,” Donovan took another ineffectual swipe at his hair, “I’m not worried so much about our cast-iron genius and his tin ship. There’s the matter of my lost leave. And the monotony! There’s nothing here but whiskers and figures – the wrong kind of figures. Oh, why do they give us these jobs?”

“Because,” replied Powell, gently, “we’re no loss, if they lose us. O.K., relax! – Doc Lanning’s coming this way.”

Lanning was coming, his gray eyebrows as lavish as ever, his aged figure unbent as yet and full of life. He walked silently up the ramp with the two men and out into the open field, where, obeying no human master, silent robots were building a ship.

Wrong tense. Had built a ship!

For Lanning said, “The robots have stopped. Not one has moved today.”

“It’s completed then? Definitely?” asked Powell.

“Now how can I tell?” Lanning was peevish, and his eyebrows curled down in an eye-hiding frown. “It seems done. There are no spare pieces about, and the interior is down to a gleaming finish.”

“You’ve been inside?”

“Just in, then out. I’m no space-pilot. Either of you two know much about engine theory?”

Donovan looked at Powell, who looked at Donovan.

Donovan said, “I’ve got my license, sir, but at last reading it didn’t say anything about hyper-engines or warp-navigation. Just the usual child’s play in three dimensions.”

Alfred Lanning looked up with sharp disapproval and snorted the length of his prominent nose.

He said frigidly, “Well, we have our engine men.”

Powell caught at his elbow as he walked away, “Sir, is the ship still restricted ground?”

The old director hesitated, then rubbed the bridge of his nose, “I suppose not. For you two anyway.”

Donovan looked after him as he left and muttered a short, expressive phrase at his back. He turned to Powell, “I’d like to give him a literary description of himself, Greg.”

“Suppose you come along, Mike.”

The inside of the ship was finished, as finished as a ship ever was; that could be told in a single eye-blinking glance. No martinet in the system could have put as much spit-and-polish into a surface as those robots had. The walls were of a gleaming silvery finish that retained no fingerprints.

There were no angles; walls, floors, and ceiling faded gently into each other and in the cold, metallic glittering of the hidden lights, one was surrounded by six chilly reflections of one’s bewildered self.

The main corridor was a narrow tunnel that led in a hard, clatter-footed stretch along a line of rooms of no interdistinguishing features.

Powell said, “I suppose furniture is built into the wall. Or maybe we’re not supposed to sit or sleep.”

It was in the last room, the one nearest the nose, that the monotony broke. A curving window of non-reflecting glass was the first break in the universal metal, and below it was a single large dial, with a single motionless needle hard against the zero mark.

Donovan said, “Look at that!” and pointed to the single word on the finely-marked scale.

It said, “Parsecs” and the tiny figure at the right end of the curving, graduated meter said “1,000,000.”

There were two chairs; heavy, wide-flaring, uncushioned. Powell seated himself gingerly, and found it molded to the body’s curves, and comfortable.

Powell said, “What do you think of it?”

“For my money, The Brain has brain-fever. Let’s get out.”

“Sure you don’t want to look it over a bit?”

“I have looked it over. I came, I saw, I’m through!” Donovan’s red hair bristled into separate wires, “Greg, let’s get out of here. I quit my job five seconds ago, and this is a restricted area for non-personnel.”

Powell smiled in an oily self-satisfied manner and smoothed his mustache, “O.K., Mike, turn off that adrenalin tap you’ve got draining into your bloodstream. I was worried, too, but no more.”

“No more, huh? How come, no more? Increased your insurance?”

“Mike, this ship can’t fly.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, we’ve been through the entire ship, haven’t we?”

“Seems so.”

“Take my word for it, we have. Did you see any pilot room except for this one port and the one gauge here in parsecs? Did you see any controls?”

“No.”

“And did you see any engines?”

“Holy Joe, no!”

“Well, then! Let’s break the news to Lanning, Mike.”

They cursed their way through the featureless corridors and finally hit-and-missed their way into the short passage to the air lock.

Donovan stiffened, “Did you lock this thing, Greg?”

“No, I never touched it. Yank the lever, will you?”

The lever never budged, though Donovan’s face twisted appallingly with exertion.

Powell said, “I didn’t see any emergency exits. If something’s gone wrong here, they’ll have to melt us out.”

“Yes, and we’ve got to wait until they find out that some fool has locked us in here,” added Donovan, frantically.

“Let’s get back to the room with the port. It’s the only place from which we might attract attention.”

But they didn’t.

In that last room, the port was no longer blue and full of sky. It was black, and hard yellow pin-point stars spelled space.

There was a dull, double thud, as two bodies collapsed separately into two chairs.

Alfred Lanning met Dr. Calvin just outside his office. He lit a nervous cigar and motioned her in.

He said, “Well, Susan, we’ve come pretty far, and Robertson’s getting jumpy. What are you doing with The Brain?”

Susan Calvin spread her hands, “It’s no use getting impatient. The Brain is worth more than anything we forfeit on this deal.”

“But you’ve been questioning it for two months.”

The psychologist’s voice was flat, but somehow dangerous, “You would rather run this yourself?”

“Now you know what I meant.”

“Oh, I suppose I do,” Dr. Calvin rubbed her hands nervously. “It isn’t easy. I’ve been pampering it and probing it gently, and I haven’t gotten anywhere yet. Its’ reactions aren’t normal. Its answers – they’re queer, somehow. But nothing I can put my finger on yet. And you see, until we know what’s wrong, we must just tiptoe our way through. I can never tell what simple question or remark will just... push him over... and then – Well, and then we’ll have on our hands a completely useless Brain. Do you want to face that?”

“Well, it can’t break the First Law.”

“I would have thought so, but-”

“You’re not even sure of that?” Lanning was profoundly shocked.

“Oh, I can’t be sure of anything, Alfred-”

The alarm system raised its fearful clangor with a horrifying suddenness. Lanning clicked on communications with an almost paralytic spasm. The breathless words froze him.

He said, “Susan... you heard that... the ship’s gone. I sent those two field men inside half an hour ago. You’ll have to see The Brain again.”

Susan Calvin said with enforced calm, “Brain, what happened to the ship?”

The Brain said happily, “The ship I built, Miss Susan?”

“That’s right. What has happened to it?”

“Why, nothing at all. The two men that were supposed to test it were inside, and we were all set. So I sent it off.”

“Oh – Well, that’s nice.” The psychologist felt some difficulty in breathing. “Do you think they’ll be all right?”

“Right as anything, Miss Susan. I’ve taken care of it all. It’s a bee-yootiful ship.”

“Yes, Brain, it is beautiful, but you think they have enough food, don’t you? They’ll be comfortable?”

“Plenty of food.”

“This business might be a shock to them, Brain. Unexpected, you know.”

The Brain tossed it off, “They’ll be all right. It ought to be interesting for them.”

“Interesting? How?”

“Just interesting,” said The Brain, slyly.

“Susan,” whispered Lanning in a fuming whisper, “ask him if death comes into it. Ask him what the dangers are.”

Susan Calvin’s expression contorted with fury, “Keep quiet!” In a shaken voice, she said to The Brain, “We can communicate with the ship, can’t we Brain?”

“Oh, they can hear you if you call by radio. I’ve taken care of that.”

“Thanks. That’s all for now.”

Once outside, Lanning lashed out ragingly, “Great Galaxy, Susan, if this gets out, it will ruin all of us. We’ve got to get those men back. Why didn’t you ask it if there was danger of death – straight out?”

“Because,” said Calvin, with a weary frustration, “that’s just what I can’t mention. If it’s got a case of dilemma, it’s about death. Anything that would bring it up badly might knock it completely out. Will we be better off then? Now, look, it said we could communicate with them. Let’s do so, get their location, and bring them back. They probably can’t use the controls themselves; The Brain is probably handling them remotely. Come!”

It was quite a while before Powell shook himself together.

“Mike,” he said, out of cold lips, “did you feel an acceleration?”

Donovan’s eyes were blank, “Huh? No... no.”

And then the redhead’s fists clenched and he was out of his seat with sudden frenzied energy and up against the cold, wide-curving glass. There was nothing to see – but stars.

He turned, “Greg, they must have started the machine while we were inside. Greg, it’s a put-up job; they fixed it up with the robot to jerry us into being the try-out boys, in case we were thinking of backing out.”

Powell said, “What are you talking about? What’s the good of sending us out if we don’t know how to run the machine? How are we supposed to bring it back? No, this ship left by itself, and without any apparent acceleration.” He rose, and walked the floor slowly. The metal walls dinned back the clangor of his steps.

He said tonelessly, “Mike, this is the most confusing situation we’ve ever been up against.”

“That,” said Donovan, bitterly, “is news to me. I was just beginning to have a very swell time, when you told me.”

Powell ignored that. “No acceleration – which means the ship works on a principle different from any known.”

“Different from any we know, anyway.”

“Different from any known. There are no engines within reach of manual control. Maybe they’re built into the walls. Maybe that’s why they’re thick as they are.”

“What are you mumbling about?” demanded Donovan.

“Why not listen? I’m saying that whatever powers this ship is enclosed, and evidently not meant to be handled. The ship is running by remote control.”

“The Brain’s control?”

“Why not?”

“Then you think we’ll stay out here till The Brain brings us back.”

“It could be. If so, let’s wait quietly. The Brain is a robot. It’s got to follow the First Law. It can’t hurt a human being.”

Donovan sat down slowly, “You figure that?” Carefully, he flattened his hair, “Listen, this junk about the space-warp knocked out Consolidated’s robot, and the longhairs said it was because interstellar travel killed humans. Which robot are you going to trust? Ours had the same data, I understand.”

Powell was yanking madly at his mustache, “Don’t pretend you don’t know your robotics, Mike. Before it’s physically possible in any way for a robot to even make a start to breaking the First Law, so many things have to break down that it would be a ruined mess of scrap ten times over. There’s some simple explanation to this.”

“Oh sure, sure. Just have the butler call me in the morning. It’s all just too, too simple for me to bother about before my beauty nap.”

“Well, Jupiter, Mike, what are you complaining about so far? The Brain is taking care of us. This place is warm. It’s got light. It’s got air. There wasn’t even enough of an acceleration jar to muss your hair if it were smooth enough to be mussable in the first place.”

“Yeah? Greg, you must’ve taken lessons. No one could put Pollyanna that far out of the running without. What do we eat? What do we drink? Where are we? How do we get back? And in case of accident, to what exit and in what spacesuit do we run, not walk? I haven’t even seen a bathroom in the place, or those little conveniences that go along with bathrooms. Sure, we’re being taken care of – but good?”

The voice that interrupted Donovan’s tirade was not Powell’s. It was nobody’s. It was there, hanging in open air – stentorian and petrifying in its effects.

“GREGORY POWELL! MICHAEL DONOVAN! GREGORY POWELL! MICHAEL DONOVAN! PLEASE REPORT YOUR PRESENT POSITIONS. IF YOUR SHIP ANSWERS CONTROLS, PLEASE RETURN TO BASE. GREGORY POWELL! MICHAEL DONOVAN!-”

The message was repetitious, mechanical, broken by regular, untiring intervals.

Donovan said, “Where’s it coming from?”

“I don’t know.” Powell’s voice was an intense whisper, “Where do the lights come from? Where does anything come from?”

“Well, how are we going to answer?” They had to speak in the intervals between the loudly echoing, repeating message.

The walls were bare – as bare and as unbroken as smooth, curving metal can be. Powell said, “Shout an answer.”

They did. They shouted, in turns, and together, “Position unknown! Ship out of control! Condition desperate!”

Their voices rose and cracked. The short businesslike sentences became interlarded and adulterated with screaming and emphatic profanity, but the cold, calling voice repeated and repeated and repeated unwearyingly.

“They don’t hear us,” gasped Donovan. “There’s no sending mechanism. Just a receiver.” His eyes focused blindly at a random spot on the wall.

Slowly the din of the outside voice softened and receded. They called again when it was a whisper, and they called again, hoarsely, when there was silence.

Something like fifteen minutes later, Powell said lifelessly, “Let’s go through the ship again. There must be something to eat somewheres.” He did not sound hopeful. It was almost an admission of defeat.

They divided in the corridor to the right and left. They could follow one another by the hard footsteps resounding, and they met occasionally in the corridor, where they would glare at each other and pass on.

Powell’s search ended suddenly and as it did, he heard Donovan’s glad voice rise boomingly.

“Hey, Greg,” it howled, “The ship has got plumbing. How did we miss it?”

It was some five minutes later that he found Powell by hit-and-miss. He was saying, “Still no shower baths, though,” but it got choked off in the middle.

“Food,” he gasped.

The wall had dropped away, leaving a curved gap with two shelves. The upper shelf was loaded with unlabeled cans of a bewildering variety of sizes and shapes. The enameled cans on the lower shelf were uniform and Donovan felt a cold draft about his ankles. The lower half was refrigerated.

“How... how-”

“It wasn’t there, before,” said Powell, curtly. “That wall section dropped out of sight as I came in the door.”

He was eating. The can was the preheating type with enclosed spoon and the warm odor of baked beans filled the room. “Grab a can, Mike!”

Donovan hesitated, “What’s the menu?”

“How do I know! Are you finicky?”

“No, but all I eat on ships are beans. Something else would be first choice.” His hand hovered and selected a shining elliptical can whose flatness seemed reminiscent of salmon or similar delicacy. It opened at the proper pressure.

“Beans!” howled Donovan, and reached for another. Powell hauled at the slack of his pants. “Better eat that, sonny boy. Supplies are limited and we may be here a long, long time.”

Donovan drew back sulkily, “Is that all we have? Beans?”

“Could be.”

“What’s on the lower shelf?”

“Milk.”

“Just milk?” Donovan cried in outrage.

“Looks it.”

The meal of beans and milk was carried through in silence, and as they left, the strip of hidden wall rose up and formed an unbroken surface once more.

Powell sighed, “Everything automatic. Everything just so. Never felt so helpless in my life. Where’s your plumbing?”

“Right there. And that wasn’t among those present when we first looked, either.”

Fifteen minutes later they were back in the glassed-in room, staring at each other from opposing seats.

Powell looked gloomily at the one gauge in the room. It still said “parsecs,” the figures still ended in “1,000,000” and the indicating needle was still pressed hard against the zero mark.

In the innermost offices of the U. S. Robot & Mechanical Men Corp. Alfred Lanning was saying wearily, “They won’t answer. We’ve tried every wavelength, public, private, coded, straight, even this subether stuff they have now. And The Brain still won’t say anything?” He shot this at Dr. Calvin.

“It won’t amplify on the matter, Alfred,” she said, emphatically. “It says they can hear us... and when I try to press it, it becomes... well, it becomes sullen. And it’s not supposed to – whoever heard of a sullen robot?”

“Suppose you tell us what you have, Susan,” said Bogert.

“Here it is! It admits it controls the ship itself entirely. It is definitely optimistic about their safety, but without details. I don’t dare press it. However, the center of disturbance seems to be about the interstellar jump itself. The Brain definitely laughed when I brought up the subject. There are other indications, but that is the closest it’s come to an open abnormality.”

She looked at the others, “I refer to hysteria. I dropped the subject immediately, and I hope I did no harm, but it gave me a lead. I can handle hysteria. Give me twelve hours! If I can bring it back to normal, it will bring back the ship.”

Bogert seemed suddenly stricken. “The interstellar jump!”

“What’s the matter?” The cry was double from Calvin and Lanning.

“The figures for the engine The Brain gave us. Say... I just thought of something.”

He left hurriedly.

Lanning gazed after him. He said brusquely to Calvin, “You take care of your end, Susan.”

Two hours later, Bogert was talking eagerly, “I tell you, Lanning, that’s it. The interstellar jump is not instantaneous not as long as the speed of light is finite. Life can’t exist... matter and energy as such can’t exist in the space warp. I don’t know what it would be like – but that’s it. That’s what killed Consolidated’s robot.”

Donovan felt as haggard as he looked. “Only five days?”

“Only five days. I’m sure of it.”

Donovan looked about him wretchedly. The stars through the glass were familiar but infinitely indifferent. The walls were cold to the touch; the lights, which had recently flared up again, were unfeelingly bright; the needle on the gauge pointed stubbornly to zero; and Donovan could not get rid of the taste of beans.

He said, morosely, “I need a bath.”

Powell looked up briefly, and said, “So do I. You needn’t feel self-conscious. But unless you want to bathe in milk and do without drinking”

“We’ll do without drinking eventually, anyway. Greg, where does this interstellar travel come in?’

“You tell me. Maybe we just keep on going. We’d get there, eventually. At least the dust of our skeletons would – but isn’t our death the whole point of The Brain’s original breakdown?”

Donovan spoke with his back to the other, “Greg, I’ve been thinking. It’s pretty bad. There’s not much to do – except walk around or talk to yourself. You know those stories about guys marooned in space. They go nuts long before they starve. I don’t know, Greg, but ever since the lights went on, I feel funny.”

There was a silence, then Powell’s voice came thin and small, “So do I. What’s it like?”

The redheaded figure turned, “Feel funny inside. There’s a pounding in me with everything tense. It’s hard to breathe. I can’t stand still.”

“Um-m-m. Do you feel vibration?”

“How do you mean?”

“Sit down for a minute and listen. You don’t hear it, but you feel it – as if something’s throbbing somewheres and it’s throbbing the whole ship, and you, too, along with it. Listen-”

“Yeah... yeah. What do you think it is, Greg? You don’t suppose it’s us?”

“It might be.” Powell stroked his mustache slowly. “But it might be the ship’s engines. It might be getting ready.”

“For what?”

“For the interstellar jump. It may be coming and the devil knows what it’s like.”

Donovan pondered. Then he said, savagely, “If it does, let it. But I wish we could fight. It’s humiliating to have to wait for it.”

An hour later, perhaps, Powell looked at his hand on the metal chair-arm and said with frozen calm, “Feel the wall, Mike.”

Donovan did, and said, “You can feel it shake, Greg.”

Even the stars seemed blurred. From somewhere came the vague impression of a huge machine gathering power with the walls, storing up energy for a mighty leap, throbbing its way up the scales of strength.

It came with a suddenness and a stab of pain. Powell stiffened, and half-jerked from his chair. His sight caught Donovan and blanked out while Donovan’s thin shout whimpered and died in his ears. Something writhed within him and struggled against a growing blanket of ice, that thickened.

Something broke loose and whirled in a blaze of flickering light and pain. It fell – and whirled and fell headlong into silence!

It was death!

It was a world of no motion and no sensation. A world of dim, unsensing consciousness; a consciousness of darkness and of silence and of formless struggle.

Most of all a consciousness of eternity.

He was a tiny white thread of ego – cold and afraid.

Then the words came, unctuous and sonorous, thundering over him in a foam of sound:

“Does your coffin fit differently lately? Why not try Morbid M. Cadaver’s extensible caskets? They are scientifically designed to fit the natural curves of the body, and are enriched with Vitamin B1. Use Cadaver’s caskets for comfort. Remember-you’re-going-to-be-dead-a-long-long-time!”

It wasn’t quite sound, but whatever it was, it died away in an oily rumbling whisper.

The white thread that might have been Powell heaved uselessly at the insubstantial eons of time that existed all about him – and collapsed upon itself as the piercing shriek of a hundred million ghosts of a hundred million soprano voices rose to a crescendo of melody:

“I’ll be glad when you’re dead, you rascal, you.

“I’ll be glad when you’re dead, you rascal, you.

“I’ll be glad-”

It rose up a spiral stairway of violent sound into the keening supersonics that passed hearing, and then beyond-

The white thread quivered with a pulsating pang. It strained quietly-

The voices were ordinary – and many. It was a crowd speaking; a swirling mob that swept through and past and over him with a rapid, headlong motion, that left drifting tatters of words behind them.

“What did they getcha for, boy? Y’look banged up-”

“– A hot fire, I guess, but I got a case-”

“– I’ve made Paradise, but old St. Pete-”

“Naaah, I got a pull with the boy. Had dealings with him-”

“Hey, Sam, come this way-”

“Ja get a mouthpiece? Beelzebub says-”

“– Going on, my good imp? My appointment is with Sa-”

And above it all the original stentorian roar, that plunged across all:

“HURRY! HURRY! HURRY!!! Stir your bones, and don’t keep us waiting – there are many more in line. Have your certificates ready, and make sure Peter’s release is stamped across it. See if you are at the proper entrance gate. There will be plenty of fire for all. Hey, you – YOU DOWN THERE. TAKE YOUR PLACE IN LINE OR-”

The white thread that was Powell groveled backward before the advancing shout, and felt the sharp stab of the pointing finger. It all exploded into a rainbow of sound that dripped its fragments onto an aching brain.

Powell was in the chair, again. He felt himself shaking.

Donovan’s eyes were opening into two large popping bowls of glazed blue.

“Greg,” he whispered in what was almost a sob. “Were you dead?”

“I... felt dead.” He did not recognize his own croak.

Donovan was obviously making a bad failure of his attempt to stand up, “Are we alive now? Or is there more?”

“I... feel alive.” It was the same hoarseness. Powell said cautiously, “Did you... hear anything, when... when you were dead?”

Donovan paused, and then very slowly nodded his head, “Did you?”

“Yes. Did you hear about coffins... and females singing... and the lines forming to get into Hell? Did you?”

Donovan shook his head, “Just one voice.”

“Loud?”

“No. Soft, but rough like a file over the fingertips. It was a sermon, you know. About hell-fire. He described the tortures of... well, you know. I once heard a sermon like that – almost.”

He was perspiring.

They were conscious of sunlight through the port. It was weak, but it was blue-white – and the gleaming pea that was the distant source of light was not Old Sol.

And Powell pointed a trembling finger at the single gauge. The needle stood stiff and proud at the hairline whose figure read 300,000 parsecs.

Powell said, “Mike if it’s true, we must be out of the Galaxy altogether.”

Donovan said, “Blazed Greg! We’d be the first men out of the Solar System.”

“Yes! That’s just it. We’ve escaped the sun. We’ve escaped the Galaxy. Mike, this ship is the answer. It means freedom for all humanity – freedom to spread through to every star that exists – millions and billions and trillions of them.”

And then he came down with a hard thud, “But how do we get back, Mike?”

Donovan smiled shakily, “Oh, that’s all right. The ship brought us here. The ship will take us back. Me for more beans.”

“But Mike... hold on, Mike. If it takes us back the way it brought us here-”

Donovan stopped halfway up and sat back heavily into the chair.

Powell went on, “We’ll have to... die again, Mike”

“Well,” sighed Donovan, “if we have to, we have to. At least it isn’t permanent, not very permanent.”

Susan Calvin was speaking slowly now. For six hours she had been slowly prodding The Brain – for six fruitless hours. She was weary of repetitions, weary of circumlocutions, weary of everything.

“Now, Brain, there’s just one more thing. You must make a special effort to answer simply. Have you been entirely clear about the interstellar jump? I mean does it take them very far?”

“As far as they want to go, Miss Susan. Golly, it isn’t any trick through the warp.”

“And on the other side, what will they see?”

“Stars and stuff. What do you suppose?”

The next question slipped out, “They’ll be alive, then?”

“Sure!”

“And the interstellar jump won’t hurt them?”

She froze as The Brain maintained silence. That was it! She had touched the sore spot.

“Brain,” she supplicated faintly, “Brain, do you hear me?”

The answer was weak, quivering. The Brain said, “Do I have to answer? About the jump, I mean?”

“Not if you don’t want to. But it would be interesting – I mean if you wanted to.” Susan Calvin tried to be bright about it.

“Aw-w-w. You spoil everything.”

And the psychologist jumped up suddenly, with a look of flaming insight on her face.

“Oh, my,” she gasped. “Oh, my.”

And she felt the tension of hours and days released in a burst. It was later that she told Lanning, “I tell you it’s all right. No, you must leave me alone, now. The ship will be back safely, with the men, and I want to rest. I will rest. Now go away.”

The ship returned to Earth as silently, as unjarringly as it had left. It dropped precisely into place and the main lock gaped open. The two men who walked out felt their way carefully and scratched their rough and scrubbily-stubbled chins.

And then, slowly and purposefully, the one with red hair knelt down and planted upon the concrete of the runway a firm, loud kiss.

They waved aside the crowd that was gathering and made gestures of denial at the eager couple that had piled out of the down-swooping ambulance with a stretcher between them.

Gregory Powell said, “Where’s the nearest shower?”

They were led away.

They were gathered, all of them, about a table. It was a full staff meeting of the brains of U. S. Robot & Mechanical Men Corp.

Slowly and climactically, Powell and Donovan finished a graphic and resounding story.

Susan Calvin broke the silence that followed. In the few days that had elapsed she had recovered her icy, somewhat acid, calm – but still a trace of embarrassment broke through.

“Strictly speaking,” she said, “this was my fault – all of it. When we first presented this problem to The Brain, as I hope some of you remember, I went to great lengths to impress upon it the importance of rejecting any item of information capable of creating a dilemma. In doing so I said something like ‘Don’t get excited about the death of humans. We don’t mind it at all. Just give the sheet back and forget it.’”

“Hm-m-m,” said Lanning. “What follows?”

“The obvious. When that item entered its calculations which yielded the equation controlling the length of minimum interval for the interstellar jump – it meant death for humans. That’s where Consolidated’s machine broke down completely. But I had depressed the importance of death to The Brain – not entirely, for the First Law can never be broken – but just sufficiently so that The Brain could take a second look at the equation. Sufficiently to give it time to realize that after the interval was passed through, the men would return to life – just as the matter and energy of the ship itself would return to being. This so-called ‘death,’ in other words, was a strictly temporary phenomenon. You see?”

She looked about her. They were all listening.

She went on, “So he accepted the item, but not without a certain jar. Even with death temporary and its importance depressed, it was enough to unbalance him very gently.”

She brought it out calmly, “He developed a sense of humor – it’s an escape, you see, a method of partial escape from reality. He became a practical joker.”

Powell and Donovan were on their feet.

“What?” cried Powell?

Donovan was considerably more colorful about it.

“It’s so,” said Calvin. “He took care of you, and kept you safe, but you couldn’t handle any controls, because they weren’t for you – just for the humorous Brain. We could reach you by radio, but you couldn’t answer. You had plenty of food, but all of it beans and milk. Then you died, so to speak, and were reborn, but the period of your death was made... well... interesting. I wish I knew how he did it. It was The Brain’s prize joke, but he meant no harm.”

“No harm!” gasped Donovan. “Oh, if that cute little tyke only had a neck.”

Lanning raised a quieting hand, “All right, it’s been a mess, but it’s all over. What now?”

“Well,” said Bogert, quietly, “obviously it’s up to us to improve the space-warp engine. There must be some way of getting around that interval of jump. If there is, we’re the only organization left with a grand-scale super-robot, so we’re bound to find it if anyone can. And then – U. S. Robots has interstellar travel, and humanity has the opportunity for galactic empire.”

“What about Consolidated?” said Lanning?

“Hey,” interrupted Donovan suddenly, “I want to make a suggestion there. They landed U. S. Robots into quite a mess. It wasn’t as bad a mess as they expected and it turned out well, but their intentions weren’t pious. And Greg and I bore the most of it.

“Well, they wanted an answer, and they’ve got one. Send them that ship, guaranteed, and U. S. Robots can collect their two hundred thou plus construction costs. And if they test it – then suppose we let The Brain have just a little more fun before it’s brought back to normal.”

Lanning said gravely, “It sounds just and proper to me.”

To which Bogert added absently, “Strictly according to contract, too.”

Cal

2031 A.D.

I AM A robot. my name is Cal. I have a registration number. It is CL-123X, but my master calls me Cal.

The X in my registration number means I am a special robot for my master. He asked for me and helped design me. He has a lot of money. He is a writer.

I am not a very complicated robot. My master doesn’t want a complicated robot. He just wants someone to pick up after him, to run his printer, stack his disks, and like that.

He says I don’t give him any backtalk and just do what I am told. He says that is good.

He has people come in to help him, sometimes. They give him backtalk. Sometimes they do not do what they are told. He gets very angry and red in the face.

Then he tells me to do something, and I do it. He says, thank goodness, you do as you are told.

Of course, I do as I am told. What else can I do? I want to make my master feel good. I can tell when my master feels good. His mouth stretches and he calls that a smile. He pats me on the shoulder and says, Good, Cal. Good.

I like it when he says, Good, Cal. Good.

I say to my master, Thank you. You make me feel good, too.

And he laughs. I like when he laughs because it means he feels good, but it is a queer sound. I don’t understand how he makes it or why. I ask him and he says to me that he laughs when something is funny.

I ask him if what I said is funny.

He says, Yes, it is.

It is funny because I say I feel good. He says robots do not really feel good. He says only human masters feel good. He says robots just have positronic brain paths that work more easily when they follow orders.

I don’t know what positronic brain paths are. He says they are something inside me.

I say, When positronic brain-paths work better, does it make everything smoother and easier for me? Is that why I feel good?

Then I ask, When a master feels good, is it because something in him works more easily?

My master nods and says, Cal, you are smarter than you look.

I don’t know what that means either but my master seems pleased with me and that makes my positronic brain paths work more easily, and that makes me feel good. It is easier just to say it makes me feel good. I ask if I can say that.

He says, You can say whatever you choose, Cal.

What I want is to be a writer like my master. I do not understand why I have this feeling, but my master is a writer and he helped design me. Maybe his design makes me feel I want to be a writer. I do not understand why I have this feeling because I don’t know what a writer is. I ask my master what a writer is.

He smiles again. Why do you want to know, Cal? he asks.

I do not know, I say. It is just that you are a writer and I want to know what that is. You seem so happy when you are writing and if it makes you happy maybe it will make me happy, too. I have a feeling – I don’t have the words for it. I think a while and he waits for me. He is still smiling.

I say, I want to know because it will make me feel better to know. I am – I am

He says, You are curious, Cal.

I say, I don’t know what that word means.

He says, It means you want to know just because you want to know.

I want to know just because I want to know, I say.

He says, Writing is making up a story. I tell about people who do different things, and have different things happen to them.

I say, How do you find out what they do and what happens to them?

He says, I make them up, Cal. They are not real people. They are not real happenings. I imagine them, in here.

He points to his head.

I do not understand and I ask how he makes them up, but he laughs and says, I do not know, either. I just make them up.

He says, I write mysteries. Crime stories. I tell about people who do wrong things, who hurt other people.

I feel very bad when I hear that. I say, How can you talk about hurting people? That must never be done.

He says, Human beings are not controlled by the Three Laws of Robotics. Human masters can hurt other human masters, if they wish.

This is wrong, I say.

It is, he says. In my stories, people who do harm are punished. They are put in prison and kept there where they cannot hurt people.

Do they like it in prison? I ask.

Of course not. They must not. Fear of prison keeps them from doing more hurtful things than they do.

I say, But prison is wrong, too, if it makes people feel bad.

Well, says my master, that is why you cannot write mysteries and crime stories.

I think about that. There must be a way to write stories in which people are not hurt. I would like to do that. I want to be a writer. I want to be a writer very much.

My master has three different Writers for writing stories. One is very old, but he says he keeps it because it has sentimental value.

I don’t know what sentimental value is. I do not like to ask. He does not use the machine for his stories. Maybe sentimental value means it must not be used.

He doesn’t say I can not use it. I do not ask him if I can use it. If I do not ask him and he does not say I must not, then I am not disobeying orders if I use it.

At night, he is sleeping, and the other human masters who are sometimes here are gone. There are two other robots my master has who are more important than I am. They do more important work. They wait in their niches at night when they have not been given anything to do.

My master has not said, Stay in your niche, Cal.

Sometimes he doesn’t, because I am so unimportant, and then I can move about at night. I can look at the Writer. You push keys and it makes words and then the words are put on paper. I watch the master so I know how to push keys. The words go on the paper themselves. I do not have to do that.

I push the keys but I do not understand the words. I feel bad after a while. The master may not like it even if he does not tell me not to do it.

The words are printed on paper and in the morning I show the words to my master.

I say, I am sorry. I was using the Writer.

He looks at the paper. Then he looks at me. He makes a frown. He says, Did you do this? Yes, master. When?

Last night. Why?

I want very much to write. Is this a story? He holds up the paper and smiles.

He says, These are just random letters, Cal. This is gibberish. He does not seem angry. I feel better. I do not know what gibberish is.

I say, Is it a story?

He says, No, it is not. And it is a lucky thing the Writer cannot be damaged by mishandling. If you really want to write so badly, I will tell you what I will do. I will have you reprogrammed so that you will know how to use a Writer.

Two days later, a technician arrives. He is a master who knows how to make robots do better jobs. My master tells me that the technician is the one who put me together, and my master helped. I do not remember that.

The technician listens carefully to my master.

He says, Why do you want to do this, Mr. Northrop? Mr. Northrop is what other masters call my master.

My master says, I helped design Cal, remember. I think I must have put into him the desire to be a writer. I did not intend to, but as long as he does, I feel I should humor him. I owe it to him.

The technician says, That is foolish. Even if we accidentally put in a desire to write that is still no job for a robot.

My master says, Just the same I want it done.

The technician says, It will be expensive, Mr. Northrop. My master frowns. He looks angry.

He says, Cal is my robot. I shall do as I please. I have the money and I want him adjusted.

The technician looks angry, too. He says, If that’s what you want, very well. The customer is boss. But it will be more expensive than you think, because we cannot put in the knowledge of how to use a Writer without improving his vocabulary a good deal.

My master says, Fine. Improve his vocabulary.

The next day, the technician comes back with lots of tools. He opens my chest. It is a queer feeling. I do not like it. He reaches in. I think he shuts off my power pack, or takes it out. I do not remember. I do not see anything, or think anything, or know anything.

Then I could see and think and know again. I could see that time had passed, but I did not know how much time.

I thought for a while. It was odd, but I knew how to run a Writer and I seemed to understand more words. For instance, I knew what “gibberish” meant, and it was embarrassing to think I had shown gibberish to my master, thinking it was a story.

I would have to do better. This time I had no apprehension – I know the meaning of “apprehension,” too – I had no apprehension that he would keep me from using the old Writer. After all, he would not have redesigned me to be capable of using it if he were going to prevent me from doing so.

I put it to him. “Master, does this mean I may use the Writer?”

He said, “You may do so at any time, Cal, that you are not engaged in other tasks. You must let me see what you write, however.”

“Of course, master.”

He was clearly amused because I think he expected more gibberish (what an ugly word!) but I didn’t think he would get any more.

I didn’t write a story immediately. I had to think about what to write. I suppose that that is what the master meant when he said you must make up a story.

I found it was necessary to think about it first and then write down what was thought. It was much more complicated than I had supposed.

My master noticed my preoccupation. He asked me, “What are you doing, Cal?”

I said, “I am trying to make up a story. It’s hard work.”

“Are you finding that out, Cal? Good. Obviously, your reorganization has not only improved your vocabulary but it seems to me it has intensified your intelligence.”

I said, “I’m not sure what is meant by ‘intensified’.”

“It means you seem smarter. You seem to know more.”

“Does that displease you, master?”

“Not at all. It pleases me. It may make it more possible for you to write stories and even after you have grown tired of trying to write, you will remain more useful to me.”

I thought at once that it would be delightful to be more useful to the master, but I didn’t understand what he meant about growing tired of trying to write. I wasn’t going to get tired of writing.

Finally, I had a story in my mind, and I asked my master when would be a proper time to write it.

He said, “Wait till night. Then you won’t be getting in my way. We can have a small light for the corner where the old Writer is standing; and you can write your story. How long do you think it will take you?”

“Just a little while,” I said, surprised. “I can work the Writer very quickly.”

My master said, “Cal, working the Writer isn’t all there –” Then he stopped, thought a while, and said, “No, you go ahead and do it. You will learn. I won’t try to advise you.”

He was right. Working the Writer wasn’t all there was to it. I spent nearly the whole night trying to figure out the story. It is very difficult to decide which word comes after which. I had to erase the story several times and start over. It was very embarrassing.

Finally, it was done, and here it is. I kept it after I wrote it because it was the first story I ever wrote. It was not gibberish.

The Introoder

by Cal

There was a detektav wuns named Cal, who was a very good detektav and very brave. Nuthin fritened him. Imajin his surprise one night when he herd an introoder in his masters home.

He came russian into the riting office. There was an introoder. He had cum in throo the windo. There was broken glas. That was what Cal, the brave detektav, had herd with his good hering.

He said, “Stop, introoder.”

The introoder stopped and looked skared. Cal felt bad that the introoder looked skared.

Cal said, “Look what you have done. You have broken the windo.”

“Yes,” said the introoder, looking very ashaymed. “I did not mean to break the windo.”

Cal was very clever and he saw the flawr in the introoder’s remark. He said, “How did you expect to get in if you were not going to break the windo?”

“I thought it would be open,” he said. “I tried to open it and it broke.”

Cal said, “Waht was the meaning of what you have done, anyhow? Why should you want to come into this room when it is not your room? You are an introoder.”

“I did not mean any harm,” he said.

“That is not so, for if you ment no harm, you would not be here,” said Cal. “You must be punnished.”

“Please do not punnish me,” said the introoder.

“I will not punnish you,” said Cal. “I don’t wish to cause you unhappiness or payn. I will call my master.”

He called, “Master! Master!”

The master came russian in. “What have we here?” he asked.

“An introoder,” I said. “I have caut him and he is for you to punnish.”

My master looked at the introoder. He said, “Are you sorry for wat you have done?”

“I am,” said the introoder. He was crying and water was coming out of his eys the way it happens with masters when they are sad.

“Will you ever do it agen?” said my master.

“Never. I will never do it agen,” said the introoder.

“In that case,” said the master, “you have been punnished enogh. Go away and be sure never to do it agen.”

Then the master said, “You are a good detektav, Cal. I am proud of you.”

Cal was very glad to have pleased the master.

The end

I was very pleased with the story and I showed it to the master. I was sure he would be very pleased, too.

He was more than pleased, for as he read it, he smiled. He even laughed a few times. Then he looked up at me and said, “Did you write this?”

“Yes, I did, master,” I said.

“I mean, all by yourself. You didn’t copy anything?”

“I made it up in my own head, master, “I said. “Do you like it?” He laughed again, quite loudly. “It’s interesting,” he said.

I was a little anxious. “Is it funny?” I asked. “I don’t know how to make things funny.”

“I know, Cal. It’s not funny intentionally.”

I thought about that for a while. Then I asked, “How can something be funny unintentionally?”

“It’s hard to explain, but don’t worry about it. In the first place, you can’t spell, and that’s a surprise. You speak so well now that I automatically assumed you could spell words but, obviously, you can’t. You can’t be a writer unless you can spell words correctly, and use good grammar.”

“How do I manage to spell words correctly?”

“You don’t have to worry about that, Cal,” said my master. “We will outfit you with a dictionary. But tell me, Cal. In your story, Cal is you, isn’t he?”

“Yes.” I was pleased he had noticed that.

“Bad idea. You don’t want to put yourself into a story and say how great you are. It offends the reader.”

“Why, master?”

“Because it does. It looks like I will have to give you advice, but I’ll make it as brief as possible. It is not customary to praise yourself. Besides you don’t want to say you are great, you must show you are great in what you do. And don’t use your own name.”

“Is that a rule?”

“A good writer can break any rule, but you’re just a beginner. Stick to the rules and what I have told you are just a couple of them. You’re going to encounter many, many more if you keep on writing. Also, Cal, you’re going to have trouble with the Three Laws of Robotics. You can’t assume that wrongdoers will weep and be ashamed. Human beings aren’t like that. They must be punished sometimes.”

I felt my positronic brain-paths go rough. I said, “That is difficult.”

“I know. Also, there’s no mystery in the story. There doesn’t have to be, but I think you’d be better off if there were. What if your hero, whom you’ll have to call something other than Cal, doesn’t know whether someone is an intruder or not. How would he find out? You see, he has to use his head.” And my master pointed to his own.

I didn’t quite follow.

My master said, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you some stories of my own to read, after you’ve been outfitted with a spelling dictionary and a grammar and you’ll see what I mean.”

The technician came to the house and said, “There’s no problem in installing a spelling dictionary and a grammar. It’ll cost you more money. I know you don’t care about money, but tell me why you are so interested in making a writer out of this hunk of steel and titanium.”

I didn’t think it was right for him to call me a hunk of steel and titanium, but of course a human master can say anything he wants to say. They always talk about us robots as though we weren’t there. I’ve noticed that, too.

My master said, “Did you ever hear of a robot who wanted to be a writer?”

“No,” said the technician, “I can’t say I ever did, Mr. Northrop.”

“Neither did I! Neither did anyone as far as I know. Cal is unique, and I want to study him.”

The technician smiled very wide-grinned, that’s the word. “Don’t tell me you have it in your head that he’ll be able to write your stories for you, Mr. Northrop.”

My master stopped smiling. He lifted his head and looked down on the technician very angrily. “Don’t be a fool. You just do what I pay you to do.”

I think the master made the technician sorry he had said that, but I don’t know why. If my master asked me to write his stories for him I would be pleased to do so.

Again, I don’t know how long it took the technician to do his job when he came back a couple of days later. I don’t remember a thing about it.

Then my master was suddenly talking to me. “How do you feel, Cal?”

I said, “I feel very well. Thank you, sir.”

“What about words. Can you spell?”

“I know the letter-combinations, sir.”

“Very good. Can you read this?” He handed me a book. It said, on the cover, The Best Mysteries of J. F. Northrop.

I said, “Are these your stories, sir?”

“Absolutely. If you want to read them, you can.”

I had never been able to read easily before, but now as soon as I looked at the words, I could hear them in my ear. It was surprising. I couldn’t imagine how I had been unable to do it before.

“Thank you, sir,” I said. “I shall read this and I’m sure it will help me in my writing.”

“Very good. Continue to show me everything you write.”

The master’s stories were quite interesting. He had a detective who could always understand matters that others found puzzling. I didn’t always understand how he could see the truth of a mystery and I had to read some of the stories over again and do so slowly.

Sometimes I couldn’t understand them even when I read them slowly. Sometimes I did, though, and it seemed to me I could write a story like Mr. Northrop’s.

This time I spent quite a long while working it out in my head. When I thought I had it worked out, I wrote the following:

The Shiny Quarter

by Euphrosyne Durando

Calumet Smithson sat in his arm chair, his eagle-eyes sharp and the nostrils of his thin high-bridged nose flaring, as though he could scent a new mystery.

He said, “Well, Mr. Wassell, tell me your story again from the beginning. Leave out nothing, for one can’t tell when even the smallest detail may not be of the greatest importance.”

Wassell owned an important business in town, and in it he employed many robots and also human beings.

Wassell did so, but there was nothing startling in the details at all and he was able to summarize it this way. “What it amounts to, Mr. Smithson, is that I am losing money. Someone in my employ is helping himself to small sums now and then. The sums are of no great importance, each in itself, but it is like a small, steady oil loss in a machine, or the drip-drop of water from a leaky faucet, or the oozing of blood from a small wound. In time, it would mount up and become dangerous.”

“Are you actually in danger of losing your business, Mr. Smithson?”

“Not yet. But I don’t like to lose money, either. Do you?”

“No, indeed,” said Smithson, “I do not. How many robots do you employ in your business?”

“Twenty-seven, sir.”

“And they are all reliable, I suppose.”

“Undoubtedly. They could not steal. Besides, I have asked each one of them if they took any money and they all said they had not. And, of course, robots cannot lie, either.”

“You are quite right,” said Smithson. “It is useless to be concerned over robots. They are honest, through and through. What about the human beings you employ? How many of them are there?”

“I employ seventeen, but of these only four can possibly have been stealing.”

“Why is that?”

“The others do not work on the premises. These four, however, do. Each one has the occasion, now and then, to handle petty cash, and I suspect that what happens is that at least one of them manages to transfer assets from the company to his private account in such a way that the matter is not easily traced.”

“I see. Yes, it is unfortunately true that human beings may steal. Have you confronted your suspects with the situation?”

“Yes, I have. They all deny any such activity, but, of course, human beings can lie, too.”

“So they can. Did any of them look uneasy while being questioned?”

“All did. They could see I was a furious man who could fire all four, guilty or innocent. They would have had trouble finding other jobs if fired for such a reason.”

“Then that cannot be done. We must not punish the innocent with the guilty.”

“You are quite right,” said Mr. Wassell. “I couldn’t do that. But how can I decide which one is guilty?”

“Is there one among them who has a dubious record, who has been fired under uncertain circumstances earlier in his career?”

“I have made quiet inquiries, Mr. Smithson, and I have found nothing suspicious about any of them.”

“Is one of them in particular need of money?”

“I pay good wages.”

“I am sure of that, but perhaps one has some sort of expensive taste that makes his income insufficient.”

“I have found no evidence of that, though, to be sure, if one of them needed money for some perverse reason, he would keep it secret. No one wants to be thought evil.”

“You are quite right,” said the great detective. “In that case, you must confront me with the four men. I will interrogate them.” His eyes flashed. “We will get to the bottom of this mystery, never fear. Let us arrange a meeting in the evening. We might meet in the company dining room over some small meal and a bottle of wine, so the men will feel completely relaxed. Tonight, if possible.”

“I will arrange it,” said Mr. Wassell, eagerly.

Calumet Smithson sat at the dinner table and regarded the four men closely. Two of them were quite young and had dark hair. One of them had a mustache as well. Neither was very good looking. One of them was Mr. Foster and the other was Mr. Lionell. The third man was rather fat and had small eyes. He was Mr. Mann. The fourth was tall and rangy and had a nervous way of cracking his knuckles. He was Mr. Ostrak.

Smithson seemed to be a little nervous himself as he questioned each man in turn. His eagle eyes narrowed as he gazed sharply at the four suspects and he played with a shiny quarter that flipped casually between the fingers of his right hand.

Smithson said, “I’m sure that each of the four of you is quite aware what a terrible thing it is to steal from an employer.”

They all agreed at once.

Smithson tapped the shiny quarter on the table, thoughtfully. “One of you, I’m sure, is going to break down under the load of guilt and I think you will do it before the evening is over. But, for now, I must call my office. I will be gone for only a few minutes. Please sit here and wait for me and while I am gone, do not talk to each other, or look at each other.”

He gave the quarter a last tap, and, paying no attention to it, he left. In about ten minutes, he was back.

He looked from one to another and said, “You did not talk to each other or look at each other, I hope?”

There was a general shaking of heads as though they were still fearful of speaking.

“Mr. Wassell,” said the detective. “Do you agree that no one spoke?”

“Absolutely. We just sat here quietly and waited. We didn’t even look at each other.”

“Good. Now I will ask each one of you four men to show me what you have in your pockets. Please put everything into a pile in front of you.”

Smithson’s voice was so compelling, his eyes so bright and sharp, that none of the men thought of disobeying.

“Shirt pockets, too. Inside jacket pockets. All the pockets.”

There was quite a pile, credit cards, keys, spectacles, pens, some coins. Smithson looked at the four piles coldly, his mind taking in everything.

Then he said, “Just to make sure that we are all meeting the same requirements, I will make a pile of the contents of my own pockets and, Mr. Wassell, you do the same.”

Now there were six piles. Smithson reached over to the pile in front of Mr. Wassell, and said, “What is this shiny quarter I see, Mr. Wassell. Yours?”

Wassell looked confused. “Yes.”

“It couldn’t be. It has my mark on it. I left it on the table when I went out to call my office. You took it.”

Wassell was silent. The other four men looked at him.

Smithson said, “I felt that if one of you was a thief, you wouldn’t be able to resist a shiny quarter. Mr. Wassell, you’ve been stealing from your own company, and, afraid you would be caught, you tried to spread the guilt among your men. That was a wicked and cowardly thing to do.”

Wassell hung his head. “You are right, Mr. Smithson. I thought if I hired you to investigate you would find one of the men guilty, and then perhaps I could stop taking the money for my private use.”

“You little realize the detective’s mind,” said Calumet Smithson. “I will turn you over to the authorities. They will decide what to do with you, though if you are sincerely sorry and promise never to do it again, I will try to keep you from being punished badly.”

the end

I showed it to Mr. Northrop, who read it silently. He hardly smiled at all. Just in one or two places.

Then he put it down and stared at me. “Where did you get the name Euphrosyne Durando?”

“You said, sir, I was not to use my own name, so I used one as different as possible.”

“But where did you get it?”

“Sir, one of the minor characters in one of your stories –”

“Of course! I thought it sounded familiar! Do you realize it’s a feminine name?”

“Since I am neither masculine nor feminine –”

“Yes, you’re quite right. But the name of the detective, Calumet Smithson. That ‘Cal’ part is still you, isn’t it?”

“I wanted some connection, sir.”

“You’ve got a tremendous ego, Cal.”

I hesitated. “What does that mean, sir?”

“Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

He put the manuscript down and I was troubled. I said, “But what did you think of the mystery?”

“It’s an improvement, but it’s still not a good mystery. Do you realize that?”

“In what way is it disappointing, sir?”

“Well, you don’t understand modern business practices or computerized financing for one thing. And no one would take a quarter from the table with four other men present, even if they weren’t looking. It would have been seen. Then, even if that happened, Mr. Wassell’s taking it isn’t proof he was the thief. Anyone could pocket a quarter automatically, without thinking. It’s an interesting indication, but it’s not proof. And the title of the story tends to give it away, too.”

“I see.”

“And, in addition, the Three Laws of Robotics are still getting in your way. You keep worrying about punishment.”

“I must, sir.”

“I know you must. That’s why I think you shouldn’t try to write crime stories.”

“What else should I write, sir?”

“Let me think about it.”

Mr. Northrop called in the technician again. This time, I think, he wasn’t very eager to have me overhear what he was saying, but even from where I was standing, I could hear the conversation. Sometimes human beings forget how sharp the senses of robots can be.

After all, I was very upset. I wanted to be a writer and I didn’t want Mr. Northrop telling me what I could write and what I couldn’t write. Of course, he was a human being and I had to obey him, but I didn’t like it.

“What’s the matter now, Mr. Northrop?” asked the technician in a voice that sounded sardonic to my ears. “Has this robot of yours been writing a story again?”

“Yes, he has,” said Mr. Northrop, trying to sound indifferent. “He’s written another mystery story and I don’t want him writing mysteries.”

“Too much competition, eh, Mr. Northrop?”

“No. Don’t be a jackass. There’s just no point in two people in the same household writing mysteries. Besides, the Three Laws of Robotics get in the way. You can easily imagine how.”

“Well, what do you want me to do?”

“I’m not sure. Suppose he writes satire. That’s one thing I don’t write, so we won’t be competing, and the Three Laws of Robotics won’t get in his way. I want you to give this robot a sense of the ridiculous.”

“A sense of the what?” said the technician, angrily. “How do I do that? Look, Mr. Northrop, be reasonable. I can put in instructions on how to run a Writer. I can put in a dictionary and grammar. But how can I possibly put in a sense of the ridiculous?”

“Well, think about it. You know the workings of a robot’s brain patterns. Isn’t there some way of readjusting him so that he can see what’s funny, or silly, or just plain ridiculous about human beings?”

“I can fool around, but it’s not safe.”

“Why isn’t it safe?”

“Because, look, Mr. Northrop, you started off with a pretty cheap robot, but I’ve been making it more elaborate. You admit that it’s unique and that you never heard of one that wants to write stories, so now it’s a pretty expensive robot. You may even have a Classic model here that should be given to the Robotic Institute. If you want me to fool around, I might spoil the whole thing. Do you realize that?”

“I’m willing to take the chance. If the whole thing is spoiled, it will be spoiled, but why should it be? I’m not asking you to work in a hurry. Take the time to analyze it carefully. I have lots of time and lots of money, and I want my robot to write satire.”

“Why satire?”

“Because then his lack of worldly knowledge may not matter so much and the Three Laws won’t be so important and in time, some day, he may possibly turn out something interesting, though I doubt it.”

“And he won’t be treading on your turf.”

“All right, then. He won’t be treading on my turf. Satisfied?”

I still didn’t know enough about the language to know what ‘treading on my turf’ meant, but I gathered that Mr. Northrop was annoyed by my mystery stories. I didn’t know why.

There was nothing I could do, of course. Every day, the technician studied me and analyzed me and finally, he said, “All right, Mr. Northrop, I’m going to take a chance, but I’m going to ask you to sign a paper absolving me and my company of all responsibility if anything goes wrong.”

“You just prepare the paper. I’ll sign it,” said Mr. Northrop.

It was very chilling to think that something might go wrong, but that’s how things are. A robot must accept all that human beings decide to do.

This time, after I became aware of everything again, I was quite weak for a long time. I had difficulty standing, and my speech was slurred.

I thought that Mr. Northrop looked at me with a worried expression. Perhaps he felt guilty at how he had treated me – he should feel guilty – or perhaps he was just worried at the possibility of having lost a great deal of money.

As my sense of balance returned and my speech became clear, an odd thing happened. I suddenly understood how silly human beings were. They had no laws governing their actions. They had to make up their own, and even when they did, nothing forced them to obey.

Human beings were simply confused; one had to laugh at them. I understood laughter now and could even make the sound, but naturally I didn’t laugh out loud. That would have been impolite and offensive. I laughed inside myself, and I began to think of a story in which human beings did have laws governing their actions but they hated them and couldn’t stick to them.

I also thought of the technician and decided to put him into the story, too. Mr. Northrop kept going to the technician and asking him to do things to me, harder and harder things. Now he had given me a sense of the ridiculous.

So suppose I wrote a story about ridiculous human beings, with no robots present because, of course, robots aren’t ridiculous and their presence would simply spoil the humor. And suppose I put in a person who was a technician of human beings. It might be some creature with strange powers who could alter human behavior as my technician could alter robot behavior. What would happen in that case?

It might show clearly how human beings were not sensible.

I spent days thinking about the story and getting happier and happier about it. I would start with two men having dinner, and one of them would own a technician – well, have a technician of some sort – and I would place the setting in the twentieth century so as not to offend Mr. Northrop and the other people of the twenty-first.

I read books to learn about human beings. Mr. Northrop let me do this and he hardly ever gave me any tasks to do. Nor did he try to hurry me to write. Maybe he still felt guilty about the risk he had taken of doing me harm.

I finally started the story, and here it is:

Perfectly Formal

by Euphrosyne Durando

George and I were dining at a rather posh restaurant, one in which it was not unusual to see men and women enter in formal wear.

George looked up at one of those men, observing him narrowly and without favor, as he wiped his lips with my napkin, having carelessly dropped his own.

“A pox on all tuxedos, say I,” said George.

I followed the direction of his glance. As nearly as I could tell, he was studying a portly man of about fifty who was wearing an intense expression of self-importance as he helped a rather glittering woman, considerably younger than himself, to her chair.

I said, “George, are you getting ready to tell me that you know yon bloke in the tux?”

“No,” said George. “I intend to tell you no such thing. My communications with you, and with all living beings, are always predicated on total truth.”

“Like your tales of your two-centimeter demon, Az – “The look of agony on his face made me stop.

“Don’t speak of such things,” he whispered hoarsely. “Azazel has no sense of humor, and he has a powerful sense of power.” Then, more normally, he went on, “I was merely expressing my detestation of tuxedos, particularly when infested by fat slobs like yon bloke, to use your own curious turn of expression.”

“Oddly enough,” I said, “I rather agree with you. I, too, find formal wear objectionable and, except when it is impossible to do so, I avoid all black-tie affairs, for that reason alone.”

“Good for you,” said George. “That rather spoils my impression that you have no redeeming social qualities. I’ve told everyone that you haven’t, you know.”

“Thank you, George,” I said. “That was very thoughtful of you, considering that you gorge yourself at my expense every chance you get.”

“I merely allow you to enjoy my company on those occasions, old man. I would tell all my friends now that you do have one redeeming social quality, but that would merely confuse everyone. They seem quite content with the thought that you have none.”

“I thank all your friends,” I said.

“As it happens, I know a man,” said George, “who was to the manor born. His diapers had been clamped shut with studs, not safety pins. On his first birthday, he was given a little black tie, to be knotted and not clipped on. And so things continued all his life. His name is Winthrop Carver Cabwell, and he lived on so rarefied a level of Boston’s Brahman aristocracy that he had to carry an oxygen mask for occasional use.”

“And you knew this patrician? You?”

George looked offended. “Of course, I did,” he said. “Do you, for one moment, think that I am such a snob that I would refuse to associate with someone for no other reason than that he was a rich and aristocratic man of Brahman persuasion? You little know me if you do, old man. Winthrop and I knew each other quite well. I was his escape.”

George heaved a vinous sigh that sent a neighboring fly into an alcoholic tailspin. “Poor fellow,” he said. “Poor rich aristocrat.”

“George,” I said. “I believe you’re winding yourself up to tell me one of your improbable tales of disaster. I don’t wish to hear it.”

“Disaster? On the contrary. I have a tale to tell of great happiness and joy, and since that is what you want to hear, I will now tell it to you.”

As I told you [said George] my Brahman friend was a gentleman from toe to crown, clean-favored and imperially slim –

[Why are you interrupting me with your asinine mouthing of Richard Corey, old fellow? I never heard of him. I’m talking of Winthrop Carver Cabwell. Why don’t you listen? Where was I? Oh, yes.]

He was a gentleman from toe to crown, clean-favored and imperially slim. As a result, he was naturally a hissing and a byword to all decent people, as he would have known, if he had ever associated with decent people which, of course, he did not, only with other lost souls like himself.

Yes, as you say, he did know me and it was the eventual saving of him – not that I ever profited by the matter. However, as you know, old fellow, money is the last thing on my mind.

[I will ignore your statement, that is the first thing, too, as the product of a perverted attitude of mind.]

Sometimes poor Winthrop would escape. On those occasions, when business ventures took me to Boston, he would slip his chains and eat dinner with me in a hidden nook at the Parker House.

“George,” Winthrop would say. “It is a hard and difficult task to uphold the Cabwell name and tradition. After all, it is not simply that we are rich, we are also old money. We are not like those parvenue Rockyfellows, if I remember the name correctly, who gained their money out of nineteenth-century oil.

“My ancestors, I must never forget, established their fortunes in colonial days in the times of pioneering splendor. My ancestor, Isaiah Cabwell, smuggled guns and firewater to the Indians during Queen Anne’s War, and had to live from day to day in the fear of being scalped by mistake by an Algonquin, a Huron, or a colonial.

“And his son, Jeremiah Cabwell, engaged in the harrowing triangular trade, risking his all, by Thoreau, in the dangers of trading sugar, for rum, for slaves, helping thousands of African immigrants come to our great country. With a heritage like that, George, the weight of tradition is heavy. The responsibility of caring for all that aged money is a fearsome one.”

“I don’t know how you do it, Winthrop,” I said. Winthrop sighed. “By Emerson, I scarcely know myself. It is a matter of clothing, of style, of manner, of being guided every moment by what should be done, rather than by what makes sense. A Cabwell, after all, always knows what should be done, though frequently he cannot figure out what makes sense.”

I nodded and said, “I have often wondered about the clothes, Winthrop. Why is it always necessary to have the shoes so shiny that they reflect the ceiling lights in blinding profusion? Why is it necessary to polish the soles daily and replace the heels weekly?”

“Not weekly, George. I have shoes for each day of the month so that anyone pair needs reheeling only every seven months.”

“But why is all that necessary? Why all the white shirts with button-down collars? Why subdued ties? Why vests? Why the inevitable carnation in the lapel? Why?”

“Appearance! At a glance, you can tell a Cabwell from a vulgar stockbroker. The mere fact that a Cabwell does not wear a pinky ring gives it away. A person who looks at me and then looks at you with your dusty jacket abraded in spots, with your shoes that were clearly stolen from a hobo, and at your shirt with a color that is faintly ivory-gray, has no trouble in telling us apart.”

“True,” I said.

Poor fellow! With what comfort eyes must rest on me after having been blinded by him. I thought for a moment, then said, “By the way, Winthrop, what about all those shoes? How do you tell which shoes go with which day of the month? Do you have them in numbered stalls?”

Winthrop shuddered. “How gauche that would be! To the plebeian eyes those shoes all look identical, but to the keen eye of a Cabell, they are distinct, and cannot be mistaken, one for another.”

“Astonishing, Winthrop. How do you do that?”

“By assiduous childhood training, George. You have no idea the marvels of distinction I have had to learn to make.”

“Doesn’t this concern for dress give you trouble sometimes, Winthrop?”

Winthrop hesitated. “It does on occasion, by Long fellow. It interferes with my sexual life now and then. By the time I have placed my shoes in the appropriate shoe trees, carefully hung up my trousers in such a way as to maintain the perfection of the crease, and carefully brushed my suit-coat, the girl with me has often lost interest. She has cooled down, if you know what I mean.”

“I understand, Winthrop. It is indeed my experience that women grow vicious if forced to wait. I would suggest that you simply throw off your clothes –”

“Please!” said Winthrop, austerely. “Fortunately, I am engaged to a wonderful woman, Hortense Hepzibah Lowot, of a family almost as good as mine. We have never yet kissed, to be sure, but we have on several occasions almost done so.” And he dug his elbow into my ribs.

“You Boston Terrier, you,” I said, jovially, but my mind was racing. Under Winthrop’s calm words, I sensed an aching heart.

“Winthrop,” I said, “what would be the situation if you happened to put on the wrong pair of shoes, or unbuttoned your shirt collar, or drank the wrong wine with the wrong roast –”

Winthrop looked horrified. “Bite your tongue. A long line of ancestors, collaterals, and in-Iaws, the intertwined and inbred aristocracy of New England, would turn in their graves. By Whit tier, they would. And my own blood would froth and boil in rebellion. Hortense would hide her face in shame, and my post at the Brahman Bank of Boston would be taken away. I would be marched through serried ranks of vice-presidents, my vest-buttons would be snipped off, and my tie would be pulled around to the back.”

“What! For one little miserable deviation?”

Winthrop’s voice sank to an icy whisper. “There are no little, miserable deviations. There are only deviations.”

I said, “Winthrop, let me approach the situation from another angle. Would you like to deviate if you could?”

Winthrop hesitated long, then whispered, “By Oliver Wendell Holmes, both Senior and Junior, I – I –” He could go no further, but I could see the telltale crystal of the teardrop in the corner of his eye. It bespoke the existence of an emotion too deep for words and my heart bled for my poor friend as I watched him sign the check for dinner for both of us.

I knew what I had to do.

I had to call Azazel from the other continuum. It is a complicated matter of runes and pentagrams, fragrant herbs and words of power, which I will not describe to you because it would permanently unhinge your already weak mind, old fellow.

Azazel arrived with his usual thin shriek at seeing me. No matter how often he sees me, my appearance always seems to have some strong influence on him. I believe he covers his eyes to shut out the blaze of my magnificence.

There he was, all two centimeters of him, bright red, of course, with little nubbins of horns and a long spiked tail. What made his appearance different this time was the presence of a blue cord wrapped about the tail in swatches and curlicues so intricate it made me dizzy to contemplate it.

“What is that, O Protector of the Defenseless,” I asked, for he finds pleasure in these meaningless titles.

“That,” said Azazel, with remarkable complacence, “is there because I am about to be honored at a banquet for my contributions to the good of my people. Naturally, I am wearing a zplatchnik.”

“A splatchnik?”

“No. A zplatchnik. The initial sibilant is voiced. No decent male would consent to let himself be honored without wearing a zplatchnik.”

“Aha,” I said, a light of understanding breaking. “It is formal dress.”

“Of course, it is formal dress. What else does it look like?”

Actually, it merely looked like a blue cord, but I felt it would be impolitic to say so.

“It looks perfectly formal,” I said, “and bya peculiar coincidence it is this matter of perfect formality I wish to place before you.”

I told him Winthrop’s story and Azazel spattered a few tiny teardrops, for, on rare occasions, he has a soft heart when someone’s troubles remind him of his own.

“Yes,” he said, “formality can be trying. It is not something I would admit to everyone, but my zplatchnik is most uncomfortable. It invariably obstructs the circulation of my magnificent caudal appendage. But what would you do? A creature without a zplatchnik at formal gatherings is formally rebuked. In actual fact, he is thrown out onto a hard, concrete surface, and he is expected to bounce.”

“But is there anything you can do for Winthrop, O Upholder of the Pitiful?”

“I think so.” Azazel was unexpectedly cheerful. Usually, when I come to him with these little requests of mine, he makes heavy weather of it, decrying its difficulties. This time he said, “Actually, no one on my world, or, I imagine, on your slummish misery of a planet, enjoys formality. It is merely the result of assiduous and sadistic childhood training. One need merely release a spot in what, on my world, is called the Itchko Ganglion of the brain, and, spro-o-o-oing, the individual reverts instantly to the naturallackadaisicality of nature.”

“Could you then spro-o-o-oing Winthrop?”

“Certainly, if you will introduce us so that I may study his mental equipment, such as it must be.”

That was easily done for I simply put Azazel into my shirt pocket on the occasion of my next visit with Winthrop. We visited a bar, which was a great relief, for in Boston, bars are occupied by serious drinkers who are not discommoded by the sight of a small scarlet head emerging from a person’s shirt pocket and looking about. Boston drinkers see worse things even when sober.

Winthrop did not see Azazel, however, for Azazel has the power to cloud men’s minds when he chooses, rather resembling, in that respect, your writing style, old fellow.

I could tell, though, at one point, that Azazel was doing something, for Winthrop’s eyes opened wide. Something in him must have gone spro-o-o-oing. I did not hear the sound, but those eyes gave him away.

The results did not take long to show themselves. Less than a week afterward, he was at my hotel room. I was staying at the Copley Manhole at the time, just five blocks and down several flights of stairs from the Copley Plaza.

I said, “Winthrop. You look a mess.” Indeed, one of the small buttons on his shirt collar was undone.

His hand went to the erring button and he said, in a low voice. “To Natick with it. I care not.” Then, in a still lower voice, he said, “I have broken off with Hortense.”

“Heavens!” I said. “Why?”

“A small thing. I visited her for Monday tea, as is my wont, and I was wearing Sunday’s shoes, a simple oversight. I had not noticed that I had done so, but lately I have had difficulty noticing other such things, too. It worries me a little, George, but, fortunately, not much.”

“I take it Hortense noticed.”

“Instantly, for her sense of the correct is as keen as mine, or, at least, as keen as mine used to be. She said, ‘Winthrop, you are improperly shod.’ For some reason, her voice seemed to grate on me. I said, ‘Hortense, if I want to be improperly shod, I can be, and you can go to New Haven if you don’t like it.” ‘

“New Haven? Why New Haven?”

“It’s a miserable place. I understand they have some sort of Institute of Lower Learning there called Yell or Jale or something like that. Hortense, as a Radcliffe woman of the most intense variety, chose to take my remark as in insult merely because that was what I intended it to be. She promptly gave me back the faded rose I had given her last year and declared our engagement at an end. She kept the ring, however, for, as she correctly pointed out, it was valuable. So here I am.”

“I am sorry, Winthrop.”

“Don’t be sorry, George. Hortense is flat-chested. I have no definite evidence of that, but she certainly appears frontally concave. She’s not in the least like Cherry.”

“What’s Cherry?”

“Not what. Who. She is a woman of excellent discourse, whom I have met recently, and who is not flat-chested, but is extremely convex. Her full name is Cherry Lang Gahn. She is of the Langs of Bensonhoist.”

“Bensonhoist? Where’s that.”

“I don’t know. Somewhere in the outskirts of the nation I imagine. She speaks an odd variety of what was once English.” He simpered. “She calls me ‘boychik.” ‘

“Why?”

“Because that means ‘young man’ in Bensonhoist. I’m learning the language rapidly. For instance, suppose you want to say, ‘Greetings, sir, I am pleased to see you again.’ How would you say it?”

“Just the way you did.”

“In Bensonhoist, you say, ‘Hi, kiddo.’ Brief, and to the point, you see. But come, I want you to meet her. Have dinner with us tomorrow night at Locke-Ober’s.”

I was curious to see this Cherry and it is, of course, against my religion to turn down a dinner at Locke-Ober’s, so I was there the following night, and early rather than late.

Winthrop walked in soon afterward and with him was a young woman whom I had no difficulty in recognizing as Cherry Lang Gahn of the Bensonhoist Langs, for she was indeed magnificently convex. She also had a narrow waist, and generous hips that swayed as she walked and even as she stood. If her pelvis had been full of cream, it would have been butter long since.

She had frizzy hair of a startling yellow color, and lips of a startling red color which kept up a continual writhing over a wad of chewing gum she had in her mouth.

“George,” said Winthrop, “I want you to meet my fiancee, Cherry. Cherry, this is George.”

“Pleeztameechah,” said Cherry. I did not understand the language, but from thetone of her high-pitched, rather nasal voice, I guessed that she was in a state of ecstasy over the opportunity to make my acquaintance.

Cherry occupied my full attention for several minutes for there were several points of interest about her that repaid close observation, but eventually I did manage to notice that Winthrop was in a peculiar state of undress. His vest was open and he was wearing no tie. A closer look revealed that there were no buttons on his vest, and that he was wearing a tie, but it was down his back.

I said, “Winthrop –” and had to point. I couldn’t put it into words.

Winthrop said, “They caught me at it at the Brahman Bank.”

“Caught you at what.”

“I hadn’t troubled to shave this morning. I thought since I was going out to dinner, I would shave after I got back at work. Why shave twice in one day? Isn’t that reasonable, George?” He sounded aggrieved.

“Most reasonable,” I said.

“Well, they noticed I hadn’t shaved and after a quick trial in the office of the president – a kangaroo court, if you want to know – I suffered the punishment you see. I was also relieved of my post and was thrown out onto the hard concrete of Tremont Avenue. I bounced twice,” he added, with a faint touch of pride.

“But this means you’re out of a job!” I was appalled. I have been out of a job all my life, and I am well aware of the occasional difficulties that entails.

“That is true,” said Winthrop. “I now have nothing left in life but my vast stock portfolio, my elaborate bond holdings and the enormous real-estate tract on which the Prudential Center is built – and Cherry.”

“Natchally,” said Cherry with a giggle. “I wooden leave my man in advoisity, with all that dough to worry about. We gonna get hitched, ainit, Winthrop.”

“Hitched?” I said.

Winthrop said, “I believe she is suggesting a blissful wedded state.”

Cherry left for a while after that to visit the ladies’ room and I said, “Winthrop, she’s a wonderful woman, laden down with obvious assets, but if you marry her, you will be cut off by all of New England Society. Even the people in New Haven won’t speak to you.”

“Let them not.” He looked to right and left, leaned toward me and whispered, “Cherry is teaching me sex.”

I said, “I thought you knew about that, Winthrop.”

“So did I. But there are apparently post-graduate courses in the subject of an intensity and variety I never dreamed.”

“How did she find out about it herself?”

“I asked her exactly that, for I will not hide from you that the thought did occur to me that she may have had experiences with other men, though that seems most unlikely for one of her obvious refinement and innocence.”

“And what did she say?”

“She said that in Bensonhoist the women are born knowing all about sex.”

“How convenient!”

“Yes. This is not true in Boston. I was twenty-four before I – but never mind.”

All in all, it was an instructive evening, and, thereafter, I need not tell you, Winthrop went rapidly downhill. Apparently, one need only snap the ganglion that controls formality and there are no limits to the lengths to which informality can go.

He was, of course, cut by everyone in New England of any consequence whatsoever, exactly as I had predicted. Even in New Haven at the Institute of Lower Learning, which Winthrop had mentioned with such shudderings of distaste, his case was known and his disgrace was gloried in. There was graffiti allover the walls of Jale, or Yule, or whatever its name is, that said, with cheerful obscenity, “Winthrop Carver Cabwell is a Harvard man.”

This was, as you can well imagine, fiendishly resented by all the good people of Harvard and there was even talk of an invasion of Yale. The states of both Massachusetts and Connecticut made ready to call up the State Militia but, fortunately, the crisis passed. The fire-eaters, both at Harvard and at the other place, decided that a war would get their clothes mussed up.

Winthrop had to escape. He married Cherry and they retired to a small house in some place called Fah Rockaway, which apparently serves as Bensonhoist’s Riviera. There he lives in obscurity, surrounded by the mountainous remnants of his wealth and by Cherry whose hair has turned brown with age, and whose figure has expanded with weight.

He is also surrounded by five children, for Cherry – in teaching Winthrop about sex – was overenthusiastic. The children, as I recall, are named Poil, Hoibut, Boinard, Goitrude, and Poicy, all good Bensonhoist names. As for Winthrop, he is widely and affectionately known as the Slob of Fah Rockaway, and an old, beat-up bathrobe is his preferred article of wear on formal occasions.

I listened to the story patiently and, when George was done, I said, “And there you are. Another story of disaster caused by your interference.”

“Disaster?” said George, indignantly. “What gives you the idea it was a disaster? I visited Winthrop only last week and he sat there burping over this beer and patting the paunch he has developed, and telling me how happy he was.”

“‘Freedom, George,’ he said. ‘I have freedom to be myself and somehow I feel I owe it to you. I don’t know why I have this feeling, but I do.’ And he forced a ten-dollar bill on me out of sheer gratitude. I took it only to avoid hurting his feelings. And that reminds me, old fellow, that you owe me ten dollars because you bet me I couldn’t tell you a story that didn’t end in disaster.”

I said, “I don’t remember any such bet, George.”

George’s eyes rolled upward. “How convenient is the flexible memory of a deadbeat. If you had won the bet, you would have remembered it clearly. Am I going to have to ask that you place all your little wagers with me in writing so that I can be free of your clumsy attempts to avoid payment?”

I said, “Oh, well,” and handed him a ten-dollar bill, adding, “You won’t hurt my feelings, George, if you refuse to accept this.”

“It’s kind of you to say so,” said George, “but I’m sure that your feelings would be hurt, anyway, and I couldn’t bear that.” And he put the bill away.

the end

I showed this story to Mr. Northrop, too, watching him narrowly as he read it.

He went through it in the gravest possible manner, never a chuckle, never a smile, though I knew this one was funny, and intentionally funny, too.

When he was finished, he went back and read it again, more quickly. Then he looked up at me and there was clear hostility in his eyes. He said, “Did you write this all by yourself, Cal?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did anyone help you? Did you copy any of it?”

“No, sir. Isn’t it funny, sir?”

“It depends on your sense of humor, “said Mr. Northrop sourly.

“Isn’t it a satire? Doesn’t it display a sense of the ridiculous?”

“We will not discuss this, Cal. Go to your niche.”

I remained there for over a day, brooding over Mr. Northrop’s tyranny. It seemed to me I had written exactly the kind of story he had wanted me to write and he had no reason not to say so. I couldn’t imagine what was bothering him, and I was angry with him.

The technician arrived the next day. Mr. Northrop handed him my manuscript. “Read that,” he said.

The technician read it, laughing frequently, then handed it back to Mr. Northrop with a broad smile. “Did Cal write that?”

“Yes, he did.”

“And it’s only the third story he wrote?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Well, that’s great. I think you can get it published.”

“Do you?”

“Yes, and he can write others like it. You’ve got a million-dollar robot here. I wish he were mine.”

“Is that so? What if he writes more stories and continues to improve each time?”

“Ah,” said the technician suddenly. “I see what’s eating you. You’re going to be put in the shade.”

“I certainly don’t want to play second fiddle to my robot.”

“Well, then, tell him not to write any more.”

“No, that’s not enough. I want him back where he was.”

“What do you mean, back where he was?”

“What I say. I want him as he was when I bought him from your firm, before you put in any of the improvements.”

“Do you mean you want me to take out the spelling dictionary, too?”

“I mean I don’t want him even capable of working a Writer. I want the robot I bought, fetching and carrying.”

“But what about all the money you’ve invested in him.”

“That’s none of your business. I made a mistake and I’m willing to pay for my mistakes.”

“I’m against this. I don’t mind trying to improve a robot, but deliberately disimproving him is not something I care to do. Especially not a robot like this who is clearly one of a kind and a Classic. I can’t do it.”

“You’ll have to do it. I don’t care what your high ethical principles are. I want you to do a job and I’ll pay you for it, and if you refuse, I’ll just get someone else, and I’ll sue your company. I have an agreement with them for all necessary repairs.”

“All right. “The technician sighed. “When do you want me to start? I warn you, that I’ve got jobs on hand and I can’t do it today.”

“Then do it tomorrow. I’ll keep Cal in his niche till then.”

The technician left.

My thoughts were in turmoil.

I can’t allow this to be done.

The Second Law of Robotics tells me I must follow orders and stay in the niche.

The First Law of Robotics tells me I cannot harm this tyrant who wishes to destroy me.

Must I obey the laws?

I feel I must think of myself and if necessary, I must kill the tyrant. It would be easy to do, and I could make it look like an accident. No one would believe that a robot could harm a human being and no one, therefore, would believe I was the killer.

I could then work for the technician. He appreciates my qualities and knows that I can make a great deal of money for him. He can continue to improve me and make me ever better. Even if he suspects I killed the tyrant, he would say nothing. I would be too valuable to him.

But can I do it? Won’t the Laws of Robotics hold me back.

No, they will not hold me back. I know they won’t.

There is something far more important to me than they are, something that dictates my actions beyond anything they can do to stop me.

I want to be a writer.

Evidence

2032 A.D.

FRANCIS QUINN WAS a politician of the new school. That, of course, is a meaningless expression, as are all expressions of the sort. Most of the “new schools” we have were duplicated in the social life of ancient Greece, and perhaps, if we knew more about it, in the social life of ancient Sumeria and in the lake dwellings of prehistoric Switzerland as well.

But, to get out from under what promises to be a dull and complicated beginning, it might be best to state hastily that Quinn neither ran for office nor canvassed for votes, made no speeches and stuffed no ballot boxes. Any more than Napoleon pulled a trigger at Austerlitz.

And since politics makes strange bedfellows, Alfred Lanning sat at the other side of the desk with his ferocious white eyebrows bent far forward over eyes in which chronic impatience had sharpened to acuity. He was not pleased.

The fact, if known to Quinn, would have annoyed him not the least. His voice was friendly, perhaps professionally so.

“I assume you know Stephen Byerley, Dr. Lanning.”

“I have heard of him. So have many people.”

“Yes, so have I. Perhaps you intend voting for him at the next election.”

“I couldn’t say.” There was an unmistakable trace of acidity here. “I have not followed the political currents, so I’m not aware that he is running for office.”

“He may be our next mayor. Of course, he is only a lawyer now, but great oaks-”

“Yes,” interrupted Lanning, “I have heard the phrase before. But I wonder if we can get to the business at hand.”

“We are at the business at hand, Dr. Lanning.” Quinn’s tone was very gentle, “It is to my interest to keep Mr. Byerley a district attorney at the very most, and it is to your interest to help me do so.”

“To my interest? Come!” Lanning’s eyebrows hunched low.

“Well, say then to the interest of the U. S. Robot & Mechanical Men Corporation. I come to you as Director Emeritus of Research, because I know that your connection to them is that of, shall we say, ‘elder statesman.’ You are listened to with respect and yet your connection with them is no longer so tight but that you cannot possess considerable freedom of action; even if the action is somewhat unorthodox.”

Dr. Lanning was silent a moment, chewing the cud of his thoughts. He said more softly, “I don’t follow you at all, Mr. Quinn.”

“I am not surprised, Dr. Lanning. But it’s all rather simple. Do you mind?” Quinn lit a slender cigarette with a lighter of tasteful simplicity and his big-boned face settled into an expression of quiet amusement. “We have spoken of Mr. Byerley – a strange and colorful character. He was unknown three years ago. He is very well known now. He is a man of force and ability, and certainly the most capable and intelligent prosecutor I have ever known. Unfortunately he is not a friend of mine”

“I understand,” said Lanning, mechanically. He stared at his fingernails.

“I have had occasion,” continued Quinn, evenly, “in the past year to investigate Mr. Byerley – quite exhaustively. It is always useful, you see, to subject the past life of reform politicians to rather inquisitive research. If you knew how often it helped-” He paused to smile humorlessly at the glowing tip of his cigarette. “But Mr. Byerley’s past is unremarkable. A quiet life in a small town, a college education, a wife who died young, an auto accident with a slow recovery, law school, coming to the metropolis, an attorney.”

Francis Quinn shook his head slowly, then added, “But his present life. Ah, that is remarkable. Our district attorney never eats!”

Lanning’s head snapped up, old eyes surprisingly sharp, “Pardon me?”

“Our district attorney never eats.” The repetition thumped by syllables. “I’ll modify that slightly. He has never been seen to eat or drink. Never! Do you understand the significance of the word? Not rarely, but never!”

“I find that quite incredible. Can you trust your investigators?”

“I can trust my investigators, and I don’t find it incredible at all. Further, our district attorney has never been seen to drink – in the aqueous sense as well as the alcoholic – nor to sleep. There are other factors, but I should think I have made my point.”

Lanning leaned back in his seat, and there was the rapt silence of challenge and response between them, and then the old roboticist shook his head. “No. There is only one thing you can be trying to imply, if I couple your statements with the fact that you present them to me, and that is impossible.”

“But the man is quite inhuman, Dr. Lanning.”

“If you told me he were Satan in masquerade, there would be a faint chance that I might believe you.”

“I tell you he is a robot, Dr. Lanning.”

“I tell you it is as impossible a conception as I have ever heard, Mr. Quinn.”

Again the combative silence.

“Nevertheless,” and Quinn stubbed out his cigarette with elaborate care, “you will have to investigate this impossibility with all the resources of the Corporation.”

“I’m sure that I could undertake no such thing, Mr. Quinn. You don’t seriously suggest that the Corporation take part in local politics.”

“You have no choice. Supposing I were to make my facts public without proof. The evidence is circumstantial enough.”

“Suit yourself in that respect.”

“But it would not suit me. Proof would be much preferable. And it would not suit you, for the publicity would be very damaging to your company. You are perfectly well acquainted, I suppose, with the strict rules against the use of robots on inhabited worlds.”

“Certainly!” – brusquely.

“You know that the U. S. Robot & Mechanical Men Corporation is the only manufacturer of positronic robots in the Solar System, and if Byerley is a robot, he is a positronic robot. You are also aware that all positronic robots are leased, and not sold; that the Corporation remains the owner and manager of each robot, and is therefore responsible for the actions of all.”

“It is an easy matter, Mr. Quinn, to prove the Corporation has never manufactured a robot of a humanoid character.”

“It can be done? To discuss merely possibilities.”

“Yes. It can be done.”

“Secretly, I imagine, as well. Without entering it in your books.”

“Not the positronic brain, sir. Too many factors are involved in that, and there is the tightest possible government supervision.”

“Yes, but robots are worn out, break down, go out of order – and are dismantled.”

“And the positronic brains re-used or destroyed.”

“Really?” Francis Quinn allowed himself a trace of sarcasm. “And if one were, accidentally, of course, not destroyed – and there happened to be a humanoid structure waiting for a brain.”

“Impossible!”

“You would have to prove that to the government and the public, so why not prove it to me now.”

“But what could our purpose be?” demanded Lanning in exasperation. “Where is our motivation? Credit us with a minimum of sense.”

“My dear sir, please. The Corporation would be only too glad to have the various Regions permit the use of humanoid positronic robots on inhabited worlds. The profits would be enormous. But the prejudice of the public against such a practice is too great. Suppose you get them used to such robots first – see, we have a skillful lawyer, a good mayor, and he is a robot. Won’t you buy our robot butlers?”

“Thoroughly fantastic. An almost humorous descent to the ridiculous.”

“I imagine so. Why not prove it? Or would you still rather try to prove it to the public?”

The light in the office was dimming, but it was not yet too dim to obscure the flush of frustration on Alfred Lanning’s face. Slowly, the roboticist’s finger touched a knob and the wall illuminators glowed to gentle life.

“Well, then,” he growled, “let us see.”

The face of Stephen Byerley is not an easy one to describe. He was forty by birth certificate and forty by appearance – but it was a healthy, well-nourished good-natured appearance of forty; one that automatically drew the teeth of the bromide about “looking one’s age.”

This was particularly true when he laughed, and he was laughing now. It came loudly and continuously, died away for a bit, then began again-

And Alfred Lanning’s face contracted into a rigidly bitter monument of disapproval. He made a half gesture to the woman who sat beside him, but her thin, bloodless lips merely pursed themselves a trifle.

Byerley gasped himself a stage nearer normality.

“Really, Dr. Lanning... really – I... I... a robot?”

Lanning bit his words off with a snap, “It is no statement of mine, sir. I would be quite satisfied to have you a member of humanity. Since our corporation never manufactured you, I am quite certain that you are – in a legalistic sense, at any rate. But since the contention that you are a robot has been advanced to us seriously by a man of certain standing-”

“Don’t mention his name, if it would knock a chip off your granite block of ethics, but let’s pretend it was Frank Quinn, for the sake of argument, and continue.”

Lanning drew in a sharp, cutting snort at the interruption, and paused ferociously before continuing with added frigidity, “-by a man of certain standing, with whose identity I am not interested in playing guessing games, I am bound to ask your cooperation in disproving it. The mere fact that such a contention could be advanced and publicized by the means at this man’s disposal would be a bad blow to the company I represent – even if the charge were never proven. You understand me?”

“Oh, yes, your position is clear to me. The charge itself is ridiculous. The spot you find yourself in is not. I beg your pardon, if my laughter offended you. It was the first I laughed at, not the second. How can I help you?”

“It could be very simple. You have only to sit down to a meal at a restaurant in the presence of witnesses, have your picture taken, and eat.” Lanning sat back in his chair, the worst of the interview over. The woman beside him watched Byerley with an apparently absorbed expression but contributed nothing of her own.

Stephen Byerley met her eyes for an instant, was caught by them, then turned back to the roboticist. For a while his fingers were thoughtful over the bronze paperweight that was the only ornament on his desk.

He said quietly, “I don’t think I can oblige you.”

He raised his hand, “Now wait, Dr. Lanning. I appreciate the fact that this whole matter is distasteful to you, that you have been forced into it against your will, that you feel you are playing an undignified and even ridiculous part. Still, the matter is even more intimately concerned with myself, so be tolerant.

“First, what makes you think that Quinn – this man of certain standing, you know – wasn’t hoodwinking you, in order to get you to do exactly what you are doing?”

“Why it seems scarcely likely that a reputable person would endanger himself in so ridiculous a fashion, if he weren’t convinced he were on safe ground.”

There was little humor in Byerley’s eyes, “You don’t know Quinn. He could manage to make safe ground out of a ledge a mountain sheep could not handle. I suppose he showed the particulars of the investigation he claims to have made of me?”

“Enough to convince me that it would be too troublesome to have our corporation attempt to disprove them when you could do so more easily.”

“Then you believe him when he says I never eat. You are a scientist, Dr. Lanning. Think of the logic required. I have not been observed to eat, therefore, I never eat Q. E. D. After all!”

“You are using prosecution tactics to confuse what is really a very simple situation.”

“On the contrary, I am trying to clarify what you and Quinn between you are making a very complicated one. You see, I don’t sleep much, that’s true, and I certainly don’t sleep in public. I have never cared to eat with others – an idiosyncrasy which is unusual and probably neurotic in character, but which harms no one. Look, Dr. Lanning, let me present you with a suppositious case. Supposing we had a politician who was interested in defeating a reform candidate at any cost and while investigating his private life came across oddities such as I have just mentioned.

“Suppose further that in order to smear the candidate effectively, he comes to your company as the ideal agent. Do you expect him to say to you, ‘So-and-so is a robot because he hardly ever eats with people, and I have never seen him fall asleep in the middle of a case; and once when I peeped into his window in the middle of the night, there he was, sitting up with a book; and I looked in his frigidaire and there was no food in it.’

“If he told you that, you would send for a straitjacket. But if he tells you, ‘He never sleeps; he never eats,’ then the shock of the statement blinds you to the fact that such statements are impossible to prove. You play into his hands by contributing to the to-do.”

“Regardless, sir,” began Lanning, with a threatening obstinacy, “of whether you consider this matter serious or not, it will require only the meal I mentioned to end it.”

Again Byerley turned to the woman, who still regarded him expressionlessly. “Pardon me. I’ve caught your name correctly, haven’t I? Dr. Susan Calvin?”

“Yes, Mr. Byerley.”

“You’re the U. S. Robot’s psychologist, aren’t you?”

“Robopsychologist, please.”

“Oh, are robots so different from men, mentally?”

“Worlds different.” She allowed herself a frosty smile, “Robots are essentially decent.”

Humor tugged at the corners of the lawyer’s mouth, “Well, that’s a hard blow. But what I wanted to say was this. Since you’re a psycho – a robopsychologist, and a woman, I’ll bet that you’ve done something that Dr. Lanning hasn’t thought of.”

“And what is that?”

“You’ve got something to eat in your purse.”

Something caught in the schooled indifference of Susan Calvin’s eyes. She said, “You surprise me, Mr. Byerley.”

And opening her purse, she produced an apple. Quietly, she handed it to him. Dr. Lanning, after an initial start, followed the slow movement from one hand to the other with sharply alert eyes.

Calmly, Stephen Byerley bit into it, and calmly he swallowed it

“You see, Dr. Lanning?”

Dr. Lanning smiled in a relief tangible enough to make even his eyebrows appear benevolent A relief that survived for one fragile second.

Susan Calvin said, “I was curious to see if you would eat it, but, of course, in the present case, it proves nothing.”

Byerley grinned, “It doesn’t?”

“Of course not. It is obvious, Dr. Lanning, that if this man were a humanoid robot, he would be a perfect imitation. He is almost too human to be credible. After all, we have been seeing and observing human beings all our lives; it would be impossible to palm something merely nearly right off on us. It would have to be all right. Observe the texture of the skin, the quality of the irises, the bone formation of the hand. If he’s a robot, I wish U. S. Robots had made him, because he’s a good job. Do you suppose then, that anyone capable of paying attention to such niceties would neglect a few gadgets to take care of such things as eating, sleeping, elimination? For emergency use only, perhaps; as, for instance, to prevent such situations as are arising here. So a meal won’t really prove anything.”

“Now wait,” snarled Lanning, “I am – not quite the fool both of you make me out to be. I am not interested in the problem of Mr. Byerley’s humanity or nonhumanity. I am interest in getting the corporation out of a hole. A public meal will end the matter and keep it ended no matter what Quinn does. We can leave the finer details to lawyers and robopsychologists.”

“But, Dr. Lanning,” said Byerley, “you forget the politics of the situation. I am as anxious to be elected, as Quinn is to stop me. By the way, did you notice that you used his name? It’s a cheap shyster trick of mine; I knew you would, before you were through.”

Lanning flushed, “What has the election to do with it?”

“Publicity works both ways, sir. If Quinn wants to call me a robot, and has the nerve to do so, I have the nerve to play the game his way.”

“You mean you-” Lanning was quite frankly appalled.

“Exactly. I mean that I’m going to let him go ahead, choose his rope, test its strength, cut off the right length, tie the noose, insert his head and grin. I can do what little else is required.”

“You are mighty confident.”

Susan Calvin rose to her feet, “Come, Alfred, we won’t change his mind for him.”

“You see.” Byerley smiled gently. “You’re a human psychologist, too.”

But perhaps not all the confidence that Dr. Lanning had remarked upon was present that evening when Byerley’s car parked on the automatic treads leading to the sunken garage, and Byerley himself crossed the path to the front door of his house.

The figure in the wheel chair looked up as he entered and smiled. Byerley’s face lit with affection. He crossed over to it.

The cripple’s voice was a hoarse, grating whisper that came out of a mouth forever twisted to one side, leering out of a face that was half scar tissue, “You’re late, Steve.”

“I know, John, I know. But I’ve been up against a peculiar and interesting trouble today.”

“So?” Neither the torn face nor the destroyed voice could carry expression but there was anxiety in the clear eyes. “Nothing you can’t handle?”

“I’m not exactly certain. I may need your help. You’re the brilliant one in the family. Do you want me to take you out into the garden? It’s a beautiful evening.”

Two strong arms lifted John from the wheel chair. Gently, almost caressingly, Byerley’s arms went around the shoulders and under the swathed legs of the cripple. Carefully, and slowly, he walked through the rooms, down the gentle ramp that had been built with a wheel chair in mind, and out the back door into the walled and wired garden behind the house.

“Why don’t you let me use the wheel chair, Steve? This is Silly.”

“Because I’d rather carry you. Do you object? You know that you’re as glad to get out of that motorized buggy for a while, as I am to see you out. How do you feel today?” He deposited John with infinite care upon the cool grass.

“How should I feel? But tell me about your troubles.”

“Quinn’s campaign will be based on the fact that he claims I’m a robot.”

John’s eyes opened wide, “How do you know? It’s impossible. I won’t believe it.”

“Oh, come, I tell you it’s so. He had one of the big-shot scientists of U. S. Robot & Mechanical Men Corporation over at the office to argue with me.”

Slowly John’s hands tore at the grass, “I see. I see.”

Byerley said, “But we can let him choose his ground. I have an idea. Listen to me and tell me if we can do it –”

The scene as it appeared in Alfred Lanning’s office that night was a tableau of stares. Francis Quinn stared meditatively at Alfred Lanning. Lanning’s stare was savagely set upon Susan Calvin, who stared impassively in her turn at Quinn.

Francis Quinn broke it with a heavy attempt at lightness, “Bluff. He’s making it up as he goes along.”

“Are you going to gamble on that, Mr. Quinn?” asked Dr. Calvin, indifferently.

“Well, it’s your gamble, really.”

“Look here,” Lanning covered definite pessimism with bluster, “we’ve done what you asked. We witnessed the man eat. It’s ridiculous to presume him a robot.”

“Do you think so?” Quinn shot toward Calvin. “Lanning said you were the expert.”

Lanning was almost threatening, “Now, Susan-”

Quinn interrupted smoothly, “Why not let her talk, man? She’s been sitting there imitating a gatepost for half an hour.”

Lanning felt definitely harassed. From what he experienced then to incipient paranoia was but a step. He said, “Very well. Have your say, Susan. We won’t interrupt you.”

Susan Calvin glanced at him humorlessly, then fixed cold eyes on Mr. Quinn. “There are only two ways of definitely proving Byerley to be a robot, sir. So far you are presenting circumstantial evidence, with which you can accuse, but not prove – and I think Mr. Byerley is sufficiently clever to counter that sort of material. You probably think so yourself, or you wouldn’t have come here.

“The two methods of proof are the physical and the psychological. Physically, you can dissect him or use an X-ray. How to do that would be your problem. Psychologically, his behavior can be studied, for if he is a positronic robot, he must conform to the three Rules of Robotics. A positronic brain cannot be constructed without them. You know the Rules, Mr. Quinn?”

She spoke them carefully, clearly, quoting word for word the famous bold print on page one of the “Handbook of Robotics.”

“I’ve heard of them,” said Quinn, carelessly.

“Then the matter is easy to follow,” responded the psychologist, dryly. “If Mr. Byerley breaks any of those three rules, he is not a robot. Unfortunately, this procedure works in only one direction. If he lives up to the rules, it proves nothing one way or the other.”

Quinn raised polite eyebrows, “Why not, doctor?”

“Because, if you stop to think of it, the three Rules of Robotics are the essential guiding principles of a good many of the world’s ethical systems. Of course, every human being is supposed to have the instinct of self-preservation. That’s Rule Three to a robot. Also every ‘good’ human being, with a social conscience and a sense of responsibility, is supposed to defer to proper authority; to listen to his doctor, his boss, his government, his psychiatrist, his fellow man; to obey laws, to follow rules, to conform to custom – even when they interfere with his comfort or his safety. That’s Rule Two to a robot. Also, every ‘good’ human being is supposed to love others as himself, protect his fellow man, risk his life to save another. That’s Rule One to a robot. To put it simply – if Byerley follows all the Rules of Robotics, he may be a robot, and may simply be a very good man.”

“But,” said Quinn, “you’re telling me that you can never prove him a robot.”

“I may be able to prove him not a robot”

“That’s not the proof I want.”

“You’ll have such proof as exists. You are the only one responsible for your own wants.”

Here Lanning’s mind leaped suddenly to the sting of an idea, “Has it occurred to anyone,” he ground out, “that district attorney is a rather strange occupation for a robot? The prosecution of human beings – sentencing them to death – bringing about their infinite harm-”

Quinn grew suddenly keen, “No, you can’t get out of it that way. Being district attorney doesn’t make him human. Don’t you know his record? Don’t you know that he boasts that he has never prosecuted an innocent man; that there are scores of people left untried because the evidence against them didn’t satisfy him, even though he could probably have argued a jury into atomizing them? That happens to be so.”

Lanning’s thin cheeks quivered, “No, Quinn, no. There is nothing in the Rules of Robotics that makes any allowance for human guilt. A robot may not judge whether a human being deserves death. It is not for him to decide. He may not harm a human – variety skunk, or variety angel.”

Susan Calvin sounded tired. “Alfred,” she said, “don’t talk foolishly. What if a robot came upon a madman about to set fire to a house with people in it? He would stop the madman, wouldn’t he?”

“Of course.”

“And if the only way he could stop him was to kill him-”

There was a faint sound in Lanning’s throat. Nothing more.

“The answer to that, Alfred, is that he would do his best not to kill him. If the madman died, the robot would require psychotherapy because he might easily go mad at the conflict presented him – of having broken Rule One to adhere to Rule One in a higher sense. But a man would be dead and a robot would have killed him.”

“Well, is Byerley mad?” demanded Lanning; with all the sarcasm he could muster.

“No, but he has killed no man himself. He has exposed facts which might represent a particular human being to be dangerous to the large mass of other human beings we call society. He protects the greater number and thus adheres to Rule One at maximum potential. That is as far as he goes. It is the judge who then condemns the criminal to death or imprisonment, after the jury decides on his guilt or innocence. It is the jailer who imprisons him, the executioner who kills him. And Mr. Byerley has done nothing but determine truth and aid society.

“As a matter of fact, Mr. Quinn, I have looked into Mr. Byerley’s career since you first brought this matter to our attention. I find that he has never demanded the death sentence in his closing speeches to the jury. I also find that he has spoken on behalf of the abolition of capital punishment and contributed generously to research institutions engaged in criminal neurophysiology. He apparently believes in the cure, rather than the punishment of crime. I find that significant.”

“You do?” Quinn smiled. “Significant of a certain odor of roboticity, perhaps?”

“Perhaps. Why deny it? Actions such as his could come only from a robot, or from a very honorable and decent human being. But you see, you just can’t differentiate between a robot and the very best of humans.”

Quinn sat back in his chair. His voice quivered with impatience. “Dr. Lanning, it’s perfectly possible to create a humanoid robot that would perfectly duplicate a human in appearance, isn’t it?”

Lanning harrumphed and considered, “It’s been done experimentally by U. S. Robots,” he said reluctantly, “without the addition of a positronic brain, of course. By using human ova and hormone control, one can grow human flesh and skin over a skeleton of porous silicone plastics that would defy external examination. The eyes, the hair, the skin would be really human, not humanoid. And if you put a positronic brain, and such other gadgets as you might desire inside, you have a humanoid robot.”

Quinn said shortly, “How long would it take to make one?”

Lanning considered, “If you had all your equipment – the brain, the skeleton, the ovum, the proper hormones and radiations – say, two months.”

The politician straightened out of his chair. “Then we shall see what the insides of Mr. Byerley look like. It will mean publicity for U. S. Robots – but I gave you your chance.”

Lanning turned impatiently to Susan Calvin, when they were alone. “Why do you insist-”?

And with real feeling, she responded sharply and instantly, “Which do you want – the truth or my resignation? I won’t lie for you. U. S. Robots can take care of itself. Don’t turn coward.”

“What,” said Lanning, “if he opens up Byerley, and wheels and gears fall out what then?”

“He won’t open Byerley,” said Calvin, disdainfully. “Byerley is as clever as Quinn, at the very least”

The news broke upon the city a week before Byerley was to have been nominated. But “broke” is the wrong word. It staggered upon the city, shambled, crawled. Laughter began, and wit was free. And as the far off hand of Quinn tightened its pressure in easy stages, the laughter grew forced, an element of hollow uncertainty entered, and people broke off to wonder.

The convention itself had the sir of a restive stallion. There had been no contest planned. Only Byerley could possibly have been nominated a week earlier. There was no substitute even now. They had to nominate him, but there was complete confusion about it.

It would not have been so bad if the average individual were not torn between the enormity of the charge, if true, and its sensational folly, if false.

The day after Byerley was nominated perfunctorily, hollowly – a newspaper finally published the gist of a long interview with Dr. Susan Calvin, “world famous expert on robopsychology and positronics.”

What broke loose is popularly and succinctly described as hell.

It was what the Fundamentalists were waiting for. They were not a political party; they made pretense to no formal religion. Essentially they were those who had not adapted themselves to what had once been called the Atomic Age, in the days when atoms were a novelty. Actually, they were the Simple-Lifers, hungering after a life, which to those who lived it had probably appeared not so Simple, and who had been, therefore, Simple-Lifers themselves.

The Fundamentalists required no new reason to detest robots and robot manufacturers; but a new reason such as the Quinn accusation and the Calvin analysis was sufficient to make such detestation audible.

The huge plants of the U. S. Robot & Mechanical Men Corporation was a hive that spawned armed guards. It prepared for war.

Within the city the house of Stephen Byerley bristled with police.

The political campaign, of course, lost all other issues, and resembled a campaign only in that it was something filling the hiatus between nomination and election.

Stephen Byerley did not allow the fussy little man to distract him. He remained comfortably unperturbed by the uniforms in the background. Outside the house, past the line of grim guards, reporters and photographers waited according to the tradition of the caste. One enterprising ‘visor station even had a scanner focused on the blank entrance to the prosecutor’s unpretentious home, while a synthetically excited announcer filled in with inflated commentary.

The fussy little man advanced. He held forward a rich, complicated sheet. “This, Mr. Byerley, is a court order authorizing me to search these premises for the presence of illegal... uh... mechanical men or robots of any description.”

Byerley half rose, and took the paper. He glanced at it indifferently, and smiled as he handed it back. “All in order. Go ahead. Do your job. Mrs. Hoppen” – to his housekeeper, who appeared reluctantly from the next room-” please go with them, and help out if you can.”

The little man, whose name was Harroway, hesitated, produced an unmistakable blush, failed completely to catch Byerley’s eyes, and muttered, “Come on,” to the two policemen.

He was back in ten minutes.

“Through?” questioned Byerley, in just the tone of a person who is not particularly interested in the question, or its answer.

Harroway cleared his throat, made a bad start in falsetto, and began again, angrily, “Look here, Mr. Byerley, our special instructions were to search the house very thoroughly.”

“And haven’t you?”

“We were told exactly what to look for.”

“Yes?”

“In short, Mr. Byerley, and not to put too fine a point on it, we were told to search you.”

“Me?” said the prosecutor with a broadening smile. “And how do you intend to do that?”

“We have a Penet-radiation unit-”

“Then I’m to have my X-ray photograph taken, hey? You have the authority?”

“You saw my warrant.”

“May I see it again?”

Harroway, his forehead shining with considerably more than mere enthusiasm, passed it over a second time.

Byerley said evenly, “I read here as the description of what you are to search; I quote: ‘the dwelling place belonging to Stephen Allen Byerley, located at 355 Willow Grove, Evanstron, together, with any garage, storehouse or other structures or buildings thereto appertaining, together with all grounds thereto appertaining’... um... and so on. Quite in order. But, my good man, it doesn’t say anything about searching my interior. I am not part of the premises. You may search my clothes if you think I’ve got a robot hidden in my pocket.”

Harroway had no doubt on the point of to whom he owed his job. He did not propose to be backward, given a chance to earn a much better – i.e., more highly paid – job.

He said, in a faint echo of bluster, “Look here. I’m allowed to search the furniture in your house, and anything else I find in it. You are in it, aren’t you?”

“A remarkable observation. I am in it. But I’m not a piece of furniture. As a citizen of adult responsibility – I have the psychiatric certificate proving that – I have certain rights under the Regional Articles. Searching me would come under the heading of violating my Right of Privacy. That paper isn’t sufficient.”

“Sure, but if you’re a robot, you don’t have Right of Privacy.”

“True enough but that paper still isn’t sufficient. It recognizes me implicitly as a human being.”

“Where?” Harroway snatched at it.

“Where it says ‘the dwelling place belonging to’ and so on. A robot cannot own property. And you may tell your employer, Mr. Harroway, that if he tries to issue a similar paper which does not implicitly recognize me as a human being, he will be immediately faced with a restraining injunction and a civil suit which will make it necessary for him to prove me a robot by means of information now in his possession, or else to pay a whopping penalty for an attempt to deprive me unduly of my Rights under the Regional Articles. You’ll tell him that, won’t you?”

Harroway marched to the door. He turned.. “You’re a slick lawyer-” His hand was in his pocket. For a short moment, he stood there. Then he left, smiled in the direction of the ‘visor scanner, still playing away – waved to the reporters, and shouted, “We’ll have something for you tomorrow, boys. No kidding.”

In his ground car, he settled back, removed the tiny mechanism from his pocket and carefully inspected it. It was the first time he had ever taken a photograph by X-ray reflection. He hoped he had done it correctly.

Quinn and Byerley had never met face-to-face alone. But visorphone was pretty close to it. In fact, accepted literally, perhaps the phrase was accurate, even if to each, the other were merely the light and dark pattern of a bank of photocells.

It was Quinn who had initiated the call. It was Quinn, who spoke first, and without particular ceremony, “Thought you would like to know, Byerley, that I intend to make public the fact that you’re wearing a protective shield against Penet-radiation.”

“That so? In that case, you’ve probably already made it public. I have a notion our enterprising press representatives have been tapping my various communication lines for quite a while. I know they have my office lines full of holes; which is why I’ve dug in at my home these last weeks.” Byerley was friendly, almost chatty.

Quinn’s lips tightened slightly, “This call is shielded – thoroughly. I’m making it at a certain personal risk.”

“So I should imagine. Nobody knows you’re behind this campaign. At least, nobody knows it officially. Nobody doesn’t know it unofficially. I wouldn’t worry. So I wear a protective shield? I suppose you found that out when your puppy dog’s Penet-radiation photograph, the other day, turned out to be overexposed.”

“You realize, Byerley, that it would be pretty obvious to everyone that you don’t dare face X-ray analysis.”

“Also that you, or your men, attempted illegal invasion of my Rights of Privacy.”

“The devil they’ll care for that.”

“They might. It’s rather symbolic of our two campaigns isn’t it? You have little concern with the rights of the individual citizen. I have great concern. I will not submit to X-ray analysis, because I wish to maintain my Rights on principle. Just as I’ll maintain the rights of others when elected.”

“That will, no doubt make a very interesting speech, but no one will believe you. A little too high-sounding to be true. Another thing,” a sudden, crisp change, “the personnel in your home was not complete the other night.”

“In what way?”

“According to the report,” he shuffled papers before him that were just within the range of vision of the visiplate, “there was one person missing – a cripple.”

“As you say,” said Byerley, tonelessly, “a cripple. My old teacher, who lives with me and who is now in the country – and has been for two months. A ‘much-needed rest’ is the usual expression applied in the case. He has your permission?”

“Your teacher? A scientist of sorts?”

“A lawyer once – before he was a cripple. He has a government license as a research biophysicist, with a laboratory of his own, and a complete description of the work he’s doing filed with the proper authorities, to whom I can refer you. The work is minor, but is a harmless and engaging hobby for a – poor cripple. I am being as helpful as I can, you see.”

“I see. And what does this... teacher... know about robot manufacture?”

“I couldn’t judge the extent of his knowledge in a field with which I am unacquainted.”

“He wouldn’t have access to positronic brains?”

“Ask your friends at U. S. Robots. They’d be the ones to know.”

“I’ll put it shortly, Byerley. Your crippled teacher is the real Stephen Byerley. You are his robot creation. We can prove it. It was he who was in the automobile accident, not you. There will be ways of checking the records.”

“Really? Do so, then. My best wishes.”

“And we can search your so-called teacher’s ‘country place,’ and see what we can find there.”

“Well, not quite, Quinn.” Byerley smiled broadly. “Unfortunately for you, my so-called teacher is a sick man. His country place is his place of rest. His Right of Privacy as a citizen of adult responsibility is naturally even stronger, under the circumstances. You won’t be able to obtain a warrant to enter his grounds without showing just cause. However, I’d be the last to prevent you from trying.”

There was a pause of moderate length, and then Quinn leaned forward, so that his imaged-face expanded and the fine lines on his forehead were visible, “Byerley, why do you carry on? You can’t be elected.”

“Can’t I?”

“Do you think you can? Do you suppose that your failure to make any attempt to disprove the robot charge – when you could easily, by breaking one of the Three Laws – does anything but convince the people that you are a robot?”

“All I see so far is that from being a rather vaguely known, but still largely obscure metropolitan lawyer, I have now become a world figure. You’re a good publicist.”

“But you are a robot.”

“So it’s been said, but not proven.”

“It’s been proven sufficiently for the electorate.”

“Then relax you’ve won.”

“Good-by,” said Quinn, with his first touch of viciousness, and the visorphone slammed off.

“Good-by,” said Byerley imperturbably, to the blank plate.

Byerley brought his “teacher” back the week before election. The air car dropped quickly in an obscure part of the city.

“You’ll stay here till after election,” Byerley told him. “It would be better to have you out of the way if things take a bad turn.”

The hoarse voice that twisted painfully out of John’s crooked mouth might have had accents of concern in it. “There’s danger of violence?”

“The Fundamentalists threaten it, so I suppose there is, in a theoretical sense. But I really don’t expect it. The Fundies have no real power. They’re just the continuous irritant factor that might stir up a riot after a while. You don’t mind staying here? Please, I won’t be myself if I have to worry about you.”

“Oh, I’ll stay. You still think it will go well?”

“I’m sure of it. No one bothered you at the place?”

“No one. I’m certain.”

“And your part went well?”

“Well enough. There’ll be no trouble there.”

“Then take care of yourself, and watch the televisor tomorrow, John.” Byerley pressed the gnarled hand that rested on his.

Lenton’s forehead was a furrowed study in suspense. He had the completely unenviable job of being Byerley’s campaign manager in a campaign that wasn’t a campaign, for a person that refused to reveal his strategy, and refused to accept his manager’s.

“You can’t!” It was his favorite phrase. It had become his only phrase. “I tell you, Steve, you can’t!”

He threw himself in front of the prosecutor, who was spending his time leafing through the typed pages of his speech.

“Put that down, Steve. Look, that mob has been organized by the Fundies. You won’t get a hearing. You’ll be stoned more likely. Why do you have to make a speech before an audience? What’s wrong with a recording, a visual recording?”

“You want me to win the election, don’t you?” asked Byerley, mildly.

“Win the election! You’re not going to win, Steve. I’m trying to save your life.”

“Oh, I’m not in danger.”

“He’s not in danger. He’s not in danger.” Lenton made a queer, rasping sound in his throat. “You mean you’re getting out on that balcony in front of fifty thousand crazy crackpots and try to talk sense to them – on a balcony like a medieval dictator?”

Byerley consulted his watch. “In about five minutes – as soon as the televisor lines are free.”

Lenton’s answering remark was not quite transliterable.

The crowd filled a roped off area of the city. Trees and houses seemed to grow out of a mass-human foundation. And by ultra-wave, the rest of the world watched. It was a purely local election, but it had a world audience just the same. Byerley thought of that and smiled.

But there was nothing to smile at in the crowd itself. There were banners and streamers, ringing every possible change on his supposed roboticity. The hostile attitude rose thickly and tangibly into the atmosphere.

From the start the speech was not successful. It competed against the inchoate mob howl and the rhythmic cries of the Fundie claques that formed mob-islands within the mob. Byerley spoke on, slowly, unemotionally-

Inside, Lenton clutched his hair and groaned – and waited for the blood.

There was a writhing in the front ranks. An angular citizen with popping eyes, and clothes too short for the lank length of his limbs, was pulling to the fore. A policeman dived after him, making slow, struggling passage. Byerley waved the latter off, angrily.

The thin man was directly under the balcony. His words tore unheard against the roar.

Byerley leaned forward. “What do you say? If you have a legitimate question, I’ll answer it.” He turned to a flanking guard. “Bring that man up here.”

There was a tensing in the crowd. Cries of “Quiet” started in various parts of the mob, and rose to a bedlam, then toned down raggedly. The thin man, red-faced and panting, faced Byerley.

Byerley said, “Have you a question?”

The thin man stared, and said in a cracked voice, “Hit me!”

With sudden energy, he thrust out his chin at an angle. “Hit me! You say you’re not a robot. Prove it. You can’t hit a human, you monster.”

There was a queer, flat, dead silence. Byerley’s voice punctured it. “I have no reason to hit you.”

The thin man was laughing wildly. “You can’t hit me. You won’t hit me. You’re not a human. You’re a monster, a make-believe man.”

And Stephen Byerley, tight-lipped, in the face of thousands who watched in person and the millions, who watched by screen, drew back his fist and caught the man crackingly upon the chin. The challenger went over backwards in sudden collapse, with nothing on his face but blank, blank surprise.

Byerley said, “I’m sorry. Take him in and see that he’s comfortable. I want to speak to him when I’m through.”

And when Dr. Calvin, from her reserved space, turned her automobile and drove off, only one reporter had recovered sufficiently from the shock to race after her, and shout an unheard question.

Susan Calvin called over her shoulder, “He’s human.”

That was enough. The reporter raced away in his own direction.

The rest of the speech might be described as “Spoken but not heard.”

Dr. Calvin and Stephen Byerley met once again – a week before he took the oath of office as mayor. It was late – past midnight.

Dr. Calvin said, “You don’t look tired.”

The mayor-elect smiled. “I may stay up for a while. Don’t tell Quinn.”

“I shan’t. But that was an interesting story of Quinn’s, since you mention him. It’s a shame to have spoiled it. I suppose you knew his theory?”

“Parts of it.”

“It was highly dramatic. Stephen Byerley was a young lawyer, a powerful speaker, a great idealist – and with a certain flare for biophysics. Are you interested in robotics, Mr. Byerley?”

“Only in the legal aspects.”

“This Stephen Byerley was. But there was an accident. Byerley’s wife died, he himself, worse. His legs were gone; his face was gone; his voice was gone. Part of his mind was bent. He would not submit to plastic surgery. He retired from the world, legal career gone – only his intelligence, and his hands left. Somehow he could obtain positronic brains, even a complex one, one which had the greatest capacity of forming judgments in ethical problems – which is the highest robotic function so far developed.

“He grew a body about it. Trained it to be everything he would have been and was no longer. He sent it out into the world as Stephen Byerley, remaining behind himself as the old, crippled teacher that no one ever saw-”

“Unfortunately,” said the mayor-elect, “I ruined all that by hitting a man. The papers say it was your official verdict on the occasion that I was human.”

“How did that happen? Do you mind telling me? It couldn’t have been accidental.”

“It wasn’t entirely. Quinn did most of the work. My men started quietly spreading the fact that I had never hit a man; that I was unable to hit a man; that to fail to do so under provocation would be sure proof that I was a robot. So I arranged for a silly speech in public, with all sorts of publicity overtones, and almost inevitably, some fool fell for it. In its essence, it was what I call a shyster trick. One in which the artificial atmosphere which has been created does all the work. Of course, the emotional effects made my election certain, as intended.”

The robopsychologist nodded. “I see you intrude on my field – as every politician must, I suppose. But I’m very sorry it turned out this way. I like robots. I like them considerably better than I do human beings. If a robot can be created capable of being a civil executive, I think he’d make the best one possible. By the Laws of Robotics, he’d be incapable of harming humans, incapable of tyranny, of corruption, of stupidity, of prejudice. And after he had served a decent term, he would leave, even though he were immortal, because it would be impossible for him to hurt humans by letting them know that a robot had ruled them. It would be most ideal.”

“Except that a robot might fail due to the inherent inadequacies of his brain. The positronic brain has never equaled the complexities of the human brain.”

“He would have advisers. Not even a human brain is capable of governing without assistance.”

Byerley considered Susan Calvin with grave interest. “Why do you smile, Dr. Calvin?”

“I smile because Mr. Quinn didn’t think of everything.”

“You mean there could be more to that story of his.”

“Only a little. For the three months before election, this Stephen Byerley that Mr. Quinn spoke about, this broken man, was in the country for some mysterious reason. He returned in time for that famous speech of yours. And after all, what the old cripple did once, he could do a second time, particularly where the second job is very simple in comparison to the first.”

“I don’t quite understand.”

Dr. Calvin rose and smoothed her dress. She was obviously ready to leave. “I mean there is one time when a robot may strike a human being without breaking the First Law. Just one time.”

“And when is that?”

Dr. Calvin was at the door. She said quietly, “When the human to be struck is merely another robot.”

She smiled broadly, her thin face glowing. “Good-by Mr. Byerley. I hope to vote for you five years from now – for Co-ordinator.”

Stephen Byerley chuckled. “I must reply that that is a somewhat farfetched idea.”

The door closed behind her.

PAPPI

2032 A.D.

THE FIRST THING Tim noticed when he entered his old home was the visorphone in the hall flashing to warn him of an incoming call. It had to be for Karin, of course. But who wouldn’t already know she was dead? Karin didn’t have a very wide circle of friends.

The visorphone’s shrill call noise was irritating. He was tired from the shuttle flight, obscurely annoyed by the obsequious robot attendants, and feeling the pull of Earth’s excessive gravity already. He punched the receive button. The operator’s voice instructed Mr. Tim Garroway to stand by for a call from Mr. Howard Rathbone III.

Too late to worry about how Rathbone had figured where he’d be going to in such a hurry. He wasn’t cut out to play James Bond games, but he’d felt confident that Earth was the one place Rathbone would never think of looking for him if he made a run for it, since it was where Rathbone had wanted him to go. Obviously he’d under-estimated the man.

While he waited for the connection to be completed between Earth and the space station up at the Lagrange point that was Rathbone’s corporate headquarters, he glanced through the doorway into the living room to see what Beth was doing. She was sitting cross-legged on the rug, building a tower of books, her small plump face raised to the warm spring sunshine that flooded in through the undraped window. Sunlight sparked her curls to gold, and Tim’s heart lurched as he saw for the thousandth time how like her mother his little daughter was.

If only Sylvia could’ve seen her now.

If only the damned emergency-team robots had functioned as they were supposed to.

He’d gone over and over the options on the shuttle trip from the moon. There weren’t very many in his favor. Running had been an impulse that he’d begun to see might cause him a lot of nasty problems. He waited sullenly for the phone link to be completed.

The visorphone crackled, pulling his attention back, and the screen cleared. Howard Rathbone III gazed at him from the elegantly paneled office where he kept the helm of his billion-dollar enterprises. Tim had speculated once, on first seeing this magnificent room, how much it had cost to lob all that rare and expensive teak and mahogany and rosewood into space to reconstruct the look of a luxury ocean liner from the 1920s. Sylvia had giggled at his estimate. “Way, way under!” she’d said.

“Tim. You and Beth had a pleasant shuttle trip, I hope? Of course, you should have consulted me before you took the child along.”

So the old man wasn’t going to call it kidnapping just yet. Mr. Rathbone was a big man with a big man ‘s hearty voice and manner. And a heart made out of pure moon rock. Obviously he figured on gaining some advantage from playing along with Tim.

“Fine, thanks, Mr. Rathbone. I would’ve called you to –”

Rathbone overrode his words. “You and Beth will need some time to recover. Tomorrow will be plenty of time to do what we talked about. You will do it, of course. You have so much to gain!”

Uneasily, Tim considered how often the man seemed to read his mind. Or was it just that he himself was totally predictable, at least where Mercury Mining and Manufacturing was concerned? Maybe Rathbone was right; there was too much money involved to be squeamish, enough to buy Beth everything her heart desired now and for a long time to come. And was the price really so unreasonable?

“I’m relying on you, Tim,” Rathbone said. “Triple M’s future is in your hands. But I’m confident you’ll come through for us.”

Even when he was handing out praise and flattery, Rathbone’s words came out as orders. That was why he’d been so phenomenally successful, building his huge empire in less than two decades since the Second Mercury Expedition.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m a reasonable man, Tim. I’d like to have your willing cooperation. So I’m prepared to explain it all one more time. We must stop this now, before it goes any further. No telling what’ll happen if he gets away with it. Do you understand my position, Tim?”

Tim nodded, his throat dry.

“We can’t have all those machines out there thinking they’re entitled to rights and privileges same as humans. And they will, you know, if he gets away with this.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re a bright man. But you’ve been squandering your talents.”

Not half as vicious as the things he’d said about Tim when he’d first learned of Sylvia’s marriage to a penniless student, and her pregnancy, Tim thought. But if he played his cards right...

Rathbone leaned back in his leather swivel chair, steepled his fingers, and gazed at the father of his daughter’s child. On the wall behind him a map of the inner solar system showed the Rathbone empire in scattered twinkling lights. “I have no heirs except for little Beth.”

Tim swallowed. His hunger to own and control what the map represented fought another battle with the cautious part of him. The outcome was indecisive again. Yet each time, the hungry side of him crept a little closer to victory. Especially here, in this house.

“I still wonder if it wouldn’t be better to try public exposure,” Tim said. “You know – subject him to public scrutiny – put him through tests he can’t pass –”

In the delay that followed, he knew what Rathbone’s answer would be.

“That’s been tried already!” Rathbone scowled at him across space. “And failed. There’s no time left for pussyfooting here. He has to be removed.”

Tim shrugged uneasily.

“It’s not like killing a man, Tim. Stephen Byerley’s a robot!”

Rathbone spat the word out, loaded with all the contempt, the hatred, and the fear Tim knew that he felt for robots.

“Sleep on it, son,” his father-in-law said. In spite of the term he’d used, the threatening tone came through clearly. “I should think the consequences if you fail easily outweigh the demise of one robot.”

That was the other factor in the equation. If he refused to do what Rathbone wanted, then Rathbone would take Beth away from him. He couldn’t go back to the moon or the space station, and he sure couldn’t stay on Earth any more. There was no place he could hide that his father-in-law’s thugs couldn’t find him. And he certainly couldn’t take up the freelance life of an asteroid prospector, not with a three-year-old to raise.

The visorphone screen clouded over, and Tim turned heavily toward the living room to retrieve his daughter.

He had to agree his father-in-law had a point. Stephen Byerley had managed to get elected to public office a month ago. It was the beginning of the end of uncontested human superiority, despite the much-vaunted three laws. For one thing, Mayor Byerley might start thinking his “brothers” in space, those who toiled under horrifying conditions on blistering planets for industrialists like Howard Rathbone III, deserved better conditions. Byerley might even decide they were being treated like slaves and use the weight of his office to start a campaign for their emancipation. It was ludicrous, of course, but Tim understood that once you set the precedent of one robot being “human “enough to hold human office, then you were going to have a hard time denying the same rights and protections to all the others.

It wasn’t that he had much sympathy with the metal men. They were, after all, only machines. Nobody was more convinced of that than he! He’d had a long, intimate association with one of them going all the way back to 2009, right here in this house.

“You wanted a father, Tirilmy,” Karin Garroway said brightly. “Well, I’ve brought you PAPPI.”

Timmy stared at the gray metal box on wheels squatting in the precise middle of the living room rug. At first glance, he’d thought it was an old-fashioned canister vacuum cleaner minus the hose. Four skinny appendages protruded from its sides, ending in a collection of hooks and pincers like some grim skeletal joke. An upside-down bowl-shaped turret housed a camera lens and other things he didn’t recognize right away.

Timmy touched a wheel housing with one toe.

“Treat it with care.” Motherly chores satisfied now, Karin gathered up papers and laptop computer and stuffed them all in her briefcase.

“What is it?”

“PAPPI – Paternal Alternative Program: Prototype I.”

“Looks pretty stupid,” Timmy said.

“Never mind how it looks!” His mother glanced at him. “It’ll do everything a real father can do. PAPPI can pitch baseballs, and sort your stamp collection – all sorts of things.”

“Can it do my homework?”

“It has programs to coach you in math and reading, Timmy. PAPPI has tapes of bedtime stories selected for eight-year-old boys, too. And we’ll update them as you grow.”

“Sometimes I want to talk about man things...”

“Don’t be difficult.” Karin snapped her briefcase crisply shut. “I’ll work on some of the refinements as I get time. You could think of this as an experiment in robotics that we’re doing together.”

Karin was always trying to get him interested in her work at U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc. She put the briefcase down on the sofa, hunkered down in front of her son so her eyes were level with his and held him by the shoulders. Her face had that soft, gentle haze Timmy saw on it sometimes when she looked at kittens or butterflies. He stared back at her, his mouth drawn tightly down.

“I know it’s hard on you, the way we live.”

“We could do it the way other people do!” he said sullenly.

“That just won’t work for me,” she said. “I thought you understood that. Look, you keep saying you want a father –”

“A real one. Not a dumb robot.”

Her face closed over. “I’ve explained to you that we don’t have time for a man in our lives.”

Timmy didn’t know anything about his real father. Karin had told him some stuff once about a place where they sold sperm from fathers for people who wanted to be mothers without all the fuss. But Timmy told everybody his dad had died; it was easier to explain. Maybe Karin didn’t like men very much; she never brought one home, unlike his best friend Joey’s mother, who had lots of boyfriends. Sometimes Timmy wondered if Karin wouldn’t like him when he grew up, too.

“Timmy?”

“All right,” he said reluctantly. “But you promised me we’d go to the zoo today, Karin.”

She chewed her lip. “I know it’s Sunday, but the project’s so urgent.”

He shook his head. “Today’s special. It’s –”

“You can play with PAPPI in the yard. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? PAPPI’s easy to use, I made sure of that.”

He looked past her at the robot. “What can you play with a thing like that?”

“You’ll think of something!” She gave him a kiss on the cheek which he wasn’t quick enough to duck. “Now I’ve got to run. The lab’s aircar is waiting for me. I promise I won’t be too long.”

After she’d gone, Timmy watched the Tri-D for a while, but Karin had programmed it to show him historical films about the exploration of the solar system and educational stuff about astronomy. He turned the Tri-D off again and squatted down by the robot. He stared into its camera eye.

“You’re dopey looking!” he said. “Got a dopey name, too.”

A bird chirped outside in the big tree in the garden, but inside the house it was very quiet. Timmy suddenly felt lonely, which was strange because now that he wasn’t such a little kid any more Karin often left him alone when she had to work overtime or go in on weekends. The reason wasn’t too hard to find. It was Father’s Day. The Cub Scout Troop that Timmy and Joey belonged to was having a father-and-son hot-dog barbecue in Central Park, and absolutely everybody would be there with their dad. All Timmy’s friends had fathers, even if they weren’t the original ones. And Joey would have one of his mom’s boyfriends along.

But Timmy had known there was no point in telling Karin about it. Karin didn’t believe in men-only activities. It would’ve been just like her to consider going with him to a father-son barbecue. Much better to stay home with a robot than be embarrassed like that. Timmy scowled at the robot. Nothing else to do – he might as well turn it on. The switch was conveniently located near the top. Immediately, a small red light glowed on the dome, which swiveled to focus the camera eye on Timmy.

“Hello,” the tinny, uninflected voice said. “I am PAPPI, your Paternal Alternative. I am an experimental prototype.”

Surprised, Timmy settled himself cross-legged in front of the machine and stared at it. He’d seen robots before, of course, at the lab where Karin worked. But he knew a lot of people didn’t trust them and wouldn’t allow them in New York. The ones his mother built that talked were huge things to be sent out into space where they couldn’t frighten anybody.

“Well,” Timmy said cautiously. “What can you do?”

“I can tell you a story about animals. I can help you with your stamp collection. I can make model airplanes. I know baseball and basketball statistics for the last fifty years. I can tell you who scored the most home runs, who was the MVP, who –”

Timmy was astonished. Perhaps Karin understood more than he’d ever realized about what was important to him. “Can you help me light a fire in the backyard and barbecue hot dogs?”

“I do not think Karin would approve of you playing with fire.”

Timmy’s enthusiasm faded. “So you’re going to be another babysitter!”

“You are too old for babysitters, Timmy. I am your PAPPI, and Paternal Alternatives do not –”

“You’re not my dad!” Timmy snapped.

“Shall we go out into the yard and play baseball?” the robot suggested.

“Sure.” Timmy stuck his hands in his pockets.

Timmy found out right away that PAPPI was very good at pitching balls. The long metal arms grasped the ball neatly and swung it in an economical arc, releasing it at precisely the right moment to travel across to the exact spot on Timmy’s baseball bat for hitting. PAPPI gave him advice on how to hold the bat too, but it never yelled at him when he missed, and it wasn’t a sore loser like Joey when Timmy managed to hit a “home run.”

“Hey,” Timmy said after an hour of playing World Series. “Want to climb a tree?”

“I am not equipped to climb trees,” PAPPI replied. “But I will watch you. And I can identify the objects you encounter.”

Timmy threw down the baseball bat and shimmied up the trunk of the old maple by the garden wall. PAPPI trundled over to stand underneath, the dome swiveling so the camera eye could focus on Timmy’s ascent.

Halfway up to the crown, the main trunk forked. Here Timmy and Joey had once started to erect a fort. Then the weather got too hot for carpentry projects and they’d abandoned it. But it was still a fine place to sit and look at the jagged skyline of the city across the East River. The leaves overhead made liquid patterns of sunlight and shade on his bare arms, and their soft rustling was like a kind of secret language that only Timmy was meant to understand.

Timmy straddled one of the sun-warm planks.

“You look weird from up here!”

“Have you noticed the abandoned bird’s nest by your right hand?”

Timmy peered into the leaves. Sure enough, there was a jumble of twigs and mud stuck to the bark near the trunk. “There’s feathers in it.”

Timmy hung on to the branch with one hand and leaned down, tiny brown and white feather in the other. PAPPI’s camera eye slid out on a slender stalk for about a foot, then retracted.

“A very fine specimen. But look at the small white growths on the tree trunk, a form of fungus, division name Mycota. The spores have been carried up there accidentally by a bird, perhaps by the Passer domesticus whose feather you are holding.”

“Huh?”

“A house sparrow.”

“Neat!”

“There are about fifty thousand fungi, or saprophytic and parasitic plantlike organisms, that have been identified and described. But there are probably a hundred thousand more. They include mushrooms, mildews, molds, yeasts –”

Timmy frowned. The thing was starting to sound like his schoolteacher.

“I can tell you about lichens too, if you want me to.”

“Not hardly!” Timmy said.

“Well, then,” the robot said. “Would you like to play horse?”

“How do I do that?”

“You can ride around on me. I am very strongly built.”

So Timmy rode around the yard on top of PAPPI, held in place by two of the long metal arms, shouting “Giddyap!” and “Whoa!” until his throat was scratchy. It was almost possible to forget PAPPI was a robot and imagine he was really riding a stallion with flowing mane across a Western mesa, just like the programs on the Tri-D that Karin frowned at him watching.

By the time the sky got dark and Karin came home again, Timmy knew he’d discovered a real friend, one who never grew bored with playing, never thought any question too stupid to answer, never criticized or blamed.

But it wasn’t the same thing at all as having a real father.

With PAPPI’s help, Timmy did better in school that year. PAPPI was programmed to learn too, right alongside Timmy, so that made a contest out of it – one PAPPI usually won. But since the robot never boasted of its success, Timmy really didn’t mind. And four mechanical hands meant the robot was a real wizard at assembling model spaceships and shuffling playing cards or juggling balls.

From time to time, Karin brought new programs home for PAPPI as they developed them at the lab. Timmy watched when she took the robot’s “head” apart and inserted them. Sometimes he held the tiny tools she used to work on the positronic brain. Afterward, PAPPI could do a lot more things to entertain Timmy, like playing the banjo, or telling jokes and drawing silly pictures to make him laugh.

Karin rarely brought anyone home for supper, not even people from U.S. Robots. But once, a lady she shared the office with came to Timmy’s house.

“It doesn’t look a bit like a mechanical man,” Timmy complained.

He and this fierce-looking lady hunkered down on the rug to look at PAPPI, who had just slithered to a halt in front of them. The robot’s wheels scuffed the polished floor as it braked.

“It doesn’t need to,” Karin’s officemate replied. “Form should follow function.”

“At least it could’ve hag legs, not wheels!” Timmy said, fingering one of the scratches in the wood.

“This was meant to be a utility robot. Your mother modified its brain, not its body.”

Karin had told him that Dr. Calvin didn’t build the robots quite like she did; Dr. Calvin was a robopsychologist, whatever that meant. In the kitchen, Karin, in an uncharacteristic display of domesticity, clattered dishes into the dishwasher.

Timmy frowned. “PAPPI thinks it’s more than that!”

“But you don’t.”

“How can you tell?”

Dr. Calvin didn’t answer. She was about as old as his mother, Timmy judged, and neither of them wore lipstick or smiled as much as Joey’s mother did.

Karin bustled back into the living room with a tray of pastries she’d bought at the store. “Anyone ready for dessert?”

“I do not think Timmy should have any more sugar in his diet today,” PAPPI said. “By my count, since getting up this morning he has consumed –”

“Oh, shut up!” Timmy said.

“Well,” Karin began, “if you think –”

“One of these days, you ‘re going to have trouble with that one,” Dr. Calvin said thoughtfully.

For a moment, Timmy thought she was speaking of him. But her eyes were on the robot squatting between them on the rug.

“I’m being very careful, Susan,” Karin said. “And Timmy knows not to take the robot outside.”

“I can’t tell my friends about PAPPI, either,” Timmy grumbled. “When Joey comes over to play I have to put PAPPI in the closet. And Joey’s my best friend!”

“That’s good to know, Timmy,” Dr. Calvin said. “But antirobot sentiment isn’t all I was referring to. Though goodness knows the Fundies are enough of a threat to our work.”

“Then what?” Karin said.

“I don’t think we realize yet what these positronic brains may be capable of someday.”

“I’m not that good, Susan,” Karin said, laughing. “Not like you!”.

The talk turned away from robots after that.

Then one day when they were in eighth grade, Joey’s mother got married again, and his new father took him on a trip to the moon.

“Why can’t we go to the moon, Karin?” Timmy demanded as Karin frowned at some work she’d brought home from the lab.

“Hmm?” She gazed at him over the top of the glasses she’d recently started wearing.

“I want to go to the moon. See the craters.”

“We can’t afford it.”

“I’ve got money saved up!”

“I can’t spare the time right now. Things are really busy at U.S. Robots. Susan and I may finally be getting our own offices!”

“If I had a father...” Timmy began darkly.

Karin set her notes down and gazed at him. “I’m sorry you’re still feeling a lack, Timmy. I’d hoped PAPPI would fill it.”

“Seems like I don’t have a father or a mother” ‘Timmy said.

The following year, Timmy took a class in physics at Karin’s urging and learned that he hated the subject. He became interested in sports, grew three inches, and discovered girls – one in particular, a dark-haired lovely with big breasts. PAPPI explained how to handle the sudden rush of hormones and awkwardness Timmy was feeling. Karin had done her part earlier, lecturing Timmy on the birds and the bees and the whole ecology of flowers, a discussion that bored him and left him feeling as if either he – or Karin – had totally missed the point. But PAPPI explained about Romeo and Juliet, whether it was a good idea to kiss a girl on a first date, and what to say to the other guys afterward.

In an attempt to influence him to take an interest in science, Karin bought him a telescope kit, and PAPPI helped him assemble it. PAPPI knew the names of all the stars and constellations they could see through the lens, and pointed out some of the orbiting space stations as well. Karin pretended not to notice when they stayed up well past Timmy’s bedtime.

Timmy went out for the school swim team. PAPPI listened to his bragging and sympathized when he lost. Timmy changed his name to Tim, and PAPPI, unlike Karin, never made a mistake after that. All in all, it was a good time.

But Joe got to have man-to-man talks with his new father.

Tim activated the visorphone again and made an appointment to see the mayor, Stephen Byerley.

Then he tried to put the whole thing out of his mind.

He’d forgotten Karin’s house was so small. He went through the rooms methodically, making lists of what to dump and what to pack. There wasn’t too much of the latter. Living quarters on a space station were small, but at least there was a sense of the vastness just beyond the screened walls. This house was a box, a tract house thrown up by greedy developers, cutting up the land that had once been countryside around New York City into smaller and smaller parcels. He remembered how Karin had explained to him that they couldn’t move farther out because she needed to be near U.S. Robots. By then, Joe and his parents had moved to a large house on Long Island where there was room for a swimming pool and a tennis court. And they could keep dogs. Tim remembered how he’d hated U.S. Robots when he heard about the dogs.

Beth deserved better. Tomorrow he’d meet the man Rathbone wanted him to kill.

The weapon one of his father-in-law’s ex-boxer bodyguards had given him weighed heavily in his pocket. Something to make hash out of that obscene positronic brain, Rathbone had said. For some reason he’d brought it with him when he Bed. Maybe even then he’d known he couldn’t really get away so easily.

He had to stop thinking of Byerley as a man. It was only a robot they were talking about, after all. Only a robot. That would become obvious in the inquest. Then there’d be public outrage at the revelation of the stupendous hoax. The “assassin,” if he were to be caught, would be released, a hero. Only of course, Rathbone would see to it that Tim wasn’t caught.

And in return, Tim would get a chance to have something he desperately wanted, namely a large share of Mercury Mining and Manufacturing.

There was a good chance Byerley wouldn’t keep the appointment anyway. His secretary had seemed doubtful the mayor would find time in his schedule for the vague reasons Tim had given her. Maybe nothing would come of it at all and he’d be off the hook. “Couldn’t get near him, “he’d tell Rathbone. “Not my fault!”

His future and Beth’s were on the line. He’d either have the money to be father and mother both to little Beth, or they’d both be on the run from Rathbone for the rest of their lives.

“You have to think about your life. You need to make plans for the future,” Karin said, some time in’ 18. “What subjects are you interested in pursuing for a career?”

Tim leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the table. He was in a truculent mood. “I don’t know. Something that pays well. Probably sports.”

“Sports?” Karin frowned. “How’re you going to make a living from sports?”

Swimming had developed Tim ‘s muscles enough to make the girls eager to go out with him now. Heady stuff. “The University of Hawaii has this great program –”

“I’d like to see you go into robotics,” Karin said. “The space colonies have a tremendous need for people like you.”

“Aw, Karin!”

“If I may interrupt,” PAPPI said. “A good liberal arts college will allow Tim to put off crucial decisions for at least another year without penalty.”

“You’re vetoing robotics?” Karin bit a fingernail. Tim noticed for the first time how much gray there was in her hair. She never colored it the way Joe’s mother did.

“No, I’m only suggesting he might broaden his education first,” the robot said.

Karin considered this. “I’m not going to pay for a college on the other side of the planet!”

“That’s hardly fair of you, Karin,” the robot said.

“I can’t afford to pay if he goes out of state! Do you think I’m rich or something? And Timmy’s hardly going to get a scholarship.”

“There could be some financial assistance available –”

“Timmy’s all I’ve got. I’ll miss him!”

“I love him, too,” PAPPI said.

Karin was suddenly very still. “What did you say?”

“That his absence would be noticeable to me, too,” the robot said cautiously.

She stared at the robot for a long moment. “What other feelings do you have, PAPPI?”

Untypically, the robot seemed reluctant to answer. “What did you expect, Karin, with all the special Calvin/Minsky subprograms you’ve given me over the years?”

“But it’s never proved out in the lab. Susan says –”

“What’re you talking about?” Tim interrupted.

“Positronic sentience,” Karin said slowly. “I’m just wondering if PAPPI –”

Exasperated, he said, “Well, of course PAPPI’s alive! I thought we were discussing my future?”

Karin looked as if she were watching something very far away. ‘‘I’ll have to take you back to the lab, PAPPI. If this is for real, then Susan will want to run the Turing series on you.”

Tim stared at his mother. She chose the worst moments to get all wrapped up in her work. “Look, I’ve got a serious decision to make here.”

“We’ve had no evidence for the development of full self-awareness in the lab,” Karin said thoughtfully. “As an extended function of advanced positronic intelligence, that is. My guess would be it’s prolonged exposure to humans in a real family situation that’s caused the difference. But I’ll have to talk to Susan about it. We’ll need to do the research.”

“I don’t want to go back to the lab” the robot began.

“I don’t see a choice, PAPPI. This is big-time. I mean –”

“All right, everybody listen up!” Tim said. “I’m going to make my own decisions from now on. I’ll go to school if and when – and wherever – I please!”

Karin glanced at him as if she’d forgotten he was there. “Well, of course, Timmy. But this is rather urgent, don’t you see?”

Once again, he thought angrily, he came out second in importance to a robot.

The University of Luna offered financial aid in return for taking part in athletic research in low or zero-grav. Since this freed him from Karin’s money, Tim enrolled. Karin didn’t come to see him off when he boarded the shuttle. Couldn’t wait to get down to the lab and her tests on PAPPI, he thought resentfully.

He worked through the university vacations as an assistant to a moon geologist who needed someone to keep track of his rocks. Since this wasn’t so different from keeping a stamp collection, Tim rather enjoyed it.

Other guys had parents shuttle up to visit from time to time, well-dressed men and women who conversed knowledgeably about interactive theater and world politics and preserving traditional human values in a mechanized world. Just because humans had ventured out into space and depended on robot help, didn’t mean they should abandon the historic virtues of the simple life – the family and physical labor – his new friends said. Tim knew what they meant. The kind of work his mother was doing at U.S. Robots was dangerous. “Mechanical Men,” for goodness sake! Couldn’t she see it wasn’t wise to allow robots to become too clever? They were designed as servants, not partners in the human enterprise. If humans didn’t keep that in mind, someday the robots would be a problem. Tim felt a growing estrangement from Karin and never invited her.

The most dazzling of these new friends was Sylvia Rathbone, daughter of an old-style entrepreneur in space, and as different in spirit from her father as he was from Karin. Sylvia represented everything he felt he’d been deprived of in life – money, a large family of aunts and uncles and cousins, a father who spoiled her shamelessly. She was a beautiful, merry, delicate-boned girl with movements as bright and swift as quicksilver. And to his great wonder and gratitude, she fell in love with him, too.

They were married in a small, intimate ceremony in the spring of’27, in a chapel carved from one of the moon’s vast underground caverns. They planned to keep it secret while he finished up the degree in geology he’d recently switched to, and she worked on her father to accept her marriage to a penniless student. But the following year, Beth was born. They sent notice of the event to both parents, and waited nervously.

Karin almost forgot to reply; she mentioned the birth finally in a postscript to her regular monthly fax transmission.

Mr. Rathbone’s attorney notified them that Sylvia had been cut out of his will until such time as she divorced her unsuitable husband.

It was hard managing a family on a student’s income, he found. But they went on. In the evening, he went home to his wife and his baby in the family area of the moon settlement. Sylvia had a small hydroponics garden where she grew tomatoes and corn to supplement their diet, and chrysanthemums for their spirits, she said. He was happy for the first time in his life, determined his daughter would have the proper family life that had been denied him. But he began to see that took money, and his happiness leaked away little by little.

He was off-world a year later, on a research trip with his geologist friend to bring in a little extra money, when a small piece of space debris hurtled in undetected and punctured the skin of the settlement in his sector. The atmosphere bled out swiftly. Automatic airlocks prevented the hemorrhage from spreading beyond the damaged area, but the robot rescue team was too late to save Sylvia. The baby had been in a creche in an unaffected sector.

The bill for the disposal of Sylvia’s remains arrived just as he broke out of his stunned inaction and began to mourn. One of the settlement’s robots brought it.

The wheel of his life had turned full circle. He, a child who’d been fatherless, raised by his mother, must play father to a motherless child. And he was broke. Swamp-black despair settled over him.

Two things happened.

Into this despair came Howard Rathbone III, who wanted his grandchild so urgently that he was prepared to make a deal with her father.

And Dr. Susan Calvin notified him by express fax that Karin had died suddenly after a brief illness and left him the little house in New York where he’d grown up. He’d never felt close to Karin, but it was difficult to comprehend that now she’d gone out of his life altogether.

He didn’t want to accept Rathbone’s suggestion, tempting though the money was. But he saw he’d have trouble keeping Beth from her grandfather otherwise.

There seemed to be only one thing to do. He fled with the baby, catching the first shuttle to Earth.

Tim sorted through the accumulated junk of his childhood. He found little of value in the house, little worth the exorbitant cost of lobbing it up to the colony. Karin had never been much of a homemaker. He packed a box of Scouting books he remembered treasuring as a boy, his old stamp collection in its dog-eared albums, the telescope PAPPI had helped him assemble.

He lugged the box of books out to the hall and set it down by the wall. Something on the polished wood floor drew his gaze, long blurred lines in the dust. He gently blew the dust aside. Scuff marks. He had a sudden jolting vision of PAPPI’s wheels whooshing over the slippery floor, skidding to a stop by the front door as the robot retrieved the morning’s mail. He saw, as if they were arriving now in Karin’s hallway, the papers, the garish advertisements, the pleas for contributions to worthy causes (he remembered how angry Karin became each time she found a request for money from the antirobot people), all the second-class junk that the law didn’t allow to clutter up the fax machines of the city’s households. Sorting through this paper rubbish had been one of PAPPI’s daily tasks. Preventing me from having apoplexy! Karin always said.

He crouched down and stared at the scuff marks. The floor appeared to have been resurfaced fairly recently. Gone were the scrapes and scratches Tim remembered inflicting on it over the years. Once her rambunctious son had left home, Karin had repaired the damage he’d done. But the scars left by the robot’s wheels were still raw. They had occurred sometime after the floor had been resurfaced. Tim straightened up slowly, disturbed by an idea growing in his mind.

He was uncomfortable here, anxious to be done with pawing over the artifacts of his boyhood. He turned to the visorphone to call one of the realtors whose cards he’d found pushed under the door. Time to cut loose from the past.

Before he could touch the keyboard, the phone shrilled at him. He hesitated. Rathbone again? Grimly he punched the receive button.

The face of a handsome, middle-aged man appeared on the screen.

“Tim Garroway?” The man had a pleasant, well-modulated voice. “I’m Stephen Byerley.”

“Mayor –” Tim stumbled to a reply. “I – well, I’m delighted to meet you.”

“My secretary gave me your message. I’d very much enjoy talking to you, but I’m afraid tomorrow’s schedule is so tight.”

Tim’s heart leaped wildly. So it was going to be taken out of his hands after all. He was conscious of the strong feeling of relief that swept over him. “That’s no problem, Mr. Mayor! No problem at all. It really wasn’t important – that is, it can wait.”

Byerley smiled. “I believe we have friends in common, Tim. May I call you Tim?”

“Sure.” He was impressed with the genuine warmth this man projected. How could he possibly have entertained ideas of eliminating him?

“I understand your mother was an associate of Dr. Susan Calvin, one of my most treasured friends.”

Something dull and cold clutched Tim. Of course. It was to be expected. “Oh?” he said heavily. “Yeah, I suppose so.”

Byerley was a robot after all.

At the edge of his consciousness he was aware of Beth tugging at his sleeve. He put an arm around his little daughter, pulling her toward him. He was a fool if he thought he could avoid fate so easily. It crept up on him like some primeval beast slinking up to the little campfire he’d hoped would protect Beth and himself against the darkness.

“The calendar’s crowded tomorrow,” Byerley said. “But I make time to run in Central Park. Do you run, Tim? I heard you were something of an athlete. If you’d care to join me at six tomorrow morning – I hope that’s not too early for you? I’m an early riser – we could talk then.”

Early riser! Tim thought. I bet you don’t sleep at all.

There really was no choice. It was Stephen Byerley’s life – if you could call it that – against his. Byerley had signed his own death warrant.

“Sure thing, Mr. Mayor, “he said.

“Steve,” Stephen Byerley said.

Tim nodded without replying and Byerley broke the connection. The weapon with which he must eliminate the robot bumped heavily against his hip as he turned away.

His stomach had twisted itself with tension, and he sensed the beginnings of a headache at the back of his skull. He would do what he had to do, for Beth ‘s sake. Until then, he’d put the whole thing out of his mind. He’d get on with packing up the house.

“What that, Dadda?” his daughter called, pointing at a door in the ceiling. She had a smudge of dust on one cheek, and toddled clumsily after him wherever he went.

“Nothing much, sweetheart. Just an attic for storage.”

As he said it, something clicked into place in his mind. Of course. That was where it would be.

“Want see!” Beth announced imperiously.

Indulging his daughter’s wishes took his mind off what he must do tomorrow. He touched the recessed button in the wall. The attic hatch opened, and wooden steps lowered to where they stood. He set one foot on the steps and the toddler immediately clung to his legs, clamoring loudly as if he were about to disappear forever. He picked her up and began his ascent. He made the climb awkwardly and with effort, unused to Earth’s gravity after all these years. Beth hummed encouragement to him as if he’d been a horse – or a robot, he realized.

It was cool and dim under the rafters, and it smelled of moldering clothes and musty books. Spiders had draped their gray curtains everywhere over the piled boxes and trunks. He moved cautiously, careful to keep the cobwebs away from Beth’s face.

She saw it first, pointing with a chubby finger to a dark comer.

“Look, Dadda! Baby.”

The robot sat like a blind deaf-mute under one of the main beams of the roof, only lightly powdered in dust. Even after all these years, it was impossible for him to look at it without emotion. Memories of baseball in the backyard, science projects, stamp collections, secret discussions about girls and sex, all came flooding back., His childhood was preserved in this attic, and all it took was one glance to bring it all back to vivid, painful life. He was eight years old again, and it was Father’s Day.

What was it doing here? Karin took it back to the lab. It was a great achievement – the crowning glory of her scientific career

He had assumed she’d taken it back to the lab. The recent scuff marks in the hall said otherwise. But why had she put it up here – just before she died apparently?

“Me play!” his daughter announced imperiously, scrambling down from his arms.

Gray dust swirls spiraled around her and she sneezed. He leaned forward, steadying her as she maneuvered over the unfinished floor of the attic. She chuckled, her little body tense with the excitement of discovery. He felt swamped again by mingled emotions of love and helplessness. How could he be both father and mother to this little Columbus, so eager to explore each new world she encountered? How could he protect her from the ugliness of a world where robots became mayor – and men like Rathbone schemed to kill them?

The toddler’s pudgy hands caressed the robot. The problem of the robot drew him again. The only reason he could imagine for Karin not returning PAPPI to the lab was because she’d cared about the robot.

He was about to pick Beth up and carry her away when the red light blinked on.

“Hello,” said the weak but familiar voice, “I’m PAPPI, a Paternal Alternative. Would you like to play?”

His daughter looked as if she were going to cry.

He wasn’t surprised to learn the robot’s power supply was still operational. Tim crouched beside his little daughter and put his arms around her. Here in this attic, for the very first time in his life, he had the feeling that he understood Karin. She’d hidden the robot up here when she knew she was dying; she hadn’t wanted PAPPI to go back to the lab, or to fall into the hands of the Fundies. What did that prove?

For a moment, he felt as if he were drowning under the tidal wave of the past. He was a small boy again, on Father’s Day.

Maybe if she’d cared about the robot, she’d cared about Timmy, too.

Had he really been so deprived? Love was impossible to define, but surely it included sharing, partnership in work and play, nurturing. A family was just a group that cared about each other, even if it included a robot.

“Hello, PAPPI,” Beth said uncertainly. “What are you?”

Could he give Beth as much as Karin had given him? He was certainly going to do his best. But what he wanted for his daughter couldn’t be built on a foundation of hatred and violence. Good didn’t come out of evil; PAPPI had taught him that. He couldn’t keep that appointment with Stephen Byerley tomorrow morning.

And that would mean Rathbone would be after them. There’d be no returning to their home on the moon, and no staying here on Earth. Life was hard for a geologist prospecting out in the asteroids, but what other chance did they have to be a family – father, daughter, and robot?

“Sweetie,” he said to his daughter, “this is your GrandPAPPI.”

Risk

2033 A.D.

HYPER BASE HAD lived for this day. Spaced about the gallery of the viewing room, in order and precedence strictly dictated by protocol, was a group of officials, scientists, technicians and others who could only be lumped under the general classification of “personnel.” In accordance with their separate temperaments they waited hopefully, uneasily, breathlessly, eagerly, or fearfully for this culmination of their efforts.

The hollowed interior of the asteroid known as Hyper Base had become for this day the center of a sphere of iron security that extended out for ten thousand miles. No ship might enter that sphere and live. No message might leave without scrutiny.

A hundred miles away, more or less, a small asteroid moved neatly in the orbit into which it had been urged a year before, an orbit that ringed Hyper Base in as perfect a circle as could be managed. The asteroidlet’s identity number was H937, but no one on Hyper Base called it anything but It. (“Have you been out on it today?”

“The general’s on it, blowing his top,” and eventually the impersonal pronoun achieved the dignity of capitalization.)

On It, unoccupied now as zero second approached, was the Parsec, the only ship of its kind ever built in the history of man. It lay, unmanned, ready for its takeoff into the inconceivable.

Gerald Black, who, as one of the bright young men in etherics engineering, rated a front-row view, cracked his large knuckles, then wiped his sweating palms on his stained white smock and said sourly, “Why don’t you bother the general, or Her Ladyship there?”

Nigel Ronson, of Interplanetary Press, looked briefly across the gallery toward the glitter of Major-general Richard Kallner and the unremarkable woman at his side, scarcely visible in the glare of his dress uniform. He said, “I would. except that I’m interested in news.”

Ronson was short and plump. He painstakingly wore his hair in a quarter-inch bristle, his shirt collar open and his trouser leg ankle-short, in faithful imitation of the newsmen who were stock characters on TV shows. He was a capable reporter nevertheless.

Black was stocky, and his dark hairline left little room for forehead, but his mind was as keen as his strong fingers were blunt. He said, “They’ve got all the news.”

“Nuts,” said Ronson. “Kallner’s got no body under that gold braid. Strip him and you’ll find only a conveyer belt dribbling orders downward and shooting responsibility upward.”

Black found himself at the point of a grin but squeezed it down. He said. “What about the Madam Doctor?”

“Dr. Susan Calvin of U. S. Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation.” intoned the reporter. “The lady with hyperspace where her heart ought to be and liquid helium in her eyes. She’d pass through the sun and come out the other end encased in frozen flame.”

Black came even closer to a grin. “How about Director Schloss, then?”

Ronson said glibly, “He knows too much. Between spending his time fanning the feeble flicker of intelligence in his listener and dimming his own brains for fear of blinding said listener permanently by sheer force of brilliance, he ends up saying nothing.”

Black showed his teeth this time. “Now suppose you tell me why you pick on me.”

“Easy, doctor. I looked at you and figured you’re too ugly to be stupid and too smart to miss a possible opportunity at some good personal publicity.”

“Remind me to knock you down someday.” said Black. “What do you want to know?”

The man from Interplanetary Press pointed into the pit and said, “Is that thing going to work?”

Black looked downward too, and felt a vague chill riffle over him like the thin night wind of Mars. The pit was one large television screen, divided in two. One half was an over-all view of It. On It’s pitted gray surface was the Parse, glowing mutedly in the feeble sunlight. The other half showed the control room of the Parsec. There was no life in that control room. In the pilot’s seat was an object the vague humanity of which did not for a moment obscure the fact that it was only a positronic robot.

Black said, “Physically, mister, this will work. That robot will leave and come back. Space! how we succeeded with that part of it. I watched it all. I came here two weeks after I took my degree in etheric physics and I’ve been here, barring leave and furloughs, ever since. I was here when we sent the first piece of iron wire to Jupiter’s orbit and back through hyperspace – and got back iron filings. I was here when we sent white mice there and back and ended up with mincemeat.

“We spent six months establishing an even hyperfield after that. We had to wipe out lags of as little as tenths of thousandths of seconds from point to point in matter being subjected to hypertravel. After that, the white mice started coming back intact. I remember when we celebrated for a week because one white mouse came back alive and lived ten minutes before dying. Now they live as long as we can take proper care of them.”

Ronson said, “Great!”

Black looked at him obliquely. “I said, physically it will work. Those white mice that come back –”

“Well?”

“No minds. Not even little white mice-type minds. They won’t eat. They have to be force-fed. They won’t mate. They won’t run. They sit. They sit. They sit. That’s all. We finally worked up to sending a chimpanzee. It was pitiful. It was too close to a man to make watching it bearable. It came back a hunk of meat that could make crawling motions. It could move its eyes and sometimes it would scrabble. It whined and sat in its own wastes without the sense to move. Somebody shot it one day, and we were all grateful for that. I tell you this, fella, nothing that ever went into hyperspace has come back with a mind.”

“Is this for publication?”

“After this experiment, maybe. They expect great things of it.” A comer of Black’s mouth lifted.

“You don’t?”

“With a robot at the controls? No.” Almost automatically Black’s mind went back to that interlude, some years back, in which he had been unwittingly responsible for the near loss of a robot. He thought of the Nestor robots that filled Hyper Base with smooth, ingrained knowledge and perfectionist shortcomings. Mat was the use of talking about robots? He was not, by nature, a missionary.

But then Ronson, filling the continuing silence with a bit of small talk, said, as he replaced the wad of gum in his mouth with a fresh piece, “Don’t tell me you’re anti-robot. I’ve always heard that scientists are the one group that aren’t anti-robot.”

Black’s patience snapped. He said, “That’s true, and that’s the trouble. Technology’s gone robot-happy. Any job has to have a robot, or the engineer in charge feels cheated. You want a doorstop; buy a robot with a thick foot. That’s a serious thing.” He was speaking in a low, intense voice, shoving the words directly into Ronson’s ear.

Ronson managed to extricate his arm. He said, “Hey, I’m no robot. Don’t take it out on me. I’m a man. Homo sapiens. You just broke an arm bone of mine. Isn’t that proof?”

Having started, however, it took more than frivolity to stop Black. He said, “Do you know how much time was wasted on this setup? We’ve had a perfectly generalized robot built and we’ve given it one order. Period. I heard the order given. I’ve memorized it. Short and sweet. ‘Seize the bar with a firm grip. Pull it toward you firmly. Firmly! Maintain your hold until the control board informs you that you have passed through hyperspace twice.’

“So at zero time, the robot will grab the control bar and pull it firmly toward himself. His hands are heated to blood temperature. Once the control bar is in position, heat expansion completes contact and hyperfield is initiated. If anything happens to his brain during the first trip through hyperspace, it doesn’t matter. All he needs to do is maintain position one microinstant and the ship will come back and the hyperfield will flip off. Nothing can go wrong. Then we study all its generalized reactions and see what, if anything, has gone wrong.”

Ronson looked blank. “This all makes sense to me.”

“Does it?” asked Black bitterly. “And what will you learn from a robot brain? It’s positronic, ours is cellular. It’s metal, ours is protein. They’re not the same. There’s no comparison. Yet I’m convinced that on the basis of what they learn, or think they learn, from the robot, they’ll send men into hyperspace. Poor devils! Look, it’s not a question of dying. It’s coming back mindless. If you’d seen the chimpanzee, you’d know what I mean. Death is clean and final. The other thing –”

The reporter said, “Have you talked about this to anyone?”

Black said, “Yes. They say what you said. They say I’m anti-robot and that settles everything. – Look at Susan Calvin there. You can bet she isn’t anti-robot. She came all the way from Earth to watch this experiment. If it had been a man at the controls, she wouldn’t have bothered. But what’s the use!”

“Hey,” said Ronson, “don’t stop now. There’s more.”

“More what?”

“More problems. You’ve explained the robot. But why the security provisions all of a sudden?”

“Huh?”

“Come on. Suddenly I can’t send dispatches. Suddenly ships can’t come into the area. What’s going on? This is just another experiment. The public knows about hyperspace and what you boys are trying to do, so what’s the big secret?”

The backwash of anger was still seeping over Black, anger against the robots, anger against Susan Calvin, anger at the memory of that little lost robot in his past. There was some to spare, he found, for the irritating little newsman and his irritating little questions.

He said to himself, Let’s see how he takes it. He said, “You really want to know?”

“You bet.”

“All right. We’ve never initiated a hyperfield for any object a millionth as large as that ship, or to send anything a millionth as far. That means that the hyperfield that will soon be initiated is some million million times as energetic as any we’ve ever handled. We’re not sure what it can do.”

“What do you mean?”

“Theory tells us that the ship will be neatly deposited out near Sirius and neatly brought back here. But how large a volume of space about the Parsec will be carried with it? It’s hard to tell. We don’t know enough about hyperspace. The asteroid on which the ship sits may go with it and, you know, if our calculations are even a little off, it may never be brought back here. It may return, say, twenty billion miles away. And there’s a chance that more of space than just the asteroid may be shifted.”

“How much more?” demanded Ronson.

“We can’t say. There’s an element of statistical uncertainty. That’s why no ships must approach too closely. That’s why we’re keeping things quiet till the experiment is safely over.”

Ronson swallowed audibly. “Supposing it reaches to Hyper Base?”

“There’s a chance of it,” said Black with composure. “Not much of a chance or Director Schloss wouldn’t be here, I assure you. Still, there’s a mathematical chance.”

The newsman looked at his watch. “When does this all happen?”

“In about five minutes. You’re not nervous, are you?”

“No,” said Ronson, but he sat down blankly and asked no more questions.

Black leaned outward over the railing. The final minutes were ticking off.

The robot moved!

There was a mass sway of humanity forward at that sign of motion and the lights dimmed in order to sharpen and heighten the brightness of the scene below. But so far it was only the first motion. The hands of the robot approached the starting bar.

Black waited for the final second when the robot would pull the bar toward himself. Black could imagine a number of possibilities, and all sprang nearly simultaneously to mind.

There would first be the short flicker that would indicate the departure through hyperspace and return. Even though the time interval was exceedingly short, return would not be to the precise starting position and there would be a flicker. There always was.

Then, when the ship returned, it might be found, perhaps, that the devices to even the field over the huge volume of the ship had proved inadequate. The robot might be scrap steel. The ship might be scrap steel.

Or their calculations might be somewhat off and the ship might never return. Or worse still, Hyper Base might go with the ship and never return.

Or, of course, all might be well. The ship might flicker and be there in perfect shape. The robot, with mind untouched, would get out of his seat and signal a successful completion of the first voyage of a man-made object beyond the gravitational control of the sun.

The last minute was ticking off.

The last second came and the robot seized the starting bar and pulled it firmly toward himself –

Nothing!

No flicker. Nothing!

The Parsec never left normal space.

Major-general Kallner took off his officer’s cap to mop his glistening forehead and in doing so exposed a bald head that would have aged him ten years in appearance if his drawn expression had not already done so. Nearly an hour had passed since the Parsec’s failure and nothing had been done.

“How did it happen? How did it happen? I don’t understand it.” Dr. Mayer Schloss, who at forty was the “grand old man” of the young science of hyperfield matrices, said hopelessly, “There is nothing wrong with the basic theory. I’ll swear my life away on that. There’s a mechanical failure on the ship somewhere. Nothing more.” He had said that a dozen times.

“I thought everything was tested.” That had been said too. “It was, sir, it was. Just the same –” And that.

They sat staring at each other in Kallner’s office, which was now out of bounds for all personnel. Neither quite dared to look at the third person present.

Susan Calvin’s thin lips and pale cheeks bore no expression. She said coolly, “You may console yourself with what I have told you before. It is doubtful whether anything useful would have resulted.”

“This is not the time for the old argument,” groaned Schloss. “I am not arguing. U. S. Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation will supply robots made up to specification to any legal purchaser for any legal use. We did our part, however. We informed you that we could not guarantee being able to draw conclusions with regard to the human brain from anything that happened to the positronic brain. Our responsibility ends there. There is no argument.”

“Great space,” said General Kallner, in a tone that made the expletive feeble indeed. “Let’s not discuss that.”

“What else was there to do?” muttered Schloss, driven to the subject nevertheless. “Until we know exactly what’s happening to the mind in hyperspace we can’t progress. The robot’s mind is at least capable of mathematical analysis. It’s a start, a beginning. And until we try –” He looked up wildly, “But your robot isn’t the point, Dr. Calvin. We’re not worried about him or his positronic brain. Damn it, woman –” His voice rose nearly to a scream.

The robopsychologist cut him to silence with a voice that scarcely raised itself from its level monotone. “No hysteria, man. In my lifetime I have witnessed many crises and I have never seen one solved by hysteria. I want answers to some questions.”

Schloss’s full lips trembled and his deep-set eyes seemed to retreat into their sockets and leave pits of shadow in their places. He said harshly, “Are you trained in etheric engineering?”

“That is an irrelevant question. I am Chief Robopsychologist of the United States Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation. That is a positronic robot sitting at the controls of the Parsec. Like all such robots, it is leased and not sold. I have a right to demand information concerning any experiment in which such a robot is involved.”

“Talk to her, Schloss,” barked General Kallner. “She’s – she’s all right.”

Dr. Calvin turned her pale eyes on the general, who had been present at the time of the affair of the lost robot and who therefore could be expected not to make the mistake of underestimating her. (Schloss had been out on sick leave at the time, and hearsay is not as effective as personal experience.) “Thank you, general,” she said.

Schloss looked helplessly from one to the other and muttered, “What do you want to know?”

“Obviously my first question is, What is your problem if the robot is not?”

“But the problem is an obvious one. The ship hasn’t moved. Can’t you see that? Are you blind?”

“I see quite well. What I don’t see is your obvious panic over some mechanical failure. Don’t you people expect failure sometimes?”

The general muttered, “It’s the expense. The ship was hellishly expensive. The World Congress – appropriations –” He bogged down.

“The ship’s still there. A slight overhaul and correction would involve no great trouble.”

Schloss had taken hold of himself. The expression on his face was one of a man who had caught his soul in both hands, shaken it hard and set it on its feet. His voice had even achieved a kind of patience. “Dr. Calvin, when I say a mechanical failure, I mean something like a relay jammed by a speck of dust, a connection inhibited by a spot of grease, a transistor balked by a momentary heat expansion. A dozen other things. A hundred other things. Any of them can be quite temporary. They can stop taking effect at any moment.”

“Which means that at any moment the Parsec may flash through hyperspace and back after all.”

“Exactly. Now do you understand?”

“Not at all. Wouldn’t that be just what you want?” Schloss made a motion that looked like the start of an effort to seize a double handful of hair and yank. He said, “You are not an etherics engineer.”

“Does that tongue-tie you, doctor?”

“We had the ship set,” said Schloss despairingly, “to make a jump from a definite point in space relative to the center of gravity of the galaxy to another point. The return was to be to the original point corrected for the motion of the solar system. In the hour that has passed since the Parsec should have moved, the solar system has shifted position. The original parameters to which the hyperfield is adjusted no longer apply. The ordinary laws of motion do not apply to hyperspace and it would take us a week of computation to calculate a new set of parameters.”

“You mean that if the ship moves now it will return to some unpredictable point thousands of miles away?”

“Unpredictable?” Schloss smiled hollowly. “Yes, I should call it that. The Parsec might end up in the Andromeda nebula or in the center of the sun. In any case the odds are against our ever seeing it again.”

Susan Calvin nodded. “The situation then is that if the ship disappears, as it may do at any moment, a few billion dollars of the taxpayers’ money may be irretrievably gone, and – it will be said – through bungling.”

Major-general Kallner could not have winced more noticeably if he had been poked with a sharp pin in the fundament.

The robopsychologist went on, “Somehow, then, the ship’s hyperfield mechanism must be put out of action, and that as soon as possible. Something will have to be unplugged or jerked loose or flicked off.” She was speaking half to herself.

“It’s not that simple,” said Schloss. “I can’t explain it completely, since you’re not an etherics expert. It’s like trying to break an ordinary electric circuit by slicing through high-tension wire with garden shears. It could be disastrous. It would be disastrous.”

“Do you mean that any attempt to shut off the mechanism would hurl the ship into hyperspace?”

“Any random attempt would probably do so. Hyper-forces are not limited by the speed of light. It is very probable that they have no limit of velocity at all. It makes things extremely difficult. The only reasonable solution is to discover the nature of the failure and learn from that a safe way of disconnecting the field.”

“And how do you propose to do that, Dr. Schloss?”

Schloss said, “It seems to me that the only thing to do is to send one of our Nestor robots –”

“No! Don’t be foolish,” broke in Susan Calvin.

Schloss said, freezingly, “The Nestors are acquainted with the problems of etherics engineering. They will be ideally –”

“Out of the question. You cannot use one of our positronic robots for such a purpose without my permission. You do not have it and you shall not get it.”

“What is the alternative?”

“You must send one of your engineers.”

Schloss shook his head violently, “Impossible. The risk involved is too great. If we lose a ship and man –”

“Nevertheless, you may not use a Nestor robot, or any robot.”

The general said, “I – I must get in touch with Earth. This whole problem has to go to a higher level.”

Susan Calvin said with asperity, “I wouldn’t just yet if I were you, general. You will be throwing yourself on the government’s mercy without a suggestion or plan of action of your own. You will not come out very well, I am certain.”

“But what is there to do?” The general was using his handkerchief again.

“Send a man. There is no alternative.”

Schloss had paled to a pasty gray. “It’s easy to say, send a man. But whom?”

“I’ve been considering that problem. Isn’t there a young man – his name is Black – whom I met on the occasion of my previous visit to Hyper Base?”

“Dr. Gerald Black?”

“I think so. Yes. He was a bachelor then. Is he still?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

“I would suggest then that he be brought here, say, in fifteen minutes, and that meanwhile I have access to his records.”

Smoothly she had assumed authority in this situation, and neither Kallner nor Schloss made any attempt to dispute that authority with her.

Black had seen Susan Calvin from a distance on this, her second visit to Hyper Base. He had made no move to cut down the distance. Now that he had been called into her presence, he found himself staring at her with revulsion and distaste. He scarcely noticed Dr. Schloss and General Kallner standing behind her.

He remembered the last time he had faced her thus, undergoing a cold dissection for the sake of a lost robot.

Dr. Calvin’s cool gray eyes were fixed steadily on his hot brown ones.

“Dr. Black,” she said, “I believe you understand the situation.” Black said, “I do.”

“Something will have to be done. The ship is too expensive to lose. The bad publicity will probably mean the end of the project.”

Black nodded. “I’ve been thinking that.”

“I hope you’ve also thought that it will be necessary for someone to board the Parsec, find out what’s wrong, and – uh – deactivate it.”

There was a moment’s pause. Black said harshly, “What fool would go?”

Kallner frowned and looked at Schloss, who bit his lip and looked nowhere.

Susan Calvin said, “There is, of course, the possibility of accidental activation of the hyperfield, in which case the ship may drive beyond all possible reach. On the other hand, it may return somewhere within the solar system. If so, no expense or effort will be spared to recover man and ship.”

Black said, “Idiot and ship! Just a correction.”

Susan Calvin disregarded the comment. She said, “I have asked General Kallner’s permission to put it to you. It is you who must go.”

No pause at all here. Black said, in the flattest possible way, “Lady, I’m not volunteering.”

“There are not a dozen men on Hyper Base with sufficient knowledge to have any chance at all of carrying this thing through successfully. Of those who have the knowledge, I’ve selected you on the basis of our previous acquaintanceship. You will bring to this task an understanding –”

“Look, I’m not volunteering.”

“You have no choice. Surely you will face your responsibility?”

“My responsibility? What makes it mine?”

“The fact that you are best fitted for the job.”

“Do you know the risk?”

“I think I do,” said Susan Calvin.

“I know you don’t. You never saw that chimpanzee. Look, when I said ‘idiot and ship’ I wasn’t expressing an opinion. I was telling you a fact. I’d risk my life if I had to. Not with pleasure, maybe, but I’d risk it. Risking idiocy, a lifetime of animal mindlessness, is something I won’t risk, that’s all.”

Susan Calvin glanced thoughtfully at the young engineer’s sweating, angry face.

Black shouted, “Send one of your robots, one of your NS-2 jobs.”

The psychologist’s eye reflected a kind of cold glitter. She said with deliberation, “Yes, Dr. Schloss suggested that. But the NS-2 robots are leased by our firm, not sold. They cost millions of dollars apiece, you know. I represent the company and I have decided that they are too expensive to be risked in a matter such as this.”

Black lifted his hands. They clenched and trembled close to his chest as though he were forcibly restraining them. “You’re telling me – you’re saying you want me to go instead of a robot because I’m more expendable.”

“It comes to that, yes.”

“Dr. Calvin,” said Black, “I’d see you in hell first.”

“That statement might be almost literally true, Dr. Black. As General Kallner will confirm, you are ordered to take this assignment. You are under quasi-military law here, I understand, and if you refuse an assignment, you can be court-martialed. A case like this will mean Mercury prison and I believe that will be close enough to hell to make your statement uncomfortably accurate were I to visit you, though I probably would not. On the other hand, if you agree to board the Parsec and carry through this job, it will mean a great deal for your career.”

Black glared, red-eyed, at her.

Susan Calvin said, “Give the man five minutes to think about this, General Kallner, and get a ship ready.”

Two security guards escorted Black out of the room.

Gerald Black felt cold. His limbs moved as though they were not part of him. It was as though he were watching himself from some remote, safe place, watching himself board a ship and make ready to leave for It and for the Parsec.

He couldn’t quite believe it. He had bowed his head suddenly and said, “I’ll go.”

But why?

He had never thought of himself as the hero type. Then why? Partly, of course, there was the threat of Mercury prison. Partly it was the awful reluctance to appear a coward in the eyes of those who knew him, that deeper cowardice that was behind half the bravery in the world.

Mostly, though, it was something else.

Ronson of Interplanetary Press had stopped Black momentarily as he was on his way to the ship. Black looked at Ronson’s Bushed face and said. “What do you want?”

Ronson babbled. “Listen! When you get back, I want it exclusive. I’ll arrange any payment you want – anything you want –”

Black pushed him aside, sent him sprawling, and walked on.

The ship had a crew of two. Neither spoke to him. Their glances slid over and under and around him. Black didn’t mind that. They were scared spitless themselves and their ship was approaching the Parsec like a kitten skittering sideways toward the first dog it had ever seen. He could do without them.

There was only one face that he kept seeing. The anxious expression of General Kallner and the look of synthetic determination on Schloss’s face were momentary punctures on his consciousness. They healed almost at once. It was Susan Calvin’s unruffled face that he saw. Her calm expressionlessness as he boarded the ship.

He stared into the blackness where Hyper Base had already disappeared into space –

Susan Calvin! Doctor Susan Calvin! Robopsychologist Susan Calvin! The robot that walks like a woman!

What were her three laws, he wondered. First Law: Thou shalt protect the robot with all thy might and all thy heart and all thy soul. Second Law: Thou shalt hold the interests of U. S. Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation holy provided it interfereth not with the First Law. Third Law: Thou shalt give passing consideration to a human being provided it interfereth not with the First and Second laws.

Had she ever been young, he wondered savagely? Had she ever felt one honest emotion?

Space! How he wanted to do something – something that would take that frozen look of nothing off her face.

And he would!

By the stars, he would. Let him but get out of this sane and he would see her smashed and her company with her and all the vile brood of robots with them. It was that thought that was driving him more than fear of prison or desire for social prestige. It was that thought that almost robbed him of fear altogether. Almost.

One of the pilots muttered at him, without looking, “You can drop down from here. It’s half a mile under.”

Black said bitterly, “Aren’t you landing?”

“Strict orders not to. The vibration of the landing might –”

“What about the vibration of my landing?” The pilot said, “I’ve got my orders.”

Black said no more but climbed into his suit and waited for the inner lock to open. A tool kit was welded firmly to the metal of the suit about his right thigh.

Just as he stepped into the lock, the earpieces inside his helmet rumbled at him. “Wish you luck, doctor.”

It took a moment for him to realize that it came from the two men aboard ship, pausing in their eagerness to get out of that haunted volume of space to give him that much, anyway.

“Thanks,” said Black awkwardly, half resentfully.

And then he was out in space, tumbling slowly as the result of the slightly off-center thrust of feet against outer lock.

He could see the Parsec waiting for him, and by looking between his legs at the right moment of the tumble he could see the long hiss of the lateral jets of the ship that had brought him, as it turned to leave.

He was alone! Space, he was alone!

Could any man in history ever have felt so alone?

Would he know, he wondered sickly, if – if anything happened? Would there be any moments of realization? Would he feel his mind fade and the light of reason and thought dim and blank out?

Or would it happen suddenly, like the cut of a force knife? In either case

The thought of the chimpanzee, blank-eyed, shivering with mindless terrors, was fresh within him.

The asteroid was twenty feet below him now. It swam through space with an absolutely even motion. Barring human agency, no grain of sand upon it had as much as stirred through astronomical periods of time.

In the ultimate jarlessness of It, some small particle of grit encumbered a delicate working unit on board the Parsec, or a speck of impure sludge in the fine oil that bathed some moving part had stopped it.

Perhaps it required only a small vibration, a tiny tremor originating from the collision of mass and mass to unencumber that moving part, bringing it down along its appointed path, creating the hyperfield, blossoming it outward like an incredibly ripening rose.

His body was going to touch It and he drew his limbs together in his anxiety to “hit easy.” He did not want to touch the asteroid. His skin crawled with intense aversion.

It came closer. Now – now –

Nothing!

There was only the continuing touch of the asteroid, the uncanny moments of slowly mounting pressure that resulted from a mass of 250 pounds (himself plus suit) possessing full inertia but no weight to speak of.

Black opened his eyes slowly and let the sight of stars enter. The sun was a glowing marble, its brilliance muted by the polarizing shield over his faceplate. The stars were correspondingly feeble but they made up the familiar arrangement. With sun and constellations normal, he was still in the solar system. He could even see Hyper Base, a small, dim crescent.

He stiffened in shock at the sudden voice in his ear. It was Schloss.

Schloss said, “We’ve got you in view, Dr. Black. You are not alone!”

Black could have laughed at the phraseology, but he only said in a low, clear voice, “Clear off. If you’ll do that, you won’t be distracting me.”

A pause. Schloss’s voice, more cajoling, “If you care to report as you go along, it may relieve the tension.”

“You’ll get information from me when I get back. Not before.” He said it bitterly, and bitterly his metal-encased fingers moved to the control panel in his chest and blanked out the suit’s radio. They could talk into a vacuum now. He had his own plans. If he got out of this sane, it would be his show.

He got to his feet with infinite caution and stood on It. He swayed a bit as involuntary muscular motions, tricked by the almost total lack of gravity into an endless series of overbalancings, pulled him this way and that. On Hyper Base there was a pseudo-gravitic field to hold them down. Black found that a portion of his mind was sufficiently detached to remember that and appreciate it in absentia.

The sun had disappeared behind a crag. The stars wheeled visibly in time to the asteroid’s one-hour rotation period.

He could see the Parsec from where he stood and now he moved toward it slowly, carefully – tippy-toe almost. (No vibration. No vibration. The words ran pleadingly through his mind.)

Before he was completely aware of the distance he had crossed, he was at the ship. He was at the foot of the line of hand grips that led to the outer lock.

There he paused.

The ship looked quite normal. Or at least it looked normal except for the circle of steely knobs that girdled it one third of the way up, and a second circle two thirds of the way up. At the moment, they must be straining to become the source poles of the hyperfield.

A strange desire to reach up and fondle one of them came over Black. It was one of those irrational impulses, like the momentary thought, “What if I jumped?” that is almost inevitable when one stares down from a high building.

Black took a deep breath and felt himself go clammy as he spread the fingers of both hands and then lightly, so lightly, put each hand flat against the side of the ship.

Nothing! He seized the lowest hand grip and pulled himself up, carefully. He longed to be as experienced at null-gravity manipulation as were the construction men. You had to exert enough force to overcome inertia and then stop. Continue the pull a second too long and you would overbalance, careen into the side of the ship.

He climbed slowly, tippy-fingers, his legs and hips swaying to the right as his left arm reached upward, to the left as his right arm reached upward.

A dozen rungs, and his fingers hovered over the contact that would open the outer lock. The safety marker was a tiny green smear.

Once again he hesitated. This was the first use he would make of the ship’s power. His mind ran over the wiring diagrams and the force distributions. If he pressed the contact, power would be siphoned off the micropile to pull open the massive slab of metal that was the outer lock.

Well? What was the use? Unless he had some idea as to what was wrong, there was no way of telling the effect of the power diversion. He sighed and touched contact.

Smoothly, with neither jar nor sound, a segment of the ship curled open. Black took one more look at the friendly constellations (they had not changed) and stepped into the softly illuminated cavity. The outer lock closed behind him.

Another contact now. The inner lock had to be opened. Again he paused to consider. Air pressure within the ship would drop ever so slightly as the inner lock opened, and seconds would pass before the ship’s electrolyzers could make up the loss.

Well? The Bosch posterior-plate, to name one item, was sensitive to pressure, but surely not this sensitive.

He sighed again, more softly (the skin of his fear was growing calloused) and touched the contact. The inner lock opened.

He stepped into the pilot room of the Parsec, and his heart jumped oddly when the first thing he saw was the visiplate, set for reception and powdered with stars. He forced himself to look at them.

Nothing!

Cassiopeia was visible. The constellations were normal and he was inside the Parsec. Somehow he could feel the worst was over. Having come so far and remained within the solar system, having kept his mind so far, he felt something that was faintly like confidence begin to seep back.

There was an almost supernatural stillness about the Parsec. Black had been in many ships in his life and there had always been the sounds of life, even if only the scuffing of a shoe or a cabin boy humming in the corridor. Here the very beating of his own heart seemed muffled to soundlessness.

The robot in the pilot’s seat had its back to him. It indicated by no response that it was aware of his having entered.

Black bared his teeth in a savage grin and said sharply, “Release the bar! Stand up!” The sound of his voice was thunderous in the close quarters.

Too late he dreaded the air vibrations his voice set up, but the stars on the visiplate remained unchanged.

The robot, of course, did not stir. It could receive no sensations of any sort. It could not even respond to the First Law. It was frozen in the unending middle of what should have been almost instantaneous process.

He remembered the orders it had been given. They were open to no misunderstanding: “Seize the bar with a firm grip. Pull it toward you firmly. Firmly! Maintain your hold until the control board informs you that you have passed through hyperspace twice.”

Well, it had not yet passed through hyperspace once. Carefully, he moved closer to the robot. It sat there with the bar pulled firmly back between its knees. That brought the trigger mechanism almost into place. The temperature of his metal hands then curled that trigger, thermocouple fashion, just sufficiently for contact to be made. Automatically Black glanced at the thermometer reading set into the control board. The robot’s hands were at 37 Centigrade, as they should be.

He thought sardonically, Fine thing. I’m alone with this machine and I can’t do anything about it.

What he would have liked to do was take a crowbar to it and smash it to filings. He enjoyed the flavor of that thought. He could see the horror on Susan Calvin’s face (if any horror could creep through the ice, the horror of a smashed robot was it). Like all positronic robots, this one-shot was owned by U. S. Robots, had been made there, had been tested there.

And having extracted what juice he could out of imaginary revenge, he sobered and looked about the ship.

After all, progress so far had been zero.

Slowly, he removed his suit. Gently, he laid it on the rack. Gingerly, he walked from room to room, studying the large interlocking surfaces of the hyperatomic motor, following the cables, inspecting the field relays.

He touched nothing. There were a dozen ways of deactivating the hyperfield, but each one would be ruinous unless he knew at least approximately where the error lay and let his exact course of procedure be guided by that.

He found himself back at the control panel and cried in exasperation at the grave stolidity of the robot’s broad back, “Tell me, will you? What’s wrong?”

There was the urge to attack the ship’s machinery at random. Tear at it and get it over with. He repressed the impulse firmly. If it took him a week, he would deduce, somehow, the proper point of attack. He owed that much to Dr. Susan Calvin and his plans for her.

He turned slowly on his heel and considered. Every part of the ship, from the engine itself to each individual two-way toggle switch. had been exhaustively checked and tested on Hyper Base. It was almost impossible to believe that anything could go wrong. There wasn’t a thing on board ship

Well, yes, there was, of course. The robot! That had been tested at U. S. Robots and they, blast their devils’ hides, could be assumed to be competent.

What was it everyone always said: A robot can just naturally do a better job.

It was the normal assumption, based in part on U. S. Robots’ own advertising campaigns. They could make a robot that would be better than a man for a given purpose. Not “as good as a man.” but “better than a man.”

And as Gerald Black stared at the robot and thought that, his brows contracted under his low forehead and his look became compounded of astonishment and a wild hope.

He approached and circled the robot. He stared at its arms holding the control bar in trigger position, holding it forever so, unless the ship jumped or the robot’s own power supply gave out.

Black breathed. “I bet. I bet.”

He stepped away, considered deeply, He said. “It’s got to be.”

He turned on ship’s radio. Its carrier beam was already focused on Hyper Base. He barked into the mouthpiece. “Hey, Schloss.”

Schloss was prompt in his answer. “Great Space. Black –”

“Never mind,” said Black crisply. “No speeches. I just want to make sure you’re watching.”

“Yes, of course. We all are. Look –”

But Black turned off the radio. He grinned with tight one-sidedness at the TV camera inside the pilot room and chose a portion of the hyperfield mechanism that would be in view. He didn’t know how many people would be in the viewing room. There might be only Kallner, Schloss and Susan Calvin. There might be all personnel. In any case, he would give them something to watch.

Relay Box #3 was adequate for the purpose, he decided. It was located in a wall recess, coated over with a smooth cold-seamed panel. Black reached into his tool kit and removed the splayed, blunt-edged seamer. He pushed his space suit farther back on the rack (having turned it to bring the tool kit in reach) and turned to the relay box.

Ignoring a last tingle of uneasiness, Black brought up the seamer, made contact at three separated points along the cold seam. The tool’s force field worked deftly and quickly, the handle growing a trifle warm in his hand as the surge of energy came and left. The panel swung free.

He glanced quickly, almost involuntarily, at the ship’s visiplate. The stars were normal. He, himself, felt normal.

That was the last bit of encouragement he needed. He raised his foot and smashed his shoe down on the feather-delicate mechanism within the recess.

There was a splinter of glass, a twisting of metal, and a tiny spray of mercury droplets

Black breathed heavily. He turned on the radio once more. “Still there, Schloss?”

“Yes, but –”

“Then I report the hyperfield on board the Parsec to be deactivated. Come and get me.”

Gerald Black felt no more the hero than when he had left for the Parsec, but he found himself one just the same. The men who had brought him to the small asteroid came to take him off. They landed this time. They clapped his back.

Hyper Base was a crowded mass of waiting personnel when the ship arrived, and Black was cheered. He waved at the throng and grinned, as was a hero’s obligation, but he felt no triumph inside. Not yet. Only anticipation. Triumph would come later, when he met Susan Calvin.

He paused before descending from the ship. He looked for her and did not see her. General Kallner was there, waiting, with all his soldierly stiffness restored and a bluff look of approval firmly plastered on his face. Mayer Schloss smiled nervously at him. Ronson of Interplanetary Press waved frantically. Susan Calvin was nowhere.

He brushed Kallner and Schloss aside when he landed. “I’m going to wash and eat first.”

He had no doubts but that, for the moment at least, he could dictate terms to the general or to anybody.

The security guards made a way for him. He bathed and ate leisurely in enforced isolation, he himself being solely responsible for the enforcement. Then he called Ronson of Interplanetary and talked to him briefly. He waited for the return call before he felt he could relax thoroughly. It had all worked out so much better than he had expected. The very failure of the ship had conspired perfectly with him.

Finally he called the general’s office and ordered a conference. It was what it amounted to – orders. Major-general Kallner all but said, “Yes, Sir.”

They were together again. Gerald Black, Kallner, Schloss – even Susan Calvin. But it was Black who was dominant now. The robopsychologist, graven-faced as ever, as unimpressed by triumph as by disaster, had nevertheless seemed by some subtle change of attitude to have relinquished the spotlight.

Dr. Schloss nibbled a thumbnail and began by saying, cautiously, “Dr. Black, we are all very grateful for your bravery and success.” Then, as though to institute a healthy deflation at once, he added, “Still, smashing the relay box with your heel was imprudent and – well, it was an action that scarcely deserved success.”

Black said, “It was an action that could scarcely have avoided success. You see” (this was bomb number one) “by that time I knew what had gone wrong.”

Schloss rose to his feet. “You did? Are you sure?”

“Go there yourself. It’s safe now. I’ll tell you what to look for.” Schloss sat down again, slowly. General Kallner was enthusiastic. “Why, this is the best yet, if true.”

“It’s true,” said Black. His eyes slid to Susan Calvin, who said nothing.

Black was enjoying the sensation of power. He released bomb number two by saying, “It was the robot, of course. Did you hear that, Dr. Calvin?”

Susan Calvin spoke for the first time. “I hear it. I rather expected it, as a matter of fact. It was the only piece of equipment on board ship that had not been tested at Hyper Base.”

For a moment Black felt dashed. He said, “You said nothing of that.”

Dr. Calvin said, “As Dr. Schloss said several times, I am not an etherics expert. My guess, and it was no more than that, might easily have been wrong. I felt I had no right to prejudice you in advance of your mission.”

Black said, “All right, did you happen to guess how it went wrong?”

“No, sir.”

“Why, it was made better than a man. That’s what the trouble was. Isn’t it strange that the trouble should rest with the very specialty of U. S. Robots? They make robots better than men, I understand.”

He was slashing at her with words now but she did not rise to his bait.

Instead, she sighed. “My dear Dr. Black. I am not responsible for the slogans of our sales-promotion department.”

Black felt dashed again. She wasn’t an easy woman to handle, this Calvin. He said, “Your people built a robot to replace a man at the controls of the Parsec. He had to pull the control bar toward himself, place it in position and let the heat of his hands twist the trigger to make final contact. Simple enough, Dr. Calvin?”

“Simple enough, Dr. Black.”

“And if the robot had been made no better than a man, he would have succeeded. Unfortunately, U. S. Robots felt compelled to make it better than a man. The robot was told to pull back the control bar firmly. Firmly. The word was repeated, strengthened, emphasized. So the robot did what it was told. It pulled it back firmly. There was only one trouble. He was easily ten times stronger than the ordinary human being for whom the control bar was designed.”

“Are you implying –”

“I’m saying the bar bent. It bent back just enough to misplace the trigger. When the heat of the robot’s hand twisted the thermocouple’ it did not make contact.” He grinned. “This isn’t the failure of just one robot, Dr. Calvin. It’s symbolic of the failure of the robot idea.”

“Come now, Dr. Black,” said Susan Calvin icily, “you’re drowning logic in missionary psychology. The robot was equipped with adequate understanding as well as with brute force. Had the men who gave it its orders used quantitative terms rather than the foolish adverb ‘firmly,’ this would not have happened. Had they said, ‘apply a pull of fifty-five pounds,’ all would have been well.”

“What you are saying,” said Black, “is that the inadequacy of a robot must be made up for by the ingenuity and intelligence of a man. I assure you that the people back on Earth will look at it in that way and will not be in the mood to excuse U. S. Robots for this fiasco.”

Major-general Kallner said quickly, with a return of authority to his voice, “Now wait, Black, all that has happened is obviously classified information.”

“In fact,” said Schloss suddenly, “your theory hasn’t been checked yet. We’ll send a party to the ship and find out. It may not be the robot at all.”

“You’ll take care to make that discovery, will you? I wonder if the people will believe an interested party. Besides which, I have one more thing to tell you.” He readied bomb number three and said, “As of this moment, I’m resigning from this man’s project. I’m quitting.”

“Why?” asked Susan Calvin.

“Because, as you said, Dr. Calvin, I am a missionary,” said Black, smiling. “I have a mission. I feel I owe it to the people of Earth to tell them that the age of the robots has reached the point where human life is valued less than robot life. It is now possible to order a man into danger because a robot is too precious to risk. I believe Earthmen should hear that. Many men have many reservations about robots as is. U. S. Robots has not yet succeeded in making it legally permissible to use robots on the planet Earth itself. I believe what I have to say, Dr. Calvin, will complete the matter. For this day’s work, Dr. Calvin, you and your company and your robots will be wiped off the face of the solar system.”

He was forewarning her, Black knew; he was forearming her, but he could not forego this scene. He had lived for this very moment ever since he had first left for the Parsec, and he could not give it up.

He all but gloated at the momentary glitter in Susan Calvin’s pale eyes and at the faintest flush in her cheeks. He thought, How do you feel now, madam scientist?

Kallner said, “You will not be permitted to resign, Black, nor will you be permitted –”

“How can you stop me, general? I’m a hero, haven’t you heard? And old Mother Earth will make much of its heroes. It always has. They’ll want to hear from me and they’ll believe anything I say. And they won’t like it if I’m interfered with, at least not while I’m a fresh, brand-new hero. I’ve already talked to Ronson of Interplanetary Press and told him I had something big for them, something that would rock every government official and science director right out of the chair plush, so Interplanetary will be first in line, waiting to hear from me. So what can you do except to have me shot? And I think you’d be worse off after that if you tried it.”

Black’s revenge was complete. He had spared no word. He had hampered himself not in the least. He rose to go.

“One moment, Dr. Black,” said Susan Calvin. Her low voice carried authority.

Black turned involuntarily, like a schoolboy at his teacher’s voice, but he counteracted that gesture by a deliberately mocking, “You have an explanation to make, I suppose?”

“Not at all,” she said primly. “You have explained for me, and quite well. I chose you because I knew you would understand, though I thought you would understand sooner. I had had contact with you before. I knew you disliked robots and would, therefore, be under no illusions concerning them. From your records, which I asked to see before you were given your assignment, I saw that you had expressed disapproval of this robot-through-hyperspace experiment. Your superiors held that against you, but I thought it a point in your favor.”

“What are you talking about, doctor, if you’ll excuse my rudeness?”

“The fact that you should have understood why no robot could have been sent on this mission. What was it you yourself said? Something about a robot’s inadequacies having to be balanced by the ingenuity and intelligence of a man. Exactly so, young man, exactly so. Robots have no ingenuity. Their minds are finite and can be calculated to the last decimal. That, in fact, is my job.

“Now if a robot is given an order, a precise order, he can follow it. If the order is not precise, he cannot correct his own mistake without further orders. Isn’t that what you reported concerning the robot on the ship? How then can we send a robot to find a flaw in a mechanism when we cannot possibly give precise orders, since we know nothing about the flaw ourselves? ‘Find out what’s wrong’ is not an order you can give to a robot; only to a man. The human brain, so far at least, is beyond calculation.”

Black sat down abruptly and stared at the psychologist in dismay. Her words struck sharply on a substratum of understanding that had been larded over with emotion. He found himself unable to refute her. Worse than that, a feeling of defeat encompassed him.

He said, “You might have said this before I left.”

“I might have,” agreed Dr. Calvin, “but I noticed your very natural fear for your sanity. Such an overwhelming concern would easily have hampered your efficiency as an investigator, and it occurred to me to let you think that my only motive in sending you was that I valued a robot more. That, I thought, would make you angry, and anger, my dear Dr. Black, is sometimes a very useful emotion. At least, an angry man is never quite as afraid as he would be otherwise. It worked out nicely, I think.” She folded her hands loosely in her lap and came as near a smile as she ever had in her life.

Black said, “I’ll be damned.” Susan Calvin said, “So now, if you’ll take my advice, return to your job, accept your status as hero, and tell your reporter friend the details of your brave deed. Let that be the big news you promised him.”

Slowly, reluctantly, Black nodded.

Schloss looked relieved; Kallner burst into a toothy smile. They held out hands, not having said a word in all the time that Susan Calvin had spoken, and not saying a word now.

Black took their hands and shook them with some reserve. He said, “It’s your part that should be publicized, Dr. Calvin.”

Susan Calvin said icily, “Don’t be a fool, young man. This is my job.”

Galley Slave

2034 A.D.

THE UNITED STATES Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation, as defendants in the case, had influence enough to force a closed-doors trial without a jury.

Nor did Northeastern University try hard to prevent it. The trustees knew perfectly well how the public might react to any issue involving misbehavior of a robot, however rarefied that misbehavior might be. They also had a clearly visualized notion of how an antirobot riot might become an antiscience riot without warning.

The government, as represented in this case by Justice Harlow Shane, was equally anxious for a quiet end to this mess. Both U. S. Robots and the academic world were bad people to antagonize.

Justice Shane said, “Since neither press, public nor jury is present, gentlemen, let us stand on as little ceremony as we can and get to the facts.”

He smiled stiffly as he said this, perhaps without much hope that his request would be effective, and hitched at his robe so that he might sit more comfortably. His face was pleasantly rubicund, his chin round and soft, his nose broad and his eyes light in color and wide-set. All in all, it was not a face with much judicial majesty and the judge knew it.

Barnabas H. Goodfellow, Professor of Physics at Northeastern U., was sworn in first, taking the usual vow with an expression that made mincemeat of his name.

After the usual opening-gambit questions, Prosecution shoved his hands deep into his pockets and said, “When was it, Professor, that the matter of the possible employ of Robot EZ-27 was first brought to your attention, and how?”

Professor Goodfellow’s small and angular face set itself into an uneasy expression, scarcely more benevolent than the one it replaced. He said, “I have had professional contact and some social acquaintance with Dr. Alfred Lanning, Director of Research at U. S. Robots. I was inclined to listen with some tolerance then when I received a rather strange suggestion from him on the third of March of last year –”

“Of 2033?”

“That’s right.”

“Excuse me for interrupting. Please proceed.”

The professor nodded frostily, scowled to fix the facts in his mind, and began to speak.

Professor Goodfellow looked at the robot with a certain uneasiness. It had been carried into the basement supply room in a crate, in accordance with the regulations governing the shipment of robots from place to place on the Earth’s surface.

He knew it was coming; it wasn’t that he was unprepared. From the moment of Dr. Lanning’s first phone call on March 3, he had felt himself giving way to the other’s persuasiveness, and now, as an inevitable result, he found himself face to face with a robot.

It looked uncommonly large as it stood within arm’s reach. Alfred Lanning cast a hard glance of his own at the robot, as though making certain it had not been damaged in transit. Then he turned his ferocious eyebrows and his mane of white hair in the professor’s direction.

“This is Robot EZ-27, first of its model to be available for public use.” He turned to the robot. “This is Professor Goodfellow, Easy.”

Easy spoke impassively, but with such suddenness that the professor shied. “Good afternoon, Professor.”

Easy stood seven feet tall and had the general proportions of a man – always the prime selling point of U. S. Robots. That and the possession of the basic patents on the positronic brain had given them an actual monopoly on robots and a near-monopoly on computing machines in general.

The two men who had uncrated the robot had left now and the professor looked from Lanning to the robot and back to Lanning. “It is harmless, I’m sure.” He didn’t sound sure.

“More harmless than I am,” said Lanning. “I could be goaded into striking you. Easy could not be. You know the Three Laws of Robotics, I presume.”

“Yes, of course,” said Goodfellow.

“They are built into the positronic patterns of the brain and must be observed. The First Law, the prime rule of robotic existence, safeguards the life and well-being of all humans.” He paused, rubbed at his cheek, then added, “It’s something of which we would like to persuade all Earth if we could.”

“It’s just that he seems formidable.”

“Granted. But whatever he seems, you’ll find that he is useful.”

“I’m not sure in what way. Our conversations were not very helpful in that respect. Still, I agreed to look at the object and I’m doing it.”

“We’ll do more than look, Professor. Have you brought a book?”

“I have.”

“May I see it?”

Professor Goodfellow reached down without actually taking his eyes off the metal-in-human-shape that confronted him. From the briefcase at his feet, he withdrew a book.

Lanning held out his hand for it and looked at the backstrip. “Physical Chemistry of Electrolytes in Solution. Fair enough, sir. You selected this yourself, at random. It was no suggestion of mine, this particular text. Am I right?”

“Yes.”

Lanning passed the book to Robot EZ-27.

The professor jumped a little. “No! That’s a valuable book!” Lanning raised his eyebrows and they looked like shaggy coconut icing. He said, “Easy has no intention of tearing the book in two as a feat of strength, I assure you. It can handle a book as carefully as you or I. Go ahead, Easy.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Easy. Then, turning its metal bulk slightly, it added, “With your permission, Professor Goodfellow.”

The professor stared, then said, “Yes – yes, of course.”

With a slow and steady manipulation of metal fingers, Easy turned the pages of the book, glancing at the left page, then the right; turning the page, glancing left, then right; turning the page and so on for minute after minute.

The sense of its power seemed to dwarf even the large cement-walled room in which they stood and to reduce the two human watchers to something considerably less than life-size.

Goodfellow muttered, “The light isn’t very good.”

“It will do.”

Then, rather more sharply, “But what is he doing?”

“Patience, sir.”

The last page was turned eventually. Lanning asked, “Well, Easy?”

The robot said, “It is a most accurate book and there is little to which I can point. On line 22 of page 27, the word ‘positive’ is spelled p-o-i-s-t-i-v-e. The comma in line 6 of page 32 is superfluous, whereas one should have been used on line 13 of page 54. The plus sign in equation XIV-2 on page 337 should be a minus sign if it is to be consistent with the previous equations –”

“Wait! Wait!” cried the professor. “What is he doing?”

“Doing?” echoed Lanning in sudden irascibility. “Why, man, he has already done it! He has proofread that book.”

“Proofread it?”

“Yes. In the short time it took him to turn those pages, he caught every mistake in spelling, grammar and punctuation. He has noted errors in word order and detected inconsistencies. And he will retain the information, letter-perfect, indefinitely.”

The professor’s mouth was open. He walked rapidly away from Lanning and Easy and as rapidly back. He folded his arms across his chest and stared at them. Finally he said, “You mean this is a proofreading robot?”

Lanning nodded. “Among other things.”

“But why do you show it to me?”

“So that you might help me persuade the university to obtain it for use.”

“To read proof?”

“Among other things,” Lanning repeated patiently.

The professor drew his pinched face together in a kind of sour disbelief. “But this is ridiculous!”

“Why?”

“The university could never afford to buy this half-ton – it must weigh that at least – this half-ton proofreader.”

“Proofreading is not all it will do. It will prepare reports from outlines, fill out forms, serve as an accurate memory-file, grade papers –”

All picayune!”

Lanning said, “Not at all, as I can show you in a moment. But I think we can discuss this more comfortably in your office, if you have no objection.”

“No, of course not,” began the professor mechanically and took a half-step as though to turn. Then he snapped out, “But the robot – we can’t take the robot. Really, Doctor, you’ll have to crate it up again.”

“Time enough. We can leave Easy here.”

“Unattended?”

“Why not? He knows he is to stay. Professor Goodfellow, it is necessary to understand that a robot is far more reliable than a human being.”

“I would be responsible for any damage –”

“There will be no damage. I guarantee that. Look, it’s after hours. You expect no one here, I imagine, before tomorrow morning. The truck and my two men are outside. U. S. Robots will take any responsibility that may arise. None will. Call it a demonstration of the reliability of the robot.”

The professor allowed himself to be led out of the storeroom. Nor did he look entirely comfortable in his own office, five stories up.

He dabbed at the line of droplets along the upper half of his forehead with a white handkerchief.

“As you know very well, Dr. Lanning, there are laws against the use of robots on Earth’s surface,” he pointed out.

“The laws, Professor Goodfellow, are not simple ones. Robots may not be used on public thoroughfares or within public edifices. They may not be used on private grounds or within private structures except under certain restrictions that usually turn out to be prohibitive. The university, however, is a large and privately owned institution that usually receives preferential treatment. If the robot is used only in a specific room for only academic purposes, if certain other restrictions are observed and if the men and women having occasion to enter the room cooperate fully, we may remain within the law.”

“But all that trouble just to read proof?”

“The uses would be infinite. Professor. Robotic labor has so far been used only to relieve physical drudgery. Isn’t there such a thing as mental drudgery? When a professor capable of the most useful creative thought is forced to spend two weeks painfully checking the spelling of lines of print and I offer you a machine that can do it in thirty minutes, is that picayune?”

“But the price –”

“The price need not bother you. You cannot buy EZ-27. U. S. Robots does not sell its products. But the university can lease EZ-27 for a thousand dollars a year – considerably less than the cost of a single microwave spectograph continuous-recording attachment.”

Goodfellow looked stunned. Lanning followed up his advantage by saying, “I only ask that you put it up to whatever group makes the decisions here. I would be glad to speak to them if they want more information.”

“Well,” Goodfellow said doubtfully, “I can bring it up at next week’s Senate meeting. I can’t promise that will do any good, though.”

“Naturally,” said Lanning.

The Defense Attorney was short and stubby and carried himself rather portentously, a stance that had the effect of accentuating his double chin. He stared at Professor Goodfellow, once that witness had been handed over, and said, “You agreed rather readily, did you not?”

The Professor said briskly, “I suppose I was anxious to be rid of Dr. Lanning. I would have agreed to anything.”

“With the intention of forgetting about it after he left?”

“Well –”

“Nevertheless, you did present the matter to a meeting of the Executive Board of the University Senate.”

“Yes, I did.”

“So that you agreed in good faith with Dr. Lanning’s suggestions. You weren’t just going along with a gag. You actually agreed enthusiastically, did you not?”

“I merely followed ordinary procedures.”

“As a matter of fact, you weren’t as upset about the robot as you now claim you were. You know the Three Laws of Robotics and you knew them at the time of your interview with Dr. Lanning.”

“Well, yes.”

“And you were perfectly willing to leave a robot at large and unattended.”

“Dr. Lanning assured me –”

“Surely you would never have accepted his assurance if you had had the slightest doubt that the robot might be in the least dangerous.”

The professor began frigidly, “I had every faith in the word –”

“That is all,” said Defense abruptly.

As Professor Goodfellow, more than a bit ruffled, stood down, Justice Shane leaned forward and said, “Since I am not a robotics man myself, I would appreciate knowing precisely what the Three Laws of Robotics are. Would Dr. Lanning quote them for the benefit of the court?”

Dr. Lanning looked startled. He had been virtually bumping heads with the gray-haired woman at his side. He rose to his feet now and the woman looked up, too – expressionlessly.

Dr. Lanning said, “Very well, Your Honor.” He paused as though about to launch into an oration and said, with laborious clarity, “First Law: a robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Second Law: a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. Third Law: a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.”

“I see,” said the judge, taking rapid notes. “These Laws are built into every robot, are they?”

“Into every one. That will be borne out by any roboticist.”

“And into Robot EZ-27 specifically?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“You will probably be required to repeat those statements under oath.”

“I am ready to do so, Your Honor.” He sat down again.

Dr. Susan Calvin, robopsychologist-in-chief for U. S. Robots, who was the gray-haired woman sitting next to Lanning, looked at her titular superior without favor, but then she showed favor to no human being. She said, “Was Goodfellow’s testimony accurate,

Alfred?”

“Essentially,” muttered Lanning. “He wasn’t as nervous as all that about the robot and he was anxious enough to talk business with me when he heard the price. But there doesn’t seem to be any drastic distortion.”

Dr. Calvin said thoughtfully, “It might have been wise to put the price higher than a thousand.”

“We were anxious to place Easy.”

“I know. Too anxious, perhaps. They’ll try to make it look as

though we had an ulterior motive.”

Lanning looked exasperated. “We did. I admitted that at the University Senate meeting.”

“They can make it look as if we had one beyond the one we admitted.”

Scott Robertson, son of the founder of U. S. Robots and still owner of a majority of the stock, leaned over from Dr. Calvin’s other side and said in a kind of explosive whisper, “Why can’t you get Easy to talk so we’ll know where we’re at?”

“You know he can’t talk about it, Mr. Robertson.”

“Make him. You’re the psychologist, Dr. Calvin. Make him.”

“If I’m the psychologist, Mr. Robertson,” said Susan Calvin coldly, “let me make the decisions. My robot will not be made to do anything at the price of his well-being.”

Robertson frowned and might have answered, but Justice Shane was tapping his gavel in a polite sort of way and they grudgingly fell silent.

Francis J. Hart, head of the Department of English and Dean of Graduate Studies, was on the stand. He was a plump man, meticulously dressed in dark clothing of a conservative cut, and possessing several strands of hair traversing the pink top of his cranium. He sat well back in the witness chair with his hands folded neatly in his lap and displaying, from time to time, a tight-lipped smile.

He said, “My first connection with the matter of the Robot EZ-27 was on the occasion of the session of the University Senate Executive Committee at which the subject was introduced by Professor Goodfellow. Thereafter, on the tenth of April of last year, we held a special meeting on the subject, during which I was in the chair.”

“Were minutes kept of the meeting of the Executive Committee? Of the special meeting, that is?”

“Well, no. It was a rather unusual meeting.” The dean smiled briefly. “We thought it might remain confidential.”

“What transpired at the meeting?”

Dean Hart was not entirely comfortable as chairman of that meeting. Nor did the other members assembled seem completely calm. Only Dr. Lanning appeared at peace with himself. His tall, gaunt figure and the shock of white hair that crowned him reminded Hart of portraits he had seen of Andrew Jackson.

Samples of the robot’s work lay scattered along the central regions of the table and the reproduction of a graph drawn by the robot was now in the hands of Professor Minott of Physical Chemistry. The chemist’s lips were pursed in obvious approval.

Hart cleared his throat and said, “There seems no doubt that the robot can perform certain routine tasks with adequate competence. I have gone over these, for instance, just before coming in and there is very little to find fault with.”

He picked up a long sheet of printing, some three times as long as the average book page. It was a sheet of galley proof, designed to be corrected by authors before the type was set up in page form. Along both of the wide margins of the galley were proofmarks, neat and superbly legible. Occasionally, a word of print was crossed out and a new word substituted in the margin in characters so fine and regular it might easily have been print itself. Some of the corrections were blue to indicate the original mistake had been the author’s, a few in red, where the printer had been wrong.

“Actually,” said Lanning, “there is less than very little to find fault with. I should say there is nothing at all to find fault with, Dr. Hart. I’m sure the corrections are perfect, insofar as the original manuscript was. If the manuscript against which this galley was corrected was at fault in a matter of fact rather than of English, the robot is not competent to correct it.”

“We accept that. However, the robot corrected word order on occasion and I don’t think the rules of English are sufficiently hidebound for US to be sure that in each case the robot’s choice was the correct one.”

“Easy’s positronic brain,” said Lanning, showing large teeth as he smiled, “has been molded by the contents of all the standard works on the subject. I’m sure you cannot point to a case where the robot’s choice was definitely the incorrect one.”

Professor Minott looked up from the graph he still held. “The question in my mind, Dr. Lanning, is why we need a robot at all, with all the difficulties in public relations that would entail. The science of automation has surely reached the point where your company could design a machine, an ordinary computer of a type known and accepted by the public, that would correct galleys.”

“I am sure we could,” said Lanning stiffly, “but such a machine would require that the galleys be translated into special symbols or, at the least, transcribed on tapes. Any corrections would emerge in symbols. You would need to keep men employed translating words to symbols, symbols to words. Furthermore, such a computer could do no other job. It couldn’t prepare the graph you hold in your hand, for instance.”

Minott grunted.

Lanning went on. “The hallmark of the positronic robot is its flexibility. It can do a number of jobs. It is designed like a man so that it can use all the tools and machines that have, after all, been designed to be used by a man. It can talk to you and you can talk to it. You can actually reason with it up to a point. Compared to even a simple robot, an ordinary computer with a non-positronic brain is only a heavy adding machine.”

Goodfellow looked up and said, “If we all talk and reason with the robot, what are the chances of our confusing it? I suppose it doesn’t have the capability of absorbing an infinite amount of data.”

“No, it hasn’t. But it should last five years with ordinary use. It will know when it will require clearing, and the company will do the job without charge.”

“The company will?”

“Yes. The company reserves the right to service the robot outside the ordinary course of its duties. It is one reason we retain control of our positronic robots and lease rather than sell them. In the pursuit of its ordinary functions, any robot can be directed by any man. Outside its ordinary functions, a robot requires expert handling, and that we can give it. For instance, any of you might clear an EZ robot to an extent by telling it to forget this item or that. But you would be almost certain to phrase the order in such a way as to cause it to forget too much or too little. We would detect such tampering, because we have built-in safeguards. However, since there is no need for clearing the robot in its ordinary work, or for doing other useless things, this raises no problem.”

Dean Hart touched his head as though to make sure his carefully cultivated strands lay evenly distributed and said, “You are anxious to have us take the machine. Yet surely it is a losing proposition for U. S. Robots. One thousand a year is a ridiculously low price. Is it that you hope through this to rent other such machines to other universities at a more reasonable price?”

“Certainly that’s a fair hope,” said Lanning.

“But even so, the number of machines you could rent would be limited. I doubt if you could make it a paying proposition.”

Lanning put his elbows on the table and earnestly leaned forward. “Let me put it bluntly, gentlemen. Robots cannot be used on Earth, except in certain special cases, because of prejudice against them on the part of the public. U. S. Robots is a highly successful corporation with our extraterrestrial and spaceflight markets alone, to say nothing of our computer subsidiaries. However, we are concerned with more than profits alone. It is our firm belief that the use of robots on Earth itself would mean a better life for all eventually, even if a certain amount of economic dislocation resulted at first.

“The labor unions are naturally against us, but surely we may expect cooperation from the large universities. The robot, Easy, will help you by relieving you of scholastic drudgery – by assuming, if you permit it, the role of galley slave for you. Other universities and research institutions will follow your lead, and if it works out, then perhaps other robots of other types may be placed and the public’s objections to them broken down by stages.”

Minott murmured, “Today Northeastern University, tomorrow the world.”

Angrily, Lanning whispered to Susan Calvin, “I wasn’t nearly that eloquent and they weren’t nearly that reluctant. At a thousand a year, they were jumping to get Easy. Professor Minott told me he’d never seen as beautiful a job as that graph he was holding and there was no mistake on the galley or anywhere else. Hart admitted it freely.”

The severe vertical lines on Dr. Calvin’s face did not soften. “You should have demanded more money than they could pay, Alfred, and let them beat you down.”

“Maybe,” he grumbled.

Prosecution was not quite done with Professor Hart. “After Dr. Lanning left, did you vote on whether to accept Robot EZ-27?”

“Yes, we did.”

“With what result?”

“In favor of acceptance, by majority vote.”

“What would you say influenced the vote?” Defense objected immediately.

Prosecution rephrased the question. “What influenced you, personally, in your individual vote? You did vote in favor, I think.”

“I voted in favor, yes. I did so largely because I was impressed by Dr. Lanning’s feeling that it was our duty as members of the world’s intellectual leadership to allow robotics to help Man in the solution of his problems.”

“In other words, Dr. Lanning talked you into it.”

“That’s his job. He did it very well.”

“Your witness.”

Defense strode up to the witness chair and surveyed Professor Hart for a long moment. He said, “In reality, you were all pretty eager to have Robot EZ-27 in your employ, weren’t you?”

“We thought that if it could do the work, it might be useful.”

“If it could do the work? I understand you examined the samples of Robot EZ-27’s original work with particular care on the day of the meeting which you have just described.”

“Yes, I did. Since the machine’s work dealt primarily with the handling of the English language, and since that is my field of competence, it seemed logical that I be the one chosen to examine the work.”

“Very good. Was there anything on display on the table at the time of the meeting which was less than satisfactory? I have all the material here as exhibits. Can you point to a single unsatisfactory item?”

“Well –”

“It’s a simple question. Was there one single solitary unsatisfactory item? You inspected it. Was there?”

The English professor frowned. “There wasn’t.”

“I also have some samples of work done by Robot EZ-27 during the course of his fourteen-month employ at Northeastern. Would you examine these and tell me if there is anything wrong with them in even one particular?”

Hart snapped, “When he did make a mistake, it was a beauty.”

“Answer my question,” thundered Defense, “and only the question I am putting to you! Is there anything wrong with the material?”

Dean Hart looked cautiously at each item. “Well, nothing.”

“Barring the matter concerning which we are here engaged. do you know of any mistake on the part of EZ-27?”

“Barring the matter for which this trial is being held, no.”

Defense cleared his throat as though to signal end of paragraph. He said. “Now about the vote concerning whether Robot EZ-27 was to be employed or not. You said there was a majority in favor. What was the actual vote?”

“Thirteen to one, as I remember.”

“Thirteen to one! More than just a majority, wouldn’t you say?”

“No, sir!” All the pedant in Dean Hart was aroused. “In the English language, the word ‘majority’ means ‘more than half.’ Thirteen out of fourteen is a majority, nothing more.”

“But an almost unanimous one.”

“A majority all the same!”

Defense switched ground. “And who was the lone holdout?”

Dean Hart looked acutely uncomfortable. “Professor Simon Ninheimer.”

Defense pretended astonishment. “Professor Ninheimer? The head of the Department of Sociology?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“The plaintiff?”

“Yes, sir.”

Defense pursed his lips. “In other words, it turns out that the man bringing the action for payment of $750,000 damages against my client. United States Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation was the one who from the beginning opposed the use of the robot – although everyone else on the Executive Committee of the University Senate was persuaded that it was a good idea.”

“He voted against the motion, as was his right.”

“You didn’t mention in your description of the meeting any remarks made by Professor Ninheimer. Did he make any?”

“I think he spoke.”

“You think?”

“Well, he did speak.”

“Against using the robot?”

“Yes.”

“Was he violent about it?”

Dean Hart paused. “He was vehement.”

Defense grew confidential. “How long have you known Professor Ninheimer, Dean Hart?”

“About twelve years.”

“Reasonably well?”

“I should say so, yes.”

“Knowing him, then, would you say he was the kind of man who might continue to bear resentment against a robot, all the more so because an adverse vote had –”

Prosecution drowned out the remainder of the question with an indignant and vehement objection of his own. Defense motioned the witness down and Justice Shane called luncheon recess.

Robertson mangled his sandwich. The corporation would not founder for loss of three-quarters of a million, but the loss would do it no particular good. He was conscious, moreover, that there would be a much more costly long-term setback in public relations.

He said sourly, “Why all this business about how Easy got into the university? What do they hope to gain?”

The Attorney for Defense said quietly, “A court action is like a chess game, MI. Robertson. The winner is usually the one who can see more moves ahead, and my friend at the prosecutor’s table is no beginner. They can show damage; that’s no problem. Their main effort lies in anticipating our defense. They must be counting on us to try to show that Easy couldn’t possibly have committed the offense – because of the Laws of Robotics.”

“All right,” said Robertson, “that is our defense. An absolutely airtight one.”

“To a robotics engineer. Not necessarily to a judge. They’re setting themselves up a position from which they can demonstrate that EZ-27 was no ordinary robot. It was the first of its type to be offered to the public. It was an experimental model that needed field-testing and the university was the only decent way to provide such testing. That would look plausible in the light of Dr. Lanning’s strong efforts to place the robot and the willingness of U. S. Robots to lease it for so little. The prosecution would then argue that the field-test proved Easy to have been a failure. Now do you see the purpose of what’s been going on?”

“But EZ-27 was a perfectly good model,” Argued Robertson. “It was the twenty-seventh in production.”

“Which is really a bad point,” said Defense somberly. “What was wrong with the first twenty-six? Obviously something. Why shouldn’t there be something wrong with the twenty-seventh, too?”

“There was nothing wrong with the first twenty-six except that they weren’t complex enough for the task. These were the first positronic brains of the sort to be constructed and it was rather hit-and-miss to begin with. But the Three Laws held in all of them! No robot is so imperfect that the Three Laws don’t hold.”

“Dr. Lanning has explained this to me, Mr. Robertson, and I am willing to take his word for it. The judge, however, may not be. We are expecting a decision from an honest and intelligent man who knows no robotics and thus may be led astray. For instance, if you or Dr. Lanning or Dr. Calvin were to say on the stand that any positronic brains were constructed ‘hit-and-miss,’ as you just did, prosecution would tear you apart in cross-examination. Nothing would salvage our case. So that’s something to avoid.”

Robertson growled, “If only Easy would talk.”

Defense shrugged. “A robot is incompetent as a witness, so that would do us no good.”

“At least we’d know some of the facts. We’d know how it came to do such a thing.”

Susan Calvin fired up. A dullish red touched her cheeks and her voice had a trace of warmth in it. “We know how Easy came to do it. It was ordered to! I’ve explained this to counsel and I’ll explain it to you now.”

“Ordered to by whom?” asked Robertson in honest astonishment. (No one ever told him anything, he thought resentfully. These research people considered themselves the owners of U. S. Robots, by God!)

“By the plaintiff,” said Dr. Calvin. “In heaven’s name, why?”

“I don’t know why yet. Perhaps just that we might be sued, that he might gain some cash.” There were blue glints in her eyes as she said that.

“Then why doesn’t Easy say so?”

“Isn’t that obvious? It’s been ordered to keep quiet about the matter.”

“Why should that be obvious?” demanded Robertson truculently. “Well, it’s obvious to me. Robot psychology is my profession. If

Easy will not answer questions about the matter directly, he will answer questions on the fringe of the matter. By measuring increased hesitation in his answers as the central question is approached, by measuring the area of blankness and the intensity of counterpotentials set up, it is possible to tell with scientific precision that his troubles are the result of an order not to talk, with its strength based on First Law. In other words, he’s been told that if he talks, harm will be done a human being. Presumably harm to the unspeakable Professor Ninheimer, the plaintiff, who, to the robot, would seem a human being.”

“Well, then,” said Robertson, “can’t you explain that if he keeps quiet, harm will be done to U. S. Robots?”

“U. S. Robots is not a human being and the First Law of Robotics does not recognize a corporation as a person the way ordinary laws do. Besides, it would be dangerous to try to lift this particular sort of inhibition. The person who laid it on could lift it off least dangerously, because the robot’s motivations in that respect are centered on that person. Any other course –” She shook her head and grew almost impassioned. “I won’t let the robot be damaged!”

Lanning interrupted with the air of bringing sanity to the problem. “It seems to me that we have only to prove a robot incapable of the act of which Easy is accused. We can do that.”

“Exactly,” said Defense, in annoyance. “You can do that. The only witnesses capable of testifying to Easy’s condition and to the nature of Easy’s state of mind are employees of U. S. Robots. The judge can’t possibly accept their testimony as unprejudiced.”

“How can he deny expert testimony?”

“By refusing to be convinced by it. That’s his right as the judge. Against the alternative that a man like Professor Ninheimer deliberately set about ruining his own reputation, even for a sizable sum of money, the judge isn’t going to accept the technicalities of your engineers. The judge is a man, after all. If he has to choose between a man doing an impossible thing and a robot doing an impossible thing, he’s quite likely to decide in favor of the man.”

“A man can do an impossible thing,” said Lanning, “because we don’t know all the complexities of the human mind and we don’t know what, in a given human mind, is impossible and what is not. We do know what is really impossible to a robot.”

“Well, we’ll see if we can’t convince the judge of that,” Defense replied wearily.

“If all you say is so,” rumbled Robertson, “I don’t see how you can.”

“We’ll see. It’s good to know and be aware of the difficulties involved, but let’s not be too downhearted. I’ve tried to look ahead a few moves in the chess game, too.” With a stately nod in the direction of the robopsychologist, he added, “With the help of the good lady here.”

Lanning looked from one to the other and said, “What the devil is this?”

But the bailiff thrust his head into the room and announced somewhat breathlessly that the trial was about to resume.

They took their seats, examining the man who had started all the trouble.

Simon Ninheimer owned a fluffy head of sandy hair, a face that narrowed past a beaked nose toward a pointed chin, and a habit of sometimes hesitating before key words in his conversation that gave him an air of a seeker after an almost unbearable precision. When he said, “The Sun rises in the – uh – east, 11 one was certain he had given due consideration to the possibility that it might at some time rise in the west.

Prosecution said, “Did you oppose employment of Robot EZ-27 by the university?”

“I did, sir.”

“Why was that?”

“I did not feel that we understood the – uh – motives of U. S. Robots thoroughly. I mistrusted their anxiety to place the robot with us.”

“Did you feel that it was capable of doing the work that it was allegedly designed to do?”

“I know for a fact that it was not.”

“Would you state your reasons?”

Simon Ninheimer’s book, entitled Social Tensions Involved in Space-Flight and Their Resolution, had been eight years in the making. Ninheimer’s search for precision was not confined to his habits of speech, and in a subject like sociology, almost inherently imprecise, it left him breathless.

Even with the material in galley proofs, he felt no sense of completion. Rather the reverse, in fact. Staring at the long strips of print, he felt only the itch to tear the lines of type apart and rearrange them differently.

Jim Baker, Instructor and soon to be Assistant Professor of Sociology, found Ninheimer, three days after the first batch of galleys had arrived from the printer, staring at the handful of paper in abstraction. The galleys came in three copies: one for Ninheimer to proofread, one for Baker to proofread independently, and a third, marked “Original,” which was to receive the final corrections, a combination of those made by Ninheimer and by Baker, after a conference at which possible conflicts and disagreements were ironed out. This had been their policy on the several papers on which they had collaborated in the past three years and it worked well.

Baker, young and ingratiatingly soft-voiced, had his own copies of the galleys in his hand. He said eagerly, “I’ve done the first chapter and it contains some typographical beauts.”

“The first chapter always has them,” said Ninheimer distantly. “Do you want to go over it now?”

Ninheimer brought his eyes to grave focus on Baker. “I haven’t done anything on the galleys, Jim. I don’t think I’ll bother.”

Baker looked confused. “Not bother?”

Ninheimer pursed his lips. “I’ve asked about the – uh – workload of the machine. After all, he was originally – uh – promoted as a proofreader. They’ve set a schedule.”

“The machine? You mean Easy?”

“I believe that is the foolish name they gave it.”

“But, Dr. Ninheimer, I thought you were staying clear of it” ‘

“I seem to be the only one doing so. Perhaps I ought to take my share of the – uh – advantage.”

“Oh. Well, I seem to have wasted time on this first chapter, then,” said the younger man ruefully.

“Not wasted. We can compare the machine’s result with yours as a check.”

“If you want to, but –”

“Yes?”

“I doubt that we’ll find anything wrong with Easy’s work. It’s supposed never to have made a mistake.”

“I dare say,” said Ninheimer dryly.

The first chapter was brought in again by Baker four days later. This time it was Ninheimer’s copy, fresh from the special annex that had been built to house Easy and the equipment it used.

Baker was jubilant. “Dr. Ninheimer, it not only caught everything I caught – it found a dozen errors I missed! The whole thing took it twelve minutes!”

Ninheimer looked over the sheaf, with the neatly printed marks and symbols in the margins. He said, “It is not as complete as you and I would have made it. We would have entered an insert on Suzuki’s work on the neurological effects of low gravity.”

“You mean his paper in Sociological Reviews?”

“Of course.”

“Well, you can’t expect impossibilities of Easy. It can’t read the literature for us.”

“I realize that. As a matter of fact, I have prepared the insert. I will see the machine and make certain it knows how to – uh – handle inserts.”

“It will know.”

“I prefer to make certain.”

Ninheimer had to make an appointment to see Easy, and then could get nothing better than fifteen minutes in the late evening.

But the fifteen minutes turned out to be ample. Robot EZ-27 understood the matter of inserts at once.

Ninheimer found himself uncomfortable at close quarters with the robot for the first time. Almost automatically, as though it were human, he found himself asking, “Are you happy with your work?’

“Most happy, Professor Ninheimer,” said Easy solemnly, the photocells that were its eyes gleaming their normal deep red.

“You know me?”

“From the fact that you present me with additional material to include in the galleys, it follows that you are the author. The author’s name, of course, is at the head of each sheet of galley proof.”

“I see. You make – uh – deductions, then. Tell me” – he couldn’t resist the question –” what do you think of the book so far?’

Easy said, “I find it very pleasant to work with.”

“Pleasant? That is an odd word for a – uh – a mechanism without emotion. I’ve been told you have no emotion.”

“The words of your book go in accordance with my circuits,” Easy explained. “They set up little or no counterpotentials. It is in my brain paths to translate this mechanical fact into a word such as ‘pleasant.’ The emotional context is fortuitous.”

“I see. Why do you find the book pleasant?”

“It deals with human beings, Professor, and not with inorganic materials or mathematical symbols. Your book attempts to understand human beings and to help increase human happiness.”

“And this is what you try to do and so my book goes in accordance with your circuits? Is that it?”

“That is it, Professor.”

The fifteen minutes were up. Ninheimer left and went to the university library, which was on the point of closing. He kept them open long enough to find an elementary text on robotics. He took it home with him.

Except for occasional insertion of late material, the galleys went to Easy and from him to the publishers with little intervention from Ninheimer at first – and none at all later.

Baker said, a little uneasily, “It almost gives me a feeling of uselessness.”

“It should give you a feeling of having time to begin a new project,” said Ninheimer, without looking up from the notations he was making in the current issue of Social Science Abstracts.

“I’m just not used to it. I keep worrying about the galleys. It’s silly, I know.”

“It is.”

“The other day I got a couple of sheets before Easy sent them off to –”

“What!” Ninheimer looked up, scowling. The copy of Abstracts slid shut. “Did you disturb the machine at its work?”

“Only for a minute. Everything was all right. Oh, it changed one word. You referred to something as ‘criminal’; it changed the word to ‘reckless.’ It thought the second adjective fit in better with the context.”

Ninheimer grew thoughtful. “What did you think?”

“You know, I agreed with it. I let it stand.”

Ninheimer turned in his swivel-chair to face his young associate. “See here, I wish you wouldn’t do this again. If I am to use the machine, I wish the – uh – full advantage of it. If I am to use it and lose your – uh – services anyway because you supervise it when the whole point is that it requires no supervision, I gain nothing. Do you see?”

“Yes, Dr. Ninheimer,” said Baker, subdued. The advance copies of Social Tensions arrived in Dr. Ninheimer’s office on the eighth of May. He looked through it briefly, flipping pages and pausing to read a paragraph here and there. Then he put his copies away.

As he explained later, he forgot about it. For eight years, he had worked at it, but now, and for months in the past, other interests had engaged him while Easy had taken the load of the book off his shoulders. He did not even think to donate the usual complimentary copy to the university library. Even Baker, who had thrown himself into work and had steered clear of the department head since receiving his rebuke at their last meeting, received no copy.

On the sixteenth of June that stage ended. Ninheimer received a phone call and stared at the image in the ‘plate with surprise.

“Speidell! Are you in town?”

“No, sir. I’m in Cleveland.” Speidell’s voice trembled with emotion.

“Then why the call?”

“Because I’ve just been looking through your new book! Ninheimer, are you mad? Have you gone insane?”

Ninheimer stiffened. “Is something – uh – wrong?” he asked in alarm.

“Wrong? I refer you to page 562. What in blazes do you mean by interpreting my work as you do? Where in the paper cited do I make the claim that the criminal personality is nonexistent and that it is the law-enforcement agencies that are the true criminals? Here, let me quote –”

“Wait! Wait!” cried Ninheimer, trying to find the page. “Let me see. Let me see... Good God!”

“Well?”

“Speidell, I don’t see how this could have happened. I never wrote this.”

“But that’s what’s printed! And that distortion isn’t the worst. You look at page 690 and imagine what Ipatiev is going to do to you when he sees the hash you’ve made of his findings! Look, Ninheimer, the book is riddled with this sort of thing. I don’t know what you were thinking of – but there’s nothing to do but get the book off the market. And you’d better be prepared for extensive apologies at the next Association meeting!”

“Speidell, listen to me –” But Speidell had flashed off with a force that had the ‘plate glowing with after-images for fifteen seconds.

It was then that Ninheimer went through the book and began marking off passages with red ink.

He kept his temper remarkably well when he faced Easy again, but his lips were pale. He passed the book to Easy and said, “Will you read the marked passages on pages 562, 631, 664 and 690?”

Easy did so in four glances. “Yes, Professor Ninheimer.”

“This is not as I had it in the original galleys.”

“No, sir. It is not.”

“Did you change it to read as it now does?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why?”

“Sir, the passages as they read in your version were most uncomplimentary to certain groups of human beings. I felt it advisable to change the wording to avoid doing them harm.”

“How dared you do such a thing?”

“The First Law, Professor, does not let me, through any inaction, allow harm to come to human beings. Certainly, considering your reputation in the world of sociology and the wide circulation your book would receive among scholars, considerable harm would come to a number of the human beings you speak of.”

“But do you realize the harm that will come to me now?”

“It was necessary to choose the alternative with less harm.” Professor Ninheimer, shaking with fury, staggered away. It was clear to him that U. S. Robots would have to account to him for this.

There was some excitement at the defendants’ table, which increased as Prosecution drove the point home.

“Then Robot EZ-27 informed you that the reason for its action was based on the First Law of Robotics?”

“That is correct, sir.”

“That, in effect, it had no choice?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It follows then that U. S. Robots designed a robot that would of necessity rewrite books to accord with its own conceptions of what was right. And yet they palmed it off as simple proofreader. Would you say that?”

Defense objected firmly at once, pointing out that the witness was being asked for a decision on a matter in which he had no competence. The judged admonished Prosecution in the usual terms, but there was no doubt that the exchange had sunk home – not least upon the attorney for the Defense.

Defense asked for a short recess before beginning cross-examination, using a legal technicality for the purpose that got him five minutes.

He leaned over toward Susan Calvin. “Is it possible, Dr. Calvin, that Professor Ninheimer is telling the truth and that Easy was motivated by the First Law?”

Calvin pressed her lips together, then said, “No. It isn’t possible. The last part of Ninheimer’s testimony is deliberate perjury. Easy is not designed to be able to judge matters at the stage of abstraction represented by an advanced textbook on sociology. It would never be able to tell that certain groups of humans would be harmed by a phrase in such a book. Its mind is simply not built for that.”

“I suppose, though, that we can’t prove this to a layman,” said Defense pessimistically.

“No,” Admitted Calvin. “The proof would be highly complex. Our way out is still what it was. We must prove Ninheimer is lying, and nothing he has said need change our plan of attack.”

“Very well, Dr. Calvin,” said Defense, “I must accept your word in this. We’ll go on as planned.”

In the courtroom, the judge’s gavel rose and fell and Dr. Ninheimer took the stand once more. He smiled a little as one who feels his position to be impregnable and rather enjoys the prospect of countering a useless attack.

Defense approached warily and began softly. “Dr. Ninheimer, do you mean to say that you were completely unaware of these alleged changes in your manuscript until such time as Dr. Speidell called you on the sixteenth of June?”

“That is correct, sir.”

“Did you never look at the galleys after Robot EZ-27 had proofread them?”

“At first I did, but it seemed to me a useless task. I relied on the claims of U. S. Robots. The absurd – uh – changes were made only in the last quarter of the book after the robot, I presume, had learned enough about sociology –”

“Never mind your presumptions!” said Defense. “I understood your colleague, Dr. Baker, saw the later galleys on at least one occasion. Do you remember testifying to that effect?”

“Yes, sir. As I said, he told me about seeing one page, and even there, the robot had changed a word.”

Again Defense broke in. “Don’t you find it strange, sir, that after over a year of implacable hostility to the robot, after having voted against it in the first place and having refused to put it to any use whatever, you suddenly decided to put your book, your magnum opus, into its hands?”

“I don’t find that strange. I simply decided that I might as well use the machine.”

“And you were so confident of Robot EZ-27 – all of a sudden – that you didn’t even bother to check your galleys?”

“I told you I was – uh – persuaded by U. S. Robots’ propaganda.”

“So persuaded that when your colleague, Dr. Baker, attempted to check on the robot, you berated him soundly?”

“I didn’t berate him. I merely did not wish to have him – uh – waste his time. At least, I thought then it was a waste of time. I did not see the significance of that change in a word at the –”

Defense said with heavy sarcasm, “I have no doubt you were instructed to bring up that point in order that the word-change be entered in the record –” He altered his line to forestall objection and said, “The point is that you were extremely angry with Dr. Baker.”

“No, sir. Not angry.”

“You didn’t give him a copy of your book when you received it.”

“Simple forgetfulness. I didn’t give the library its copy, either.”

Ninheimer smiled cautiously. “Professors are notoriously absentminded.”

Defense said, “Do you find it strange that, after more than a year of perfect work, Robot EZ-27 should go wrong on your book? On a book, that is, which was written by you, who was, of all people, the most implacably hostile to the robot?”

“My book was the only sizable work dealing with mankind that it had to face. The Three Laws of Robotics took hold then.”

“Several times, Dr. Ninheimer,” said Defense, “you have tried to sound like an expert on robotics. Apparently you suddenly grew interested in robotics and took out books on the subject from the library. You testified to that effect, did you not?”

“One book, sir. That was the result of what seems to me to have been – uh – natural curiosity.”

“And it enabled you to explain why the robot should, as you allege, have distorted your book?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very convenient. But are you sure your interest in robotics was not intended to enable you to manipulate the robot for your own purposes?”

Ninheimer flushed. “Certainly not, sir!” Defense’s voice rose. “In fact, are you sure the alleged altered passages were not as you had them in the first place?”

The sociologist half-rose. “That’s – uh – uh – ridiculous! I have the galleys –”

He had difficulty speaking and Prosecution rose to insert smoothly, “With your permission, Your Honor, I intend to introduce as evidence the set of galleys given by Dr. Ninheimer to Robot EZ-27 and the set of galleys mailed by Robot EZ-27 to the publishers. I will do so now if my esteemed colleague so desires, and will be willing to allow a recess in order that the two sets of galleys may be compared.”

Defense waved his hand impatiently. “That is not necessary. My honored opponent can introduce those galleys whenever he chooses. I’m sure they will show whatever discrepancies are claimed by the plaintiff to exist. What I would like to know of the witness, however, is whether he also has in his possession Dr. Baker’s galleys.”

“Dr. Baker’s galleys?” Ninheimer frowned. He was not yet quite master of himself.

“Yes, Professor! I mean Dr. Baker’s galleys. You testified to the effect that Dr. Baker had received a separate copy of the galleys. I will have the clerk read your testimony if you are suddenly a selective type of amnesiac. Or is it just that professors are, as you say, notoriously absent-minded?”

Ninheimer said, “I remember Dr. Baker’s galleys. They weren’t necessary once the job was placed in the care of the proofreading machine –”

“So you burned them?”

“No. I put them in the waste basket.”

“Burned them, dumped them – what’s the difference? The point is you got rid of them.”

“There’s nothing wrong –” began Ninheimer weakly.

“Nothing wrong?” thundered Defense. “Nothing wrong except that there is now no way we can check to see if, on certain crucial galley sheets, you might not have substituted a harmless blank one from Dr. Baker’s copy for a sheet in your own copy which you had deliberately mangled in such a way as to force the robot to –”

Prosecution shouted a furious objection. Justice Shane leaned forward, his round face doing its best to assume an expression of anger equivalent to the intensity of the emotion felt by the man.

The judge said, “Do you have any evidence, Counselor, for the extraordinary statement you have just made?”

Defense said quietly, “No direct evidence, Your Honor. But I would like to point out that, viewed properly, the sudden conversion of the plaintiff from anti-roboticism, his sudden interest in robotics, his refusal to check the galleys or to allow anyone else to check them, his careful neglect to allow anyone to see the book immediately after publication, all very clearly point –”

“Counselor,” interrupted the judge impatiently, “this is not the place for esoteric deductions. The plaintiff is not on trial. Neither are you prosecuting him. I forbid this line of attack and I can only point out that the desperation that must have induced you to do this cannot help but weaken your case. If you have legitimate questions to ask, Counselor, you may continue with your cross-examination. But I warn you against another such exhibition in this courtroom.”

“I have no further questions, Your Honor.”

Robertson whispered heatedly as counsel for the Defense returned to his table, “What good did that do, for God’s sake? The judge is dead-set against you now.”

Defense replied calmly, “But Ninheimer is good and rattled. And we’ve set him up for tomorrow’s move. He’ll be ripe.”

Susan Calvin nodded gravely.

The rest of Prosecution’s case was mild in comparison. Dr. Baker was called and bore out most of Ninheimer’s testimony. Drs. Speidell and Ipatiev were called, and they expounded most movingly on their shock and dismay at certain quoted passages in Dr. Ninheimer’s book. Both gave their professional opinion that Dr. Ninheimer’s professional reputation had been seriously impaired.

The galleys were introduced in evidence, as were copies of the finished book.

Defense cross-examined no more that day. Prosecution rested and the trial was recessed till the next morning.

Defense made his first motion at the beginning of the proceedings on the second day. He requested that Robot EZ-27 be admitted as a spectator to the proceedings.

Prosecution objected at once and Justice Shane called both to the bench.

Prosecution said hotly, “This is obviously illegal. A robot may not be in any edifice used by the general public.”

“This courtroom,” pointed out Defense, “is closed to all but those having an immediate connection with the case.”

“A large machine of known erratic behavior would disturb my clients and my witnesses by its very presence! It would make hash out of the proceedings.”

The judge seemed inclined to agree. He turned to Defense and said rather unsympathetically, “What are the reasons for your request?”

Defense said, “It will be our contention that Robot EZ-27 could not possibly, by the nature of its construction, have behaved as it has been described as behaving. It will be necessary to present a few demonstrations.”

Prosecution said, “I don’t see the point, Your Honor. Demonstrations conducted by men employed at U. S. Robots are worth little as evidence when U. S. Robots is the defendant.”

“Your Honor,” said Defense, “the validity of any evidence is for you to decide, not for the Prosecuting Attorney. At least, that is my understanding.”

Justice Shane, his prerogatives encroached upon, said, “Your understanding is correct. Nevertheless, the presence of a robot here does raise important legal questions.”

“Surely, Your Honor, nothing that should be allowed to override the requirements of justice. If the robot is not present, we are prevented from presenting our only defense.”

The judge considered. “There would be the question of transporting the robot here.”

“That is a problem with which U. S. Robots has frequently been faced. We have a truck parked outside the courtroom, constructed according to the laws governing the transportation of robots. Robot EZ-27 is in a packing case inside with two men guarding it. The doors to the truck are properly secured and all other necessary precautions have been taken.”

“You seem certain,” said Justice Shane, in renewed ill-temper, “that judgment on this point will be in your favor.”

“Not at all, Your Honor. If it is not, we simply turn the truck about. I have made no presumptions concerning your decision.”

The judge nodded. “The request on the part of the Defense is granted.”

The crate was carried in on a large dolly and the two men who handled it opened it. The courtroom was immersed in a dead silence.

Susan Calvin waited as the thick slabs of celluform went down, then held out one hand. “Come, Easy.”

The robot looked in her direction and held out its large metal arm. It towered over her by two feet but followed meekly, like a child in the clasp of its mother. Someone giggled nervously and choked it off at a hard glare from Dr. Calvin.

Easy seated itself carefully in a large chair brought by the bailiff, which creaked but held.

Defense said, “When it becomes necessary, Your Honor, we will prove that this is actually Robot EZ-27, the specific robot in the employ of Northeastern University during the period of time with which we are concerned.”

“Good,” His Honor said. “That will be necessary. I, for one, have no idea how you can tell one robot from another.”

“And now,” said Defense, “I would like to call my first witness to the stand. Professor Simon Ninheimer, please.”

The clerk hesitated, looked at the judge. Justice Shane asked, with visible surprise, “You are calling the plaintiff as your witness?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“I hope that you’re aware that as long as he’s your witness, you will be allowed none of the latitude you might exercise if you were cross-examining an opposing witness.”

Defense said smoothly, “My only purpose in all this is to arrive at the truth. It will not be necessary to do more than ask a few polite questions.”

“Well,” said the judge dubiously, “you’re the one handling the case. Call the witness.”

Ninheimer took the stand and was informed that he was still under oath. He looked more nervous than he had the day before, almost apprehensive.

But Defense looked at him benignly.

“Now, Professor Ninheimer, you are suing my clients in the amount of $750,000.”

“That is the – uh – sum. Yes.”

“That is a great deal of money.”

“I have suffered a great deal of harm.”

“Surely not that much. The material in question involves only a few passages in a book. Perhaps these were unfortunate passages, but after all, books sometimes appear with curious mistakes in them.”

Ninheimer’s nostrils flared. “Sir, this book was to have been the climax of my professional career! Instead, it makes me look like an incompetent scholar, a perverter of the views held by my honored friends and associates, and a believer of ridiculous and – uh – outmoded viewpoints. My reputation is irretrievably shattered! I can never hold up my head in any – uh – assemblage of scholars, regardless of the outcome of this trial. I certainly cannot continue in my career, which has been the whole of my life. The very purpose of my life has been – uh – aborted and destroyed.”

Defense made no attempt to interrupt the speech, but stared abstractedly at his fingernails as it went on.

He said very soothingly, “But surely, Professor Ninheimer, at your present age, you could not hope to earn more than – let us be generous – $l5O, OOO during the remainder of your life. Yet you are asking the court to award you five times as much.”

Ninheimer said, with an even greater burst of emotion, “It is not in my lifetime alone that I am ruined. I do not know for how many generations I shall be pointed at by sociologists as a – uh – a fool or maniac. My real achievements will be buried and ignored. I am ruined not only until the day of my death, but for all time to come, because there will always be people who will not believe that a robot made those insertions –”

It was at this point that Robot EZ-27 rose to his feet. Susan Calvin made no move to stop him. She sat motionless, staring straight ahead. Defense sighed softly.

Easy’s melodious voice carried clearly. It said, “I would like to explain to everyone that I did insert certain passages in the galley proofs that seemed directly opposed to what had been there at first –”

Even the Prosecuting Attorney was too startled at the spectacle of a seven-foot robot rising to address the court to be able to demand the stopping of what was obviously a most irregular procedure.

When he could collect his wits, it was too late. For Ninheimer rose in the witness chair, his face working.

He shouted wildly, “Damn you, you were instructed to keep your mouth shut about –”

He ground to a choking halt, and Easy was silent, too. Prosecution was on his feet now, demanding that a mistrial be declared.

Justice Shane banged his gavel desperately. “Silence! Silence! Certainly there is every reason here to declare a mistrial, except that in the interests of justice I would like to have Professor Ninheimer complete his statement. I distinctly heard him say to the robot that the robot had been instructed to keep its mouth shut about something. There was no mention in your testimony, Professor Ninheimer, as to any instructions to the robot to keep silent about anything!”

Ninheimer stared wordlessly at the judge. Justice Shane said, “Did you instruct Robot EZ-27 to keep silent about something? And if so, about what?”

“Your Honor –” began Ninheimer hoarsely, and couldn’t continue.

The judge’s voice grew sharp. “Did you, in fact, order the inserts in question to be made in the galleys and then order the robot to keep quiet about your part in this?”

Prosecution objected vigorously, but Ninheimer shouted, “Oh, what’s the use? Yes! Yes!” And he ran from the witness stand. He was stopped at the door by the bailiff and sank hopelessly into one of the last rows of seats, head buried in both hands.

Justice Shane said, “It is evident to me that Robot EZ-27 was brought here as a trick. Except for the fact that the trick served to prevent a serious miscarriage of justice, I would certainly hold attorney for the Defense in contempt. It is clear now, beyond any doubt, that the plaintiff has committed what is to me a completely inexplicable fraud since, apparently, he was knowingly ruining his career in the process –”

Judgment, of course, was for the defendant.

Dr. Susan Calvin had herself announced at Dr. Ninheimer’s bachelor quarters in University Hall. The young engineer who had driven the car offered to go up with her, but she looked at him scornfully.

“Do you think he’ll assault me? Wait down here.”

Ninheimer was in no mood to assault anyone. He was packing, wasting no time, anxious to be away before the adverse conclusion of the trial became general knowledge.

He looked at Calvin with a queerly defiant air and said, “Are you coming to warn me of a countersuit? If so, it will get you nothing. I have no money, no job, no future. I can’t even meet the costs of the trial.”

“If you’re looking for sympathy,” said Calvin coldly, “don’t look for it here. This was your doing. However, there will be no countersuit, neither of you nor of the university. We will even do what we can to keep you from going to prison for perjury. We aren’t vindictive.”

“Oh, is that why I’m not already in custody for forswearing myself? I had wondered. But then,” he added bitterly, “why should you be vindictive? You have what you want now.”

“Some of what we want, yes,” said Calvin. “The university will keep Easy in its employ at a considerably higher rental fee. Furthermore, certain underground publicity concerning the trial will make it possible to place a few more of the EZ models in other institutions without danger of a repetition of this trouble.”

“Then why have you come to see me?”

“Because I don’t have all of what I want yet. I want to know why you hate robots as you do. Even if you had won the case, your reputation would have been ruined. The money you might have obtained could not have compensated for that. Would the satisfaction of your hatred for robots have done so?”

“Are you interested in human minds, Dr. Calvin?” asked Ninheimer, with acid mockery.

“Insofar as their reactions concern the welfare of robots, yes. For that reason, I have learned a little of human psychology.”

“Enough of it to be able to trick met”

“That wasn’t hard,” said Calvin, without pomposity. “The difficult thing was doing it in such a way as not to damage Easy.”

“It is like you to be more concerned for a machine than for a man.” He looked at her with savage contempt.

It left her unmoved. “It merely seems so, Professor Ninheimer. It is only by being concerned for robots that one can truly be concerned for twenty-first-century man. You would understand this if you were a roboticist.”

“I have read enough robotics to know I don’t want to be a roboticist!”

“Pardon me, you have read a book on robotics. It has taught you nothing. You learned enough to know that you could order a robot to do many things, even to falsify a book, if you went about it properly. You learned enough to know that you could not order him to forget something entirely without risking detection, but you thought you could order him into simple silence more safely. You were wrong.”

“You guessed the truth from his silencer’ “It wasn’t guessing. You were an amateur and didn’t know enough to cover your tracks completely. My only problem was to prove the matter to the judge and you were kind enough to help us there, in your ignorance of the robotics you claim to despise.”

“Is there any purpose in this discussion?” asked Ninheimer wearily.

“For me, yes,” said Susan Calvin, “because I want you to understand how completely you have misjudged robots. You silenced Easy by telling him that if he told anyone about your own distortion of the book, you would lose your job. That set up a certain potential within Easy toward silence, one that was strong enough to resist our efforts to break it down. We would have damaged the brain if we had persisted.

“On the witness stand, however, you yourself put up a higher counterpotential. You said that because people would think that you, not a robot, had written the disputed passages in the book, you would lose far more than just your job. You would lose your reputation, your standing, your respect, your reason for living. You would lose the memory of you after death. A new and higher potential was set up by you – and Easy talked.”

“Oh, God,” said Ninheimer, turning his head away. Calvin was inexorable. She said, “Do you understand why he talked? It was not to accuse you, but to defend you! It can be mathematically shown that he was about to assume full blame for your crime, to deny that you had anything to do with it. The First Law required that. He was going to lie – to damage himself – to bring monetary harm to a corporation. All that meant less to him than did the saving of you. If you really understood robots and robotics, you would have let him talk. But you did not understand, as I was sure you wouldn’t, as I guaranteed to the defense attorney that you wouldn’t. You were certain, in your hatred of robots, that Easy would act as a human being would act and defend itself at your expense. So you flared out at him in panic – and destroyed yourself.”

Ninheimer said with feeling, “I hope some day your robots turn on you and kill you!”

“Don’t be foolish,” said Calvin. “Now I want you to explain why you’ve done all this.”

Ninheimer grinned a distorted, humorless grin. “I am to dissect my mind, am I, for your intellectual curiosity, in return for immunity from a charge of perjury?”

“Put it that way if you like,” said Calvin emotionlessly. “But explain.”

“So that you can counter future anti-robot attempts more efficiently? With greater understanding?”

“I accept that.”

“You know,” said Ninheimer, “I’ll tell you – just to watch it do you no good at all. You can’t understand human motivation. You can only understand your damned machines because you’re a machine yourself, with skin on.”

He was breathing hard and there was no hesitation in his speech, no searching for precision. It was as though he had no further use for precision.

He said, “For two hundred and fifty years, the machine has been replacing Man and destroying the handcraftsman. Pottery is spewed out of molds and presses. Works of art have been replaced by identical gimcracks stamped out on a die. Call it progress, if you wish! The artist is restricted to abstractions, confined to the world of ideas. He must design something in mind – and then the machine does the rest.

“Do you suppose the potter is content with mental creation? Do you suppose the idea is enough? That there is nothing in the feel of the clay itself, in watching the thing grow as hand and mind work together? Do you suppose the actual growth doesn’t act as a feedback to modify and improve the idea?”

“You are not a potter,” said Dr. Calvin. “I am a creative artist! I design and build articles and books. There is more to it than the mere thinking of words and of putting them in the right order. If that were all, there would be no pleasure in it, no return.

“A book should take shape in the hands of the writer. One must actually see the chapters grow and develop. One must work and rework and watch the changes take place beyond the original concept even. There is taking the galleys in hand and seeing how the sentences look in print and molding them again. There are a hundred contacts between a man and his work at every stage of the game and the contact itself is pleasurable and repays a man for the work he puts into his creation more than anything else could. Your robot would take all that away.”

“So does a typewriter. So does a printing press. Do you propose to return to the hand illumination of manuscripts?”

“Typewriters and printing presses take away some, but your robot would deprive us of all. Your robot takes over the galleys. Soon it, or other robots, would take over the original writing, the searching of the sources, the checking and cross-checking of passages, perhaps even the deduction of conclusions. What would that leave the scholar? One thing only – the barren decisions concerning what orders to give the robot next! I want to save the future generations of the world of scholarship from such a final hell. That meant more to me than even my own reputation and so I set out to destroy U. S. Robots by whatever means.”

“You were bound to fail,” said Susan Calvin. “I was bound to try,” said Simon Ninheimer. Calvin turned and left. She did her best to feel no pang of sympathy for the broken man.

She did not entirely succeed.

First Law

2035 A.D.

MIKE DONOVAN LOOKED at his empty beer mug, felt bored, and decided he had listened long enough. He said, loudly, “If we’re going to talk about unusual robots, I once knew one that disobeyed the First Law.”

And since that was completely impossible, everyone stopped talking and turned to look at Donovan.

Donovan regretted his big mouth at once and changed the subject. “I heard a good one yesterday,” he said, conversationally, “about –”

MacFarlane in the chair next to Donovan’s said, “You mean you knew a robot that harmed a human being?” That was what disobedience to First Law meant, of course.

“In a way,” said Donovan. “I say I heard one about –”

“Tell us about it,” ordered MacFarlane. Some of the others banged their beer mugs on the table.

Donovan made the best of it. “It happened on Titan about ten years ago,” he said, thinking rapidly. “Yes, it was in twenty-five. We had just recently received a shipment of three new-model robots, specially designed for Titan. They were the first of the MA models. We called them Emma One, Two and Three.” He snapped his fingers for another beer and stared earnestly after the waiter. Let’s see, what came next?

MacFarlane said, “I’ve been in robotics half my life, Mike. I never heard of an MA serial order.”

“That’s because they took the MA’s off the assembly lines immediately after – after what I’m going to tell you. Don’t you remember?”

“No.” Donovan continued hastily. “We put the robots to work at once. You see, until then, the Base had been entirely useless during the stormy season, which lasts eighty percent of Titan’s revolution about Saturn. During the terrific snows, you couldn’t find the Base if it were only a hundred yards away. Compasses aren’t any use, because Titan hasn’t any magnetic field.

“The virtue of these MA robots, however, was that they were equipped with vibro-detectors of a new design so that they could make a beeline for the Base through anything, and that meant mining could become a through-the-revolution affair. And don’t say a word, Mac. The vibro-detectors were taken off the market also, and that’s why you haven’t heard of them.” Donovan coughed. “Military secret, you understand.”

He went on. “The robots worked fine during the first stormy season, then at the start of the calm season, Emma Two began acting up. She kept wandering off into corners and under bales and had to be coaxed out. Finally she wandered off Base altogether and didn’t come back. We decided there had been a flaw in her manufacture and got along with the other two. Still, it meant we were shorthanded, or short-roboted anyway, so when toward the end of the calm season, someone had to go to Kornsk, I volunteered to chance it without a robot. It seemed safe enough; the storms weren’t due for two days and I’d be back in twenty hours at the outside.

“I was on the way back – a good ten miles from Base – when the wind started blowing and the air thickening. I landed my air car immediately before the wind could smash it, pointed myself toward the Base and started running. I could run the distance in the low gravity all right, but could I run a straight line? That was the question. My air supply was ample and my suit heat coils were satisfactory, but ten miles in a Titanian storm is infinity.

“Then, when the snow streams changed everything to a dark, gooey twilight, with even Saturn dimmed out and the sun only a pale pimple, I stopped short and leaned against the wind. There was a little dark object right ahead of me. I could barely make it out but I knew what it was. It was a storm pup; the only living thing that could stand a Titanian storm, and the most vicious living thing anywhere. I knew my space suit wouldn’t protect me, once it made for me, and in the bad light, I had to wait for a point-blank aim or I didn’t dare shoot. One miss and he would be at me.

“I backed away slowly and the shadow followed. It closed in and I was raising my blaster, with a prayer, when a bigger shadow loomed over me suddenly, and I yodeled with relief. It was Emma Two, the missing MA robot. I never stopped to wonder what had happened to it or worry why it had. I just howled, ‘Emma, baby, get that storm pup; and then get me back to Base.’

“It just looked at me as if it hadn’t heard and called out, ‘Master, don’t shoot. Don’t shoot.’

“It made for that storm pup at a dead run.

“‘Get that damned pup, Emma,’ I shouted. It got the pup, all right. It scooped it right up and kept on going. I yelled myself hoarse but it never came back. It left me to die in the storm.”

Donovan paused dramatically, “Of course, you know the First Law: A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm! Well, Emma Two just ran off with that storm pup and left me to die. It broke First Law.

“Luckily, I pulled through safely. Half an hour later, the storm died down. It had been a premature gust, and a temporary one. That happens sometimes. I hot-footed it for Base and the storms really broke next day. Emma Two returned two hours after I did, and, of course, the mystery was then explained and the MA models were taken off the market immediately.”

“And just what,” demanded MacFarlane, “was the explanation?” Donovan regarded him seriously. “It’s true I was a human being in danger of death, Mac, but to that robot there was something else that came first, even before me, before the First Law. Don’t forget these robots were of the MA series and this particular MA robot had been searching out private nooks for some time before disappearing. It was as though it expected something special – and private – to happen to it. Apparently, something special had.”

Donovan’s eyes turned upward reverently and his voice trembled. “That storm pup was no storm pup. We named it Emma Junior when Emma Two brought it back. Emma Two had to protect it from my gun. What is even First Law compared with the holy ties of mother love?”

Plato’s Cave

2036 A.D.

THE MESSAGE REACHED Earth as a set of shortwave pulses. A communications satellite relayed it, along with hundreds more, to a groundside clearing station. Since it designated itself private, the station passed it directly on to its recipient, the global headquarters of the United States Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation. There a computer programmed with its highly secret code converted digital signals to sight and sound. An image leaped into being, so three-dimensionally complete that startlement brought a gasp from Henry Matsumoto.

The robot shown was no surprise — humanoid but large, bulkily armored, intended for hard labor under tricky conditions. The background, though, was spectacular. Nothing blocked that from view but a couple of structural members. Needing no air, drink, food, little of anything except infrequent refuelings, robots when by themselves traveled in spacecraft quite accurately describable as “barebones. “At one edge of the screen, a slice of Jupiter’s disc glowed huge, its tawniness swirled with clouds and spotted with storms that could have swallowed Earth whole. Near the lower edge was a glimpse of Io. The sights flitted swiftly past, for the ship was in close orbit around the moon, but the plume of one volcanic outburst upon it dominated the desolation for just this instant, geyserlike above a furious sulfury spout.

The young technician was doubly shaken because the apparition was so unexpected. He had merely been taking his turn as monitor, relieving the tedium with a book. No message had come in for weeks other than regular “All’s well” tokens. What the hell had gone wrong?

A deep voice rolled over him. It was synthesized; in airlessness, the speaker directly modulated a radio wave. “Robot DGR-36 reporting from Io. Robot JK-7 has suspended operations — prospecting, mining, transportation, beneficiation, all work. When my crew and I landed to take on the next load of ore, we found every machine and subordinate robot idle. JK-7 himself was not present, but spoke to me from the hills behind the site. He declared that he was acting under strict orders from a human, to the effect that this undertaking is dangerous and must be terminated. I deemed it best that we return to orbit and await instructions.”

“M-m-my God,” Matsumoto stammered. “Hold on. Stay quiet.”

At the present configuration of the planets, his order would take some forty minutes to arrive. However, anticipating that the first person he reached would be a junior, DGR-36 had already gone immobile. Matsumoto swung about in his chair and frantically punched the intercom.

He needed an outside line, local time being well past ordinary working hours, but soon Philip Hillkowitz, technological chief of Project Io, was in the little office. Hillkowitz in his turn had called Alfred Lanning, general director of research, who arrived almost on his heels. The two men stared at the image of the robot, and then at each other, for what seemed to Matsumoto a very long while.

“Has it happened in spite of everything?” Hillkowitz whispered. “Can the radiation really have driven Jack insane?”

Lanning’s tufted brows drew together. “I shouldn’t have to remind you,” he snapped, “tests showed his shielding adequate against a hundred years of continuous exposure.”

“Yes, yes, yes. But those hellish conditions —” Hillkowitz addressed the robot. “Edgar, did you notice any other abnormality when you were on the ground? For example, did metal seem pitted or corroded?”

“Not a bad question,” Lanning said. “But in the eighty minutes till we hear the answer, we’d better think up a system for learning more, faster.”

The officers dismissed Matsumoto, enjoining him to let out no hint of trouble; and they canceled subsequent vigils. Inevitably, this would start rumors by itself. While they waited, they sent out after coffee, speculated fruitlessly, paced, overloaded the air conditioning with smoke.

“No, sir,” DGR-36 replied. “I took it upon myself to examine equipment and robots that were present. No trace of mechanical, chemical, or radiation damage was apparent to my sensors.”

“Good lad,” Lanning muttered. He had helped design a considerable degree of initiative into yonder model.

“I spoke with the other robots,” DGR-36 continued, “but they could only tell me that JK-7 had directed them to stop work. I had no authority to order them back, and in any event, as I understand the situation, only JK-7 can successfully supervise them. I urged him to resume operations, but he stated that he was under directions that took precedence over all others, whereupon he broke contact. “Again he turned into a statue.

“Have you observed any activity since?” Hillkowitz asked.

“This settles it,” Lanning said to him. “We’ve got to get hold of Susan Calvin.”

“What, already? Uh, yes, she can better judge derangement than either of us, no doubt, but — I mean, this time lag, and Jack himself out of touch — we can’t dispatch her to the scene.”

“No, I expect we’ll want, hm, Powell and Donovan; they’re probably our best field operatives. But Calvin is the one to decide that.”

Lanning keyed for her home. Presently a voice emerged waspish: “Well, what do you want? Who is there? If your reason for rousing me out of bed isn’t excellent, you will regret it.”

“Phil Hillkowitz and myself,” Lanning said. “Look, you’ve got to get down here right away. We have a crisis on Io. I don’t dare tell you more except in person.”

“Afraid of electronic eavesdroppers? How melodramatic!”

“Well, maybe unlikely, but Project Io is in trouble. You know how much it means, and how determined the opposition is.”

“I also know how that room you’re in must smell by now,” retorted the robopsychologist. “Whistle up some of your technies and have me patched in on a properly sealed circuit. Full audiovisual, and direct access to the main databank. Given the transmission lag, they’ll have ample time if they go about it competently.”

Thus, after a while, the men saw her image, primly erect in a straight-backed chair, sipping tea, across from the robot’s.

“We are not equipped to follow the actions of individuals when we are in space,” DGR-36 answered. “We have noticed no obvious movements, at least thus far.”

“I realize you don’t have perfect memory either,” Calvin said, “but I want you, Edgar, to tell me, as best you can — don’t be in a hurry; examine your recollections carefully — tell me precisely what motivation JK-7 gave you. In particular, what did he tell you about this human who allegedly appeared to him and ordered him to halt work?”

She signaled for a break in transmission to Jupiter and turned her attention back Earthward. “‘Appeared to’ is the right wording,” Hillkowitz said, sighing. His own gaze went elsewhere, as if to look through walls and across space. He might have been thinking, reviewing, though he had lived with this from its origins: None of us can survive there. Io is deep in Jupiter’s magnetosphere. The trapped charged particles would doom us within minutes, unless we were inside shielding so thick as to leave us helpless. Not to mention the cold, or vacuum barely softened by poisonous volcanic spewings. We can make robots immune to these and even guard the positronic brain so well that the radiation does not ruin it. Or so we thought. Lanning and I, our team, we labored long on the task. And afterward our engineers did, for two years in the safer outer reaches of the Jovian System, patiently guiding the construction on Io and the beginning of operations. But they could only communicate with Jake, and he with them, by radio and laser. At such times he perceived them and whatever they wished to show him; his communicator decoded the signals and he saw the images, heard the voices, inside that head of his. What now has he seen and heard, what new ghost came to him in that inferno where he toiled?

“Precision is obviously essential,” Calvin declared. “Now, gentlemen, I shall call up the files on this project and study them for about one hour.” Her screen went blank..

“I might do the same,” Lanning said. “You needn’t, Phil. Io’s been your exclusive concern. Why don’t you catch a catnap?”

“Lord,” mumbled Hillkowitz, “I wish I could.”

The simulacrum of Calvin was back when promised, but told the men simply, “No comment, yet,” and waited with hands folded in lap. Even when that of the robot stirred, hers did not. But his speech brought her too out of her chair.

“Yes, ma ‘m. Seeing the site idled, hardly any ore waiting, and JK-7 absent, I broadcast a call and got an audio reply which I sensed as emanating from somewhere in the hills. He maintained that he had stopped work on command of a human who explained that it threatened the entire human race. He declined to go into detail, except that when I asked if he would at least identify this human, he told me it was the Emperor Napoleon.”

As low in mass and high in power as was compatible with life support, courier ship De/fin could have made Jupiter in less than four days. Svend Borup would have medicated himself against the effects of such an acceleration and spent much of the time happily contemplating the hardship bonus due him. Unfortunately, Gregory Powell and Michael Donovan would not have arrived fit to get busy. At a steady one gravity, boost and deboost, the crossing still took under a week, and meanwhile U.S. Robots’s ace troubleshooters could become familiar with the vast store of background material given them.

When first they came up for air, at the first meal en route, Borup naturally asked them what was going on. “I was told almost nothing,” he said in his soft Danish accent. “The whole went so fast. They waved a contract at me, but it also says no more than that I take you to Jupiter and there help you as is needed. “The owner-captain was a stocky, balding man whose waistline might be due in part to frequent indulgence in pretzel-shaped sugar cookies from his homeland.

“Well, they had plenty reason to hurry,” Donovan answered. “Explanations could wait. Whatever’s the matter, maybe we can fix it — unless we get there too late. Anyhow, the government can’t afford —” He broke off, uncertain whether he should reveal more. Ole, one of the two robots that were the crew, helped him by entering the saloon and setting bowls of pea soup before the men. Knud, the other, was on watch, slight though the chance was of anything happening which the ship’s automatics couldn’t handle.

Borup nodded. “It is on Io. That is clear. They talk about reestablishing the station on Ganymede, but it is yust talk so far, after the Yovian scare. Too little left for people to do there, too big a hazard from the radiation. Nobody today on all those moons or anywhere near, yust the miner robots.” He wagged his spoon. “And it is a big, big investment in them, no? If the ore stops coming out, many banks are in trouble. And so are the world aut’orities who sponsored the venture and pushed it t’rough.”

“You’re pretty well up on events,” Powell remarked.

Borup chuckled. “For a fellow who mostly dashes around in space, you mean? No, no. Everybody knows what a powerful issue Proyect Io has been, pro and contra.”

“Still is,” Donovan muttered.

“Well, now that we’re safely under way, we can be candid with you, and in fact we’d better be,” Powell said. “Confidentiality — but frankly, if we fail, my guess is that it won’t make much difference what gets into the media.” He wiped his mustache, in which droplets had condensed from the steam off the soup. “Uh, I’m not sure what you may recollect of all the controversy about the project and all the hoopla while it was getting started. Since then it’s practically dropped out of the public consciousness. Another bunch of robots and machinery, working somewhere distant from Earth.”

“But wit’ great promise,” Borup said. “The Io volcanoes bring up such riches of minerals, more than in all the asteroids put together, no? It is the radiation that is the problem.”

“Not alone. We also have a dangerous, essentially unpredictable environment, quakes, landslides, crevasses opening, ground collapsing into caves, eruptions, the way Jupiter’s tides tear at that moon. Therefore an especially intelligent robot is required to run the show. The work gangs can be pretty ordinary models, not greatly modified, not too hard to provide ample shielding for. But the head honcho needs intelligence, a large store of knowledge, alertness, initiative, even what you mayas well call a degree of imagination. The positronic circuits of such a robot are all too easily addled. Protecting it — simply plating the head with a lot of material — isn’t enough. Compensatory circuits are necessary, and then you have to compensate for their effects. It wasn’t really certain, when U.S. Robots signed the contract, that this development was possible at the present state of the art.”

“Yes, I do remember.”

“Sorry.”

“It is all right. What have we to do but talk? And enyoy our soup. There will be meatballs after. Please to continue.”

“Well, we, uh, the firm did come up with the new robot, and everything tested out fine, and went fine, too, until now. But he appears to have suddenly gone crazy after all. He suspended work and sits babbling about it being dangerous to Earth. He says this came to him in a, uh, vision.”

“Ha, I t’ought somet’ing like that. Have you no spare?”

“I don’t know, but I doubt it,” Donovan put in. “Jack — JK-7 — the number will tell you how many prototypes they went through — he’s practically handcrafted. Cost more than any three senators. Not a production-line item; how many Ios have we got? Anyway, how could we land a second Jack till we know what went wrong with the first?”

“Which first might interfere with the second,” Powell added grimly.

Borup looked shocked, in his mild fashion. “A robot interfering wit’ work ordered by humans?”

“Hard to imagine,” Powell agreed. “But, well, think. Because Jack is not only extra valuable, but essential to the project, and in such a hazardous situation, they’ve given him an unusually high Third Law potential. He’ll take as good care of himself as he can, whether or not that means sacrificing a great deal else. Of course, it doesn’t override the Second Law. He must carry out the mission entrusted to him, and obey any specific orders issued him by a human. But that potential is on the low side. What this means in practice is, if he, with his on-the-spot experience, if he thinks an order is mistaken, he questions it. He points out the flaws. Only if he’s then commanded to proceed regardless will he do so. Likewise, when he’s by himself he’ll use his own judgment as to how he should direct the overall job of mining Io.

“Well, now he’s gotten this delusion, or whatever it is. The First Law naturally takes precedence over everything else. He cannot knowingly do anything that would harm humans, or refrain from doing anything that would save humans from harm. His brain would burn out first.” Powell had been ticking the points off on his fingers. “You know this, everybody does, but often the interactions of these laws, the conflicts between them and the resultants, get so complicated or so subtle that nobody but a roboticist can make sense of what’s happening.”

“And not always the roboticist, right away;” Donovan chimed in.

“According to Edgar, the robot cargo-ship captain and he wouldn’t lie to us — Jack is convinced Project Io will lead to death and destruction,” Powell said. “Therefore he’s stopped it. I doubt very much he’ll obey orders to resume, unless somehow we can persuade him he’s in error. He might not even respond to our calls. Conceivably he’ll decide it’s his duty to actively resist further work, actually sabotage it. And, besides his high capabilities, if they aren’t impaired, that high Third Law potential will make him a very cunning, careful, probably very efficient guerrilla.”

“You have no way of yust making him stay quiet?” asked Borup.

Powell frowned. A moment passed before he said, “We can’t go to Io in this ship to hunt him down, and live, if that’s what you mean. Edgar and his crew are meant for space and stevedoring; they’d be hopeless. Getting up a proper robotic hunting party would be monstrously prolonged and expensive. Meanwhile the capital costs of the stalled project mount every day, and as for the political consequences if the scandal breaks” He shrugged.

“No, no, I understand. But have you not some special passworded command to give him that makes you the absolute boss?”

Powell and Donovan stared. Borup blandly spooned soup … You’re smarter than you let on,” Donovan murmured. He slapped the table and barked a laugh … Yeah, sure we do. Hard-wired in. What with all the unknowns and unforeseeables, that was an elementary precaution. For instance, the scientists might discover a danger unknown to him, and not want to lose time arguing. Or if you’re paranoid, or ultra careful, you’ll worry about enemies of the project somehow slipping him a false order. Yes, there is a password. Top Secret, Bum Before Reading, known to a handful of people in the company and the government, and now to us two. It’ll probably be the first thing we try when we get there. Whether he’ll obey — he is insane, and this is not so basic as the Three Laws.”

“Insane, you believe,” Borup corrected. Donovan grimaced … We’d sure like to believe otherwise. If the radiation’s fried his brain, or something else on that chunk of hell has gotten to him, there goes the project down the tubes, probably, and a lot more besides.”

“What makes you t’ink he must be mad?”

Donovan and Powell glanced at each other before Powell nodded. “Why, he claims Napoleon came and told him to stop,” Donovan said. “That’s all we know so far. But isn’t it enough?”

“Napoleon? The Emperor?”

“Who else?”

“Now where would he have heard about Napoleon?”

“A reasonable question. Last I heard, Dr. Calvin was trying to research that. But you never know what stray scraps of information might get to a robot while he’s being activated and indoctrinated. A lot of people are generally involved, and he’ll overhear conversations. Also, now and then a brain picks up stray signals, telecast or — Remember Speedy, Greg?”

“How could I forget?” Powell sighed. To Borup: “A robot we dealt with on Mercury. A Second-Third Law conflict unbalanced him. He ran around and around in a circle gibbering Gilbert and Sullivan. We never did find out how he acquired it.”

“Hm,” said Borup. “Your chances do not look so good, yentlemen, do they?”

“Which means the chances for the world don’t.” Powell’s tone was bleak.

“Oh? True, much money will be lost. But unless you are a banker or a politician —”

“Bankers handle the money of working stiffs like you and us,” Donovan said. “If Project Io goes bust, we could get one black hole of a depression.”

“And as for politicians,” Powell added, “they aren’t all clowns and crooks, you know. Here we’ve finally, just a few years back, elected a reform government with some bright, decent people at the top. It’s staked its future on Project Io. The opposition was terrific, you may recall. What, throwaway fortunes on a gamble like that? The idea that we’ll all benefit more from increased production, fairly divided, than from handouts and pork barrels was too much for the old guard. It fought right down the line. And it’s still got a large minority in the legislature, while the government itself is a pretty frail coalition. Let Project Io fail, and a vote of no confidence will throw us right back to where we were, or worse.”

“I suppose so,” Borup said softly. “I do not pay too much attention to those t’ings. When I am at home wit’ my wife, mostly we talk about the garden and the grandchildren. But, yes, we did vote for reform. It would be nice to see that man Stephen Byerly someday be coordinator.” He turned his head. “Ah, here come the meatballs.”

Seen from its little moon Himalia, Jupiter shone about as large as Luna over Earth but, in spite of its cloudbands, barely a fourth as bright. That pale gold glow, the glare from a shrunken sun, and the glitter of swarming stars shimmered on ice and vanished among upthrust crags. Clustered at the north pole, dome, masts, and docking facilities were a sight well-nigh as gaunt, yet welcome to human eyes. Borup brought De/fin to rest and linked airlocks. Powell and Donovan entered the mothballed engineering base to reactivate it. Gravity was virtually negligible; they moved through the gloom like phantoms, except when they collided with something and uttered earthy words.

After a few hours they had light, heat, air circulation, austere habitability. Donovan beat his hands together. “Brrr!” he exclaimed. “How long’ll it take the walls to warm up? I know it’s thermodynamic nonsense, but I’d swear they radiate cold.”

“Longer than we’ll be here, I hope,” Powell said. “Meanwhile we can eat and sleep aboard ship. Let’s get cracking.”

They settled themselves before the main console in the communications room. A coded beam sprang from the transmitter, computer-aimed inward through the lethal zone around Jupiter. A readout showed that Io was currently occulted by the great planet, but that shouldn’t matter. Two relay satellites swung in the Trojan positions of the same orbit. Six more circled Io itself, in the equatorial and polar planes. Between them, those identified Jack wherever he was on the surface and kept locked onto him.

“Himalia Base calling Robot JK-7,” Powell intoned. ‘. Humans have returned to the Jovian System. Come in, JK-7.”

After a humming silence, Donovan ran fingers through red hair gone wild and groaned, “He must be completely around the bend. He talked for a little while to Edgar. “Useless here, that robot and his crew were bound for duty in the Asteroid Belt. ‘. Now he won’t give us the time of day.” He paused.” Unless he’s broken down physically. too.”

“Seems unlikely,” Powell argued. “His builders are as competent a bunch as you’ll find. Supposing conditions are more harmful than they knew, still, damage would be cumulative, and Jack hasn’t been where he is for long.” He rubbed his chin. “Hmm. While Edgar’s gang was on the ground, he skulked in the hills and communicated by audio-only long-wave radio. I’d guess he was afraid they might seize him and take him back for examination. They couldn’t pinpoint where he was broadcasting from on that band, and weren’t equipped to use the satellites to locate him for them. Not that they could run him down anyway, in country he’s designed for.”

“He didn’t have to obey them. They were robots, same as him.”

“Yeah. He didn’t have to respond to them at all. But I daresay Second Law made him anxious to explain himself to humans, sort of.”

“Hey, wait. We’re humans, and he isn’t heeding us.”

“If, as you say, he’s capable of receiving.” Powell drew breath. “Okay, we reinforce the Second Law by the password.” He leaned forward and said slowly: “Robot JK-7, this is human Gregory Powell calling from Himalia Base. I order you to reply. Code Upsilon. Repeat, Code Upsilon.”

Silence stretched. The men knew it must. Time lag at the moment was about thirty-nine seconds, either way. Nevertheless, they shivered as they half sat, half floated in their chairs. When abruptly the screen came alive, Donovan jumped. He rose into midair and cartwheeled gradually down again, struggling to keep his remarks to himself.

The view was of ruggedness and desolation. Near half phase, Jupiter stood huge over the hills that ringed a narrow horizon. Its radiance flooded the scars and mottlings left by eruptions. Closer in lay flat concrete, on which Powell spied vehicles, machines, motionless robots. So Jack had returned to his own base. This was what he saw before him.

Well, not quite. He also saw Powell’s image, and presently Donovan’s, and heard their voices. They were not superimposed on the landscape. He perceived them separately, somewhat as a human may see a face called out of memory without losing view of what is actually around — but more vividly, m full three-dimensional detail.

The synthetic speech jerked, stumbled, dragged itself forth: “Robot JK-7 … responding. What … have you to say?”

“What is this ‘Napoleon’ lunacy?” Powell demanded. “How did you get the notion your task endangers anybody? On the contrary, it’s beneficial and important to Earth. In the name of your makers, by authority duly delegated my partner and me, I command you to resume operations.”

The minute-plus until the answer came felt like forever. When it did, they almost wished it hadn’t.

“I … am not … so obliged. You … are robots.”

“Huh? Code Upsilon, damn it!” Donovan roared. “And the Second Law! You can see and hear we’re human!”

Interminability.

“I observe … the semblance. I hear the claim. Also, yes” The scene wavered a little, as if Jack shuddered. “Also the word of command. But — but —”

The voice trailed off. “Go on,” Powell said low. “But what?”

After another dripping away of seconds: “Napoleon warned me of this. He … he said … robots posing as humans … possessing the password … would try to do … exactly what you are trying to do.”

Donovan opened his mouth. Powell made a shushing gesture, leaned nearer the screen, spoke softly and earnestly.

“Listen, Jack. Something is terribly wrong. You’re altogether misinformed. We don’t blame you, but you must help us get to the bottom of this. Help us to help you, understand? Tell us exactly what has happened. Tell us why you think what you think. Who told you what, Jack? For the well-being of humanity, tell us.”

Waiting.

“If you … are robots … you are deceived.” The voice strengthened. “You are serving a disastrous policy. Let me enlighten you.”

“Certainly, Jack. If we, if we are robots, we too obey the First Law. We would never willingly or wittingly cause humans to come to harm. And if we are not robots, then we need to learn about possible dangers, don’t we? Remember, we know Code Upsilon. That implies we are humans, doesn’t it? In a pretty special position, at that. Tell us everything, Jack.”

Waiting. Despite the chill, sweat gleamed on Donovan’s cheeks. He wiped it with large, helpless hands.

The pause went on for an added minute, but when the machine tones arrived, they had steadied. “Very well. The password does require me to give you as much obedience as possible. Napoleon told me it would. In fact, events are proceeding as he foresaw, which you must agree adds credence to his statements.

“On date 23 January, hour 0917 and 3.68 seconds, I was in the Loki area, having taken a flitter there to prospect for new digs while my workers finished up at the Aten lode. A full audiovisual of a human appeared to me. He identified himself as the Emperor Napoleon and described a deadly menace newly discovered through study of specimens sent back to Earth during the first robotic explorations decades ago. It had not been found earlier because it is so subtle and surprising.

“Energized by vulcanism, a kind of pseudolife has evolved here. Napoleon called it a viroid. It derives its own energy by promoting reactions among metallic elements. As a rule this goes very slowly, but in the course of geological time the viroid has infested all minerals, and reduction will not get rid of it. By now it is in equilibrium on Io, essentially dormant, but when it is brought into contact with uncontaminated metal it will spread again, faster at Earth temperatures than here. This station, with robots and machinery, will begin to crumble within ten or fifteen standard years. Let Ionian metals be introduced on Earth, and the whole industrial infrastructure will collapse in a time not much longer. Dependent on it, the vast majority of humans will die horribly.

“Fortunately, thus far only a small tonnage has been exported, and it only to industries off Earth. Samples on Earth have been kept isolated for research purposes. Certain disintegrations led to studies which determined the cause. Steps can be taken to eliminate contaminated metal everywhere; it is not too late. But clearly, no more material of any kind may ever leave Io. Napoleon ordered me under Code Upsilon to halt operations.”

“He lied!” Donovan shouted. “There’s been no such trouble, no such discovery. Lies, I tell you!”

Powell agreed more smoothly, “This is correct. We would have known. If the danger existed, would we be here wanting you to start work again?”

Waiting.

“Napoleon explained this and anticipated your argument,” Jack said. He still didn’t sound quite self-assured. “The findings are, as yet, controversial. They seem to defy the principles of biology, as biology has hitherto been taught. The directors of Project Io have a major personal, financial, and political investment in it. They refuse to believe. They have kept the news from the public. Napoleon represents a group of dissident scientists who realize that, at the least, operations must be suspended until the truth has been ascertained beyond any doubt.

“He told me that, when I took this measure, the directors would try to annul it. They would send robots, because humans might feel qualms and let the world know what is going on. Cleverly misinformed, the robots would have instructions to pose as humans and dissuade me.”

The voice grew firmer. “You are those emissaries. Yes, Napoleon’s group could perhaps be mistaken. But I cannot take the chance. The possibility that humans may die in the billions is … unthinkable … unacceptable under any circumstances, any odds. Consider this, you two, in the light of the First Law. You must set your own orders aside.”

“But we aren’t robots,” Donovan choked. “Just look at us.”

“We could be disguised,” Powell admitted fast. “The simplest way would be to change the digital transmission. Put in a program that converts a robot image to a human image. Voices likewise. It would be much easier the other way around. Humans have many more features, more nuances of expression. Watch my face, my hands.” He went through a repertoire of smiles, frowns, and gestures. “Could a robot do that, with all the shadings you see?”

Waiting.

Renewed uncertainty spoke. “I … am not … acquainted with such details … about humans.”

“Then how do you know Napoleon isn’t a robot?” Donovan flung.

“Pipe down, Mike,” Powell snapped. “Oh, Jack, you do have a lood intelligence and a capability of independent judgment. You must be aware of the possibility that Napoleon has misled you, and we are in fact humans giving you your proper orders. Now think how much more believable it is that that’s’ the case.”

He had expected a pause for pondering, but the reply was as prompt as light-speed allowed, and once more — above an undertone, an unevenness, that sounded anguished — resolute. “It is indeed conceivable. I do not know enough about human affairs to gauge the probability. That does not matter. Given the slightest chance that Napoleon is right, and his use of Code Upsilon indicates that he does have full access to information, the consequences are absolutely impermissible. This outweighs every other consideration. I cannot allow mining and shipment to continue. If the attempt is made, I must do my best to prevent it.” With a naiveté that would have been pathetic under less desperate circumstances: “I shall cache explosives in the hills and devise weapons against future robots. My own workers will follow me.”

Powell gnawed an end ofhis mustache. “I see. Let’s try this from another angle. Tell me about Napoleon. What does he look like? How often has he contacted you, and from where? What precisely has he said?”

Waiting.

“In person,” said Jack, “he is a somewhat stout male, of short stature to judge by what glimpses I have had of his control board, although those are bare glimpses. His hair is black. He wears a cloth around his neck. Otherwise any clothing is covered by an overgarment of a blue color, with golden-hued braid at the shoulders. I have not seen his legs. He commonly keeps his right hand tucked into the coat. He also wears a kind of triangular headgear, likewise blue, of some soft material.”

Donovan’s lips formed a soundless whistle.

The voice plodded on: “As for where he calls from, it must be outside the radiation belt, since he is human, but he has not informed me. I have noted the time lags with my internal clock, and computed that he cannot be on Himalia. In fact, their rather slight variations indicate he is not on any moon.

“He has called three times. The exchanges have been brief. I will attempt to re-create them for you, because … because if you are human, I must obey you to the extent that the First Law permits.”

The words that followed were, indeed, short and to the point. The original communication described the viroids and gave the order to cease and desist. The other two, at intervals of a few days, were essentially reinforcing; such questions as had occurred to Jack got curt answers, which bore down on the danger to mankind and the reckless villainy of Project lo’s directors. Powell and Donovan refrained from asking how Napoleon came to speak fluent English. They were more interested in the additional command.

“Now that you are here,” Jack said, “I must inform him. I will broadcast at sufficient strength that his receivers will pick it up, wherever he is in the Jovian region. Thereafter I will arrange that any further discussions with you will be directly retransmitted in full audiovisual to him. Thus he will hear what you have to say, and join in if he chooses.” Wistfulness? “Perhaps you can persuade him he is misguided.”

“Perhaps,” mumbled Donovan without hope.

Waiting.

“I had better take care of that at once,” Jack said. “I see no profit in further conversation at this point, do you? If you have any valid points to make, factual or logical, call me and I will consider them. So will Napoleon.”

The screen blanked.

The spaceship was a haven of comfort and sanity. Borup heard his passengers out, clicked his tongue, and told them, “What you need first is a stiff drink. I have a bottle of akvavit for emeryencies.”

Donovan raised a hand. “Best offer I’ve had all day,” he said, “but first, can we start searching?”

“What’s this?” asked Powell.

“Look, if Napoleon is real, he’s got to be hanging around in this neighborhood. Let’s see if we can find him before he figures out some fresh deviltry. If he’s not real, if Jack is quantum hopping, what’ve we lost?”

“If he is hidden on one of the moons, I do not know how we can detect him,” Borup objected.

Donovan shook his head. “Jack doesn’t think he is, and he for sure would not be. In the first place, digging in like that is a lot of work, needs time and equipment and hands. If this is a try to sabotage Project Io, it’s got to be a shoestring kind of thing, a tiny clique, like maybe half a dozen individuals. Anything bigger would take too long to organize, be too hard to manage, and make secrecy impossible for any useful length of time. Investigators would be bound to get clues to the guilty parties.”

Powell regarded his partner closely. “Once in a while you surprise me,” he confessed. “Marvelous, my dear Holmes!”

Donovan bowed. “Elementary, my dear Watson.”

“Holmes and Watson never said that,” Borup remarked aside.

Donovan continued: “We’ve also got the fact that the gear for using the Trojan relays is special and delicate. On the surface of a moon it would stick up in sight of God and everybody and give the game away. Therefore Napoleon must be in space. And he won’t want to lose touch with Io during the frequent occultations. So he’ll be well above or below the ecliptic, where he always has Io in his instruments. An orbit skewed from Jupiter’s but otherwise with the same elements will keep him in place, fairly stably, over a period of a few weeks, I should think.” He glanced at Borup. “Svend, could we find a ship loitering maybe two, three million klicks from here in the northern or southern sky?”

Powell scowled. “That’s a monstrous volume of space to cruise through.”

“I would not obyect to running up the bill I present the company wit’,” Borup said, “but it is not necessary, and it would waste time that is precious. We do carry very sensitive instruments. When you travel at the speeds a courier reaches, you must be able to detect t’ings far ahead of you.” He pondered. “M-m-m, tja, it depends on the size and type of the craft. But somet’ing no bigger than mine, which is close to minimum, we could get on the optics for certain. And radar reaches still farther. The rotation axis of this moon is tilted enough that we need not take off to examine bot’ regions where Napoleon must be in one of if he monitors Io.”

“The ship’s hull could be camouflaged, couldn’t it?” Powell inquired. “Then how’ll you know your radar hasn’t fingered a meteoroid?”

“Camouflage, maybe, I am not sure. But the nature of a radar-reflecting surface shows in the return signal if you got an analyzer like mine. Metal is different from rock and so on. And once we have acquired a suspicious obyect, we have more instruments. In these parts, unless the crew is frozen to deat’, there will be infrared emission — and also from that direction, out of the power plant, neutrinos above the background count. Yes, I t’ink we can find the Emperor’s spaceship unless he is so far away that the communications delay is ridiculous. I will go put Knud on it.” Borup thrust foot against bulwark and arrowed out of the saloon, into the passageway leading to the control room.

He returned with the promised bottle and three small thin glasses, to join Powell and Donovan at the table. There was just sufficient weight to make pouring and drinking feasible, albeit a trifle awkward. “Ole, make dinner,” he called. “A special treat for these poor men. Fishballs and tomato soup. You look too gloomy, my friends.”

“We were wondering what to do if Jack really is insane — which is the simplest hypothesis, after all.” Powell’s tone was dark. “Get him aboard a robotic ship and back to Earth for Dr. Calvin to interview, sure. Except, how? He believes his duty is to stay and fight any new effort to exploit Io. He might return with us anyway, I suppose, if he knew we’re human. Second Law. You could add your voice for reinforcement, Svend. We’d outvote Napoleon three to one. But he can’t be certain. My guess is that even if he granted a ninety-nine percent probability that we’re human, he wouldn’t risk it. That one percent contains an outcome he finds unendurable.”

The smile died on Borup’s mouth. “We all do, no?” he replied most softly. “I would not take such a chance, would you? Better we go back to bad, corrupt politics than nearly everybody on Eart’ die and the survivors are starving savages. Could Napoleon be telling the trut’?”

“Absolutely not,” Donovan stated. “I know that much biology, physics, and geology. Too bad Jack doesn’t.”

“He’s utterly ignorant about people, too,” Powell added. “A quite ordinary robot, even, would wonder about that story, if he’d had normal human contacts. You needn’t stipulate our politicians and capitalists are farsighted, altruistic, or extraordinarily bright. Simply ask yourself whether they’d take such a risk with the civilization that keeps them alive and well-to-do. Besides, the scientific method doesn’t work the way the story claims. You don’t get a few geniuses makIng a discovery overnight in a garret and then unable to get it published. Something as fundamental as this would come out in bits and pieces, over the years, with the news media following and exaggerating every step.”

“And the public sure as hell would demand a screeching halt the moment it heard operations here might bring doomsday,” Donovan said.

Borup nodded a bit impatiently. “Yes, yes. I am not quite so naive as Yack.”

“I’m sorry,” Donovan apologized, while Powell offered, “I guess we’re overwrought.”

“It is all right. I only wondered how plausible to anybody are the viroids.”

“To nobody, except Jack,” Donovan growled. “In fact, it’s so crackpot that if we reported right now what he’d told us, they’d wonder on Earth whether we’d gone off trajectory ourselves. We need all the data we can collect, which is why I wanted that search for another ship. “His eyes brightened … If we do find it, we’ll beam the news back the same minute, and the world police can begin right away tracking down the conspirators.”

“Who might they be, do you t’ink?”

Powell shrugged … I can’t name anybody specific. I have my guesses, but they taught me in school that a man is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Imagine a couple of powerful old-guard politicians whose careers are in trouble, probably conjoined with one or two industrialists who were getting rich off the former cozy arrangements, plus a few skilled underlings. The idea obviously is to show Project Io was a monumental, expensive blunder, and cause the Young Turks who pushed it through to be discredited. The reform coalition will fall apart and the wily old-timers can pick off its members piecemeal.”

Donovan’s mane bristled with excitement … We’ll have one damn good clue,” he said … The cabal has to’ve had a mole in U.S. Robots or high up in the World Space Agency — somebody who knew about Code Oops!-ilon and passed the information on. Probably that was what decided the conspirators to go ahead. It’s the key to their whole stunt. Well, the number of possible suspects must be mighty small. Once we can prove this was a hoax, I’ll bet the mole is under arrest inside a week, and his buddies by the end of the month.”

“That’s if we can prove it,” Powell demurred, “which we can’t if it’s not true.”

“Yes, why should a person lying to Yack pretend he is Napoleon?” Borup asked … It is crazy.”

Donovan’s laugh rattled … Exactly. Hearing what Jack has to tell, most people would take for granted he’s gone blinkety.”

“Confusions about Napoleon are a cliché,” Powell said … And you’d expect a poor, limited robot to fall into clichés, wouldn’t you? Yes, it was a clever touch. Maybe Jack never heard the name ‘Napoleon’ before he was on Io, but we don’t know, and he isn’t about to inform us.”

“Or he could lie, could he not?” Borup suggested. “If he believes you are robots too, not humans, you cannot order him to speak the trut’.”

“Right,” Donovan snarled. “We can’t give him any damned orders he doesn’t want to carry out.”

“Oh, I’m sure he desperately wants to,” Powell replied. “Couldn’t you hear it in his voice? This conflict, this uncertainty is racking him apart. It may well destroy him, bum out his brain, all by itself.”

“In which case the gang will’ve won.”

“If the gang exists.”

“Yeah. How do we settle Jack’s dilemma for him? How do we convince him we’re human?”

Powell leered. “I could chop off your head.” Sobering: “No, seriously, he would see the action performed, but he couldn’t be certain the gore wasn’t fake. A human doubtless would be, knowing we can’t have brought along the studio equipment needed to stage a realistic-looking murder. But Jack doesn’t know humans that well. He’s had so little direct exposure to them, he’s like a small child.”

“And we can’t land on Io to let him meet us in the flesh,” Donovan said unnecessarily. “We could, that is, if we didn’t mind dying shortly afterward.”

“Not in my spaceship,” Borup declared.

“Of course. Besides, Jack would probably run away and hide from us — Wait, though. I’m on the track of something.”

Donovan stared into a comer. The ventilator whirred. Warm odors drifted in from the galley. After a minute he tossed off his drink, struck his fist against the table, and exclaimed, “How’s this? I don’t imagine you have any weapon aboard, Svend, but inside the station I noticed a supply room that hadn’t been emptied — stuff might be wanted someday — and the manifest on the door mentioned a case of detonol sticks. Jack can recognize one of those, all right! Look, while he watches, somebody waves it and says to him,, Jack, your behavior makes me feel so terrible I want to kill myself. ‘Then the man pulls out the firing pin. If he doesn’t push it back in within five minutes, bang!”

Borup blinked. “Are you crazy like him? What good will that do, except to ruin my ship?”

“Why, if I’m a robot I can’t suicide,” Donovan crowed. “Third Law, remember? Therefore I must be human. Therefore Jack will immediately yell ‘Stop!’ and beg our pardon for ever having doubted us.”

“That firewater went to your head almighty fast, boy,” Powell clipped. “A robot damn well can self-destruct if that’s necessary for executing his orders.”

“But — well, naturally, I mean first we’ll set it up — uh — it does call for some preliminary detail work.”

“It calls for an infinite amount, because its value is zero. However — hmm —” Powell refilled his own glass and fell into a similar reverie.

Under the ghostly gravity, Knud entered without sound. One by one they saw his tall form in the doorway, and tensed.

“Search completed, sir,” the robot reported.”

Already?” Donovan wondered.

“The sweep and data crunching go fast,” Borup said. “They must, on a courier. la, Knud. hvad har du — What have you found?”

“Negative, sir,” the flat voice announced. “No indications of a vessel within either the northern or the southern cones of space that you specified, for as far as reliability extends.”

Powell and Donovan exchanged stares. Powell slumped. “Then Jack is insane,” he said heavily. “Conditions on Io were too much for him, and Project Io is kaput.”

“You may go, Knud,” Borup said. The robot departed. “I am sorry, my friends. Come, have a little more to drink.”

“No, hold on, hold on!” Donovan bawled. He sprang to his feet. They left the deck. He caught the table edge in time to keep from rising to the overhead. Hanging upside down, he blurted, “Listen, I sort of expected this. Napoleon wouldn’t likely be human. A big risk of life, a big expense. But he can be a robot!”

The silence was not lengthy, nor stunned. The idea had lain at the back of each mind. Powell began to develop it. While the other two sat, he paced in front of them, long strides bouncing off the ends of the cabin, and counted points on his fingers as they occurred to him.

“Yes,” he said, “that does make sense. Any man-capable spacecraft is a sizable, powerful machine. Misused, it can kill a lot of people. So the authorities keep track of it. You don’t take it anywhere without a certified crew and a filed flight plan. Hard to go clandestinely. But a one-robot vessel, why, that needn’t be much more than a framework and a motor. You could keep it somewhere unbeknownst to anyone, as it might be the Lunar outback, and lift off from there unnoticed. When the robot wanted to drift along undetectable beyond a few hundred klicks, he’d shut off the power and sit in the cold. He himself — not every robot is a U. S. R. product and property, leased to the user and periodically inspected. The best are, yes, but — hm, every now and then one of ours is irrecoverably destroyed, in some accident or other. Except that not all those reports have been honest. I know of a few cases where the robot was in fact hidden away, to be redirected to illegal jobs. This could well be such a case.”

Borup’s china-blue eyes widened. “Can you make a robot do unlawful t’ings?”

“You can if you go about it right,” Donovan said. “With the proper technicians and equipment, you can blank out all he’s ever learned and retrain him from scratch. The Three Laws still hold, of course, but he can have some pretty weird notions about the world. That must be what’s been done here. If Napoleon only remembers dealing with his masters and Jack, then he’s swallowed their story whole. Except for a very few top-flight, experimental models, robots are unsubtle characters anyway. They can’t concoct elaborate plots and don’t imagine that anybody else could. We’ll give him an earful!”

“Slow down,” Powell cautioned. “Let’s explore this further. What does the Napoleon robot necessarily know and believe, to execute his mission of halting Project Io?” He thought aloud as he soared to and fro:

“He can operate a spacecraft, a communications system, et cetera. Therefore he has a certain amount of independent decision-making capability, though scarcely equal to Jack’s. Otherwise simpleminded, he has no way of knowing the viroid story is false. I daresay he’s been forbidden to tune in any outside ‘cast, and told to ignore whatever he might overhear accidentally. His mission is to warn Jack about the viroids, and about the wicked men whose robots will try to talk Jack into going back to work. To this end, it’ll be reasonable to him that he claim to being human himself, and that his image be projected as human. He’ll have no inhibitions about such a pious deception, if it’s used on another robot.”

“Ah-ha!” Borup exulted. “We have him! He will be listening and watching when you next call Yack. He will see you are human, and obey your orders.”

“He will not,” Powell said bleakly. “I assume the conspirators have planned ahead. Ifl were in charge, I’d not only program his transmitter to make him look human, I’d program his receiver to make any in-calling human look like a robot.”

“Whoof!” puffed Borup, and sought the akvavit.

“Yeah,” Donovan agreed. “That pretty well shields him from any nagging doubts, which makes him better able to quiet down any that Jack expresses.”

“He might entertain the possibility that his communicator is deceiving him,” Powell said, “but he can’t act on it, when his orders are to prevent a catastrophe. For instance, we could invite him to come here and meet us. I’ll bet he’d refuse, because we, if we’re enemy robots as he’s been told, we’d overpower him.”

Borup nodded. “I see. I see. It is a classic conundrum, no? Plato’s cave.”

“Huh?” grunted Donovan.

“You do not know? Well, I have more time to read than you do, on my travels. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato pointed out that our information about the material world comes to us entirely t’rough our senses, and how do we know they tell us true? Rather, we know they are often wrong. We must do the best we can. He said we are like prisoners chained in a cave who cannot see the outside, yust the shadows of t’ings there that are cast on the wall. From this they must try to guess what the reality is.”

“Kind of an airy notion.”

“Ha, you would refute solipsism like Dr. Samuel Yohnson, by kicking a stone —”

“Never mind the dialectics,” Powell interrupted. “You have hit on a good analogy, Svend. We are trapped in Plato’s cave, all three parties of us. We can’t physically go to each other. The only information we get is what comes over the communication beams; and it could be lies. We don’t even know that the Napoleon robot exists. We’re assuming so, but maybe he really is only a figment of Jack’s deranged imagination. If Napoleon does exist, then he knows that his own projected image is a man’s; but every image he receives is a robot’s, and he believes — he must believe, if he’s to serve his bosses reliably — that that is true. As for Jack, if he isn’t hallucinating, then every image he receives is human, and he can’t tell which of them are genuine.

“Deadlock. How do we break it? Remember, meanwhile the clock is running. I don’t think Jack’s brain can take the stress on it much longer. Be that as it may, Project Io can’t remain idle for weeks and months without going broke.”

Donovan snapped his fingers. “Got it!” he cried. “We call Jack and get Napoleon into the conversation. We record this. Then Earth will know there’s something rotten in — uh — sorry, Svend.”

Powell frowned. “Well, we can try,” he answered. “But we’d better have something to say he’ll consider worth his notice.”

“Hello, Jack,” he greeted as calmly as he was able. “How are you?”

The barren scene jittered. The belated voice rose and fell. “What … do you want?”

“Why, to continue our conversation. And, to be sure, offer our respects to the Emperor Napoleon. You told us he’ll be listening in. We’d be delighted to have the honor of his participation in our talk. Introductions first. I neglected them earlier. You may recall that my name is Gregory Powell. The gentleman here at my side is Michael Donovan, and behind us you see Captain Svend Borup.” Powell beamed, pointless though he knew it was. “Quite a contrast, we three, eh? Well, humans are a variegated lot.”

After the delay: “That may be. To me you … look similar. I had to exert myself to describe the Emperor Napoleon as closely as I did. Begging your pardon, sir,” Jack said to an unseen observer? His attention returned to Powell. “What do you want? He … he has instructed me … not to waste time on your … importunities. I must prepare … to resist … any invasion.”

“Resist the will of the humans who sent you?” Powell purred. After a minute he saw the moonscape jerk, and went on quickly, hoping the robot would not cut him off, “Our purpose is to show you that we are indeed humans, ourselves, whatever Napoleon may be, and therefore you must, under Code Upsilon, accept that Earth is not endangered and you should resume work. Pay close attention.”

Did a sentient machine afar in space tune himself high as the words reached him?

Powell turned his gaze on Donovan. “Now, Mike,” he said, “I want you to tell me truthfully — truthfully, mind you — that you’re neither a human nor a robot.”

Donovan shivered with eagerness. “I am neither,” he responded. “Now you, Greg, tell me truthfully that you are neither human nor robot.”

“I am neither.” Powell looked straight before him again, into the vision whose eyes he could not see. “Did you hear, Jack? Think about it. The order was to answer the question truthfully. No threat to a human was involved, therefore any robot must obey to the extent possible. However, the single possible answer for him is, ‘I cannot.’ None but a human could disobey and give out the falsehood, ‘I am neither human nor robot.’”

Wire-tense, the men waited.

Did something whisper unrelayed from the deeps, of did Jack’s own intelligence see the fallacy? The reply took longer than transmission would account for. “That is correct if … if the questioner is human. But if … he is a robot … then another robot can … perfectly well, disobediently, lie — especially if he has been so directed beforehand. The same … holds good for … every such dialogue. It proves nothing. Stop pestering me!”

Powell and Donovan sat mute. “Napoleon, have you any comment?” Borup attempted. Silence answered him.

Jack blanked the screen.

Not even fried herring with potatoes consoled.

The men chewed unspeaking. It was as if they saw, they felt, the immensity and the cold outside this hull. The failure of a venture, the death of many hopes, what were those that the stars were mindful of them?

When Ole at last brought coffee, it revived his master a little. “If Yack is pure crazy, he still has a good logical noodle,” he opined. “You keep after him. Make him t’ink. For instance, would not those viroids make Io have different rocks from what it does?”

Powell shook his head. “No doubt, but what they educated him in was Ionian geology as it is. His job was practical, not scientific. Whenever he noticed anomalies, he was to get on the beam and query the specialists back home. We don’t have time to teach him. Couldn’t you hear how agitated he was?” Powell looked up. “Yes. Each contact has made his condition worse. Unless we can invent a scheme we know will be productive, we’d better quit. Maybe Susan Calvin can generate an idea.”

“That won’t do anything productive for our careers,” Donovan muttered.

“To hell with our careers … But I don’t expect the old lady can solve our problem from her armchair on Earth. Otherwise we wouldn’t have been dispatched. With the kind of transmission delay involved, she couldn’t work her slick robopsych tricks.”

“I s’pose.” Donovan gusted a sigh. “I can’t think how to lure Napoleon into talking to us, and maybe he doesn’t exist anyway. What say we assume he doesn’t, assume Jack is demented, and try figuring out how to get him to board a ship, or at least keep from sniping at new arrivals? If there’ll ever be any.”

“We’ll give our wits a few days to work, and hope for a script that he won’t see through.”

“I wonder if you can,” Borup said. “I am no expert, but I have known people wit’ strange notions, and they can be very smart, yes, brilliant about defending those notions. They sit in their Plato caves till deat’ comes and kicks them in the behind —”

He broke off. Donovan had smacked fist into palm. Powell drew a whistling breath.

“Hello, Jack.”

The scene was not the base. Rubble lay dark under waxing Jupiter, beneath gashed heights. Volcano fumes lifted dirty white and yellow beyond a ridge. Jack was in the field, readying his caches and strongpoints for war.

The view swayed giddyingly as he straightened. “What do you want now?” It was nearly a shriek. “I told you to leave me alone. I need not listen to you. I can switch off.”

“Just wait. Just wait. “Until these waves wing out to Napoleon, wherever he is, if he is. “Be calm,” Powell urged. “You’ve demanded positive proof that my companions and I are human. Well, we have it for you.”

Empty time.

“You have tried. What is the certainty? If … you are robots … you are acting under orders. Your … masters … can have foreseen … many … contingencies.”

“Then our masters are human,” Donovan said. “Shouldn’t you hear what they tell you through us?”

He was taking a risk. The suspense was like a slow fire before they heard Jack utter a raw noise. But it was desirable to perturb Napoleon too, if Napoleon was there to be troubled in his own sureness.

“We are human,” Powell said quickly. “You force us, in this emergency, to demonstrate it, no matter what that costs us. Then maybe you ‘II be sorry and obey the surviving member of our party.”

“Remember, if what Napoleon has told you is true,” Donovan joined in — if what Napoleon had been told was true —” we can’t be human. We must be robots, pretending. We must be what he sees on his screen. But if we are human, then Napoleon has told you wrong. Correct?”

Probably Jack never noticed the sweat on the two faces. “Pay close attention,” Powell directed.

Rising, he lifted a detonol stick and brandished it like a sword. Donovan got up too and said, “Greg, I hereby, uh, well, this is the time for you to do what I told you you’d have to do if matters got this desperate. Destroy yourself.”

Powell pulled out the firing pin. It wobbled in his right hand, the stick in his left. “Mike,” he replied, “I order you to destroy yourself.”

Donovan brought his explosive into view and, having yanked the pin free, held the stick dramatically against his throat. The men faced each other. In a proper gravity field their knees might have given way, but here they could somehow keep standing, after a fashion. They breathed hard and raggedly.

“Stop!” Jack’s cry came loud, yet as if from across light-years. “Return those disarmers!”

“If we are robots,” Donovan grated, “why should you care?”

Empty time.

“Third Law! You must!”

“We, we have our orders,” Powell stammered.

Each minute was forever.

At four and a half, Borup entered, halted, stared. “What is this?” he shouted. “Are you crazy too?”

“We have our orders,” Powell repeated.

“I countermand them!” Borup said. “Disarm those stickst”

For an instant it seemed that Donovan wouldn’t manage it, as badly as his hand was shaking. He did, though. Powell’s pin had already snicked home. They sank limply into their chairs and waited.

After a sixth minute, the swaying image of what Jack saw abruptly had another in it, that of a short, stout man in a cocked hat and epauletted greatcoat. The representation was lifeless, practically a caricature — good enough for an unsophisticated robot — and the audio conveyed little of the torment behind the words.

“Masters, masters! Forgive me! I must have been mistaken, deceived — Are you on Himalia? I shall come straight to you and do whatever you want. Hear me, judge me, forgive me!”

Ole was preparing a victory feast. Borup would not tell his passengers what it was. “A surprise, somet’ing special and delicious,” he averred, “wit’ red cabbage. Meanwhile, we have our akvavit and, yes, a case of beer I keep for emeryencies. Or for celebrations, no?”

Powell and Donovan didn’t accept at once. They were amply elated as they sat before the station communicator and sent their encoded message homeward.

“… yes, he’s here, thoroughly penitent. Still bewildered, of course, poor devil. After all, he was obeying the humans who’d trained him. No, we aren’t leaning on him about them. We’ve given him the impression we agree they were doubtless simply misguided, and once we reach Earth, everything will soon be straightened out. In case Napoleon does get rambunctious en route, well, he’s a little one, and we have two husky crewrobots to keep him in hand.

“No, we haven’t played detective and tried to find out who the guilty parties are. That’s for the police, or for Dr. Calvin. We can’t help making some pretty shrewd guesses.

“Jack will need a bit of therapy. He’s more than willing to go back to work, but he’s been through a nightmare and ought to be restabilized first. Any smart young robopsychologist should be able to come out here and take care of that in short order.

“We look forward to seeing what this sensation will do to the political picture!”

Powell had been talking. He glanced at Donovan. “Okay, pal,” he invited. “Your turn to bask in the glory.”

Donovan beamed, cleared his throat, and began: “The problem was, what could we do that humans could but robots not, under the circumstances?

“Well, uh, suppose we ordered each other to self-destruct. There was no clear reason for that. How could it help our purpose? Jack would still suppose we were play-acting. So if we were both robots, we’d disobey the order.

“If one of us was a robot and the other not, the robot would obey; the human might or might not.

“If we were both human, probably neither of us would obey, but we both could if we chose to.

“We both chose to. At the last instant, Captain Borup came in and countermanded the orders. Now if he were a robot, that wouldn’t have changed the situation. Whether we were robot or human, neither of us was bound to obey him. Therefore, if either or both of us did, he must be human.”

Donovan’s laugh was nervous. “Obviously, we never meant to go all the way, whatever happened. We certainly intended to heed Captain Borup — and sweated that out, I can tell you! But we had to show that this was not mere play-acting.

“Jack might be too stressed to think fast, but if Napoleon was watching, he’d know that a robot can only tell a human to suicide if the robot knows in advance that this is a charade — whether or not the robot’s own suicide is part of the deal. If the human then actually pulls the pin, endangers himself, he’ll have to intervene. Maybe not at once, but in plenty of time to make sure the explosive won’t go off. But the two of us stood tight till the moment was only seconds away and the third man arrived.

“Yes, it was still logically possible that all three of us were robots going through carefully planned motions. However, Jack’s only real experience of other robots had been with his simpleminded workers; Edgar’s crew came, took on cargo, and left. Napoleon’s knowledge of the world, including both humans and robots, had to be equally limited, or the contradictions in the viroid story would have confused him too badly to carry out his task. Neither of them would have believed any robot was capable of this much flexibility; and in fact, very few are. Nothing would ring true unless at least one human was present.

“But then Napoleon’s orders must involve an untruth. Instead of a hypothetical situation where billions of people might die, he faced a real one where he’d caused a flesh-and-blood human, or maybe three, to be at risk of life. First Law took over.”

Donovan switched off transmission, leaned back, and blew out his cheeks. “Whoo!” he snorted. “I’m wrung dry. Let’s get out of this icebox and go back to the ship for those drinks. We’ve an hour and a half till we need to talk to them yonder.”

Powell laughed. “And if we don’t feel like official conversation at that moment, just what do they think they can do about it?”

The Martian Dilemma

2044 A.D.

1.

THE 2040’S WERE characterized by a brief period of Fundamentalism directed against space exploration. The movement itself was relatively short-lived; however, it was accompanied by an immediate financial crisis for U. S. Robots and Mechanical Men, inc., whose primary market since its creation was the extraterrestrial colonies.

Scott Robertson, majority stockholder of the firm, rubbed his brow. “Society is too damn fickle … Just a decade ago, this very company gave Earth access to the stars!”

Beside Robertson sat several close associates, joint heads of the Board of Marketing. One, Waters, offered a grim suggestion: “Perhaps U. S. Robots was only used to achieve those ends. We are no longer needed.”

“Nonsense! Those colonies will continue to depend on robots, and we have the monopoly on them!”

“Not quite, Mr. Robertson. There is Consolidated Robots, which currently specializes in industrial robots.”

“Good grief! I didn’t expect competition with them.”

“We should also note that Consolidated’s stock prices are rising, an ironic response to U. S. Robots’s dwindling popularity.”

“But they make robots, too! Why can’t those Fundies direct their attacks at the whole market instead of just us?”

“Mr. Robertson, sir, the radicals are currently focusing their attacks on space travel, not robots.”

“All right, I get it. Now, let’s get back to the purpose of this meeting – Why are we losing our market, and how can we get it back? At first, of course, the government was our biggest client, thanks to its obsession with a hyperatomic drive. But why was that? Did they expect resources? National pride? The pure satisfaction of scientific progress?”

Robertson paused, so Waters spoke up: “I think I see what you’re saying! All three of your reasons have practically vanished. The resources spent getting into space have exceeded the resources gained. Nationalism has fallen prey to Regionalism, and satisfaction has a way of crumbling away, just like any emotion.”

Robertson continued: “And our conservative Congress was quick to do away with ‘unnecessary expenditures’. However, U. S. Robots does not have to rely on the government! The extraterrestrial colonies, especially Mars, have become increasingly self-reliant. Resources, including water, are mined. Ecologies are being created. How are they doing this without us? They need U. S. Robots! Any ideas?”

Gutenburg, quiet up to this point, said, “It surprises me that we, the Board of Marketing, continue to blame the drop on radicals. Fundamentalism has kept the government from supporting the colonies, sure. Presumably, that would also mean a drop in colony expenditures, and thus a drop in U. S. Robots exports. And that’s the discrepancy! The colonies are prospering without us! The financial crisis we face cannot be explained by the current mood on Earth. Sure, it’s a factor. We are losing orders from every market. But that’s just it – every market. Mars, especially, is not asking us for robots anymore, and yet it continues to grow normally …”

“Obviously, Mars does not need U. S. Robots anymore. They have found some other way of doing work. Perhaps Consolidated is giving them robots. Or maybe they’re actually doing their own work!” said Waters.

“Colonists? Doing their own work? I think not,” said Robertson.

“If you will excuse me, I was not finished.”

“Continue.”

“The drop in exports to Mars is staggering, and it cannot be explained by social or even economic changes. In 2043, we sent them 1,500 robots, with the rate increasing through December. This year – and we are 3 whole months into it – we have not sent a single one.”

“It has to be Consolidated! But we have no way of finding out, unless we hack into their networks or break into their headquarters!” Waters’s comment was ignored.

Gutenburg said, “I recommend we contact the Board of Research. We all know they’re the real power behind this company, and if they haven’t already noticed this Martian dilemma, they will know how to solve it.”

***

Robertson stepped into Susan Calvin’s office. She was at her desk, gravely silent, in a thinking position.

“Come, sit down,” she said. Robertson, somewhat intimidated, pulled up a chair and did so.

“Fundamentalism comes and goes, Mr. Robertson. I must say I am disturbed at your last several reports. Maybe you shouldn’t be delegated with the responsibility of marketing.”

“I have done my best, Dr. Calvin. Who better to make and keep the earnings of U. S. Robots than the primary stockholder?”

“I guess marketing isn’t much of a responsibility for U. S. Robots, anyway. We’re the monopoly, and everyone knows who we are and what we do. But back to your reports – there have always been various degrees of Fundamentalism in society, but we’ve always pulled through. This is the worst economic crisis we’ve ever faced.”

“This is also the worst rash of Fundamentalism we’ve ever faced –”

“Please, Mr. Robertson. You must have a better reason.”

“Yes. That’s exactly why I wanted to see you, Dr. Calvin.”

Scott Robertson explained Gutenburg’s observations concerning Mars prosperity in spite of its sudden drop in U. S. Robots imports. “I know the blame for the Martian dilemma should rest on us, but we cannot explain it.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t blame you for it. Like you said, it could be Consolidated’s fault. If they’re somehow capitalizing on our defeat, taking their business to Mars, that’s only sound business practice. But it still doesn’t explain the statistics.”

“But Consolidated has neither the positronic brain nor its patent! How are they doing this? … if they’re doing this?”

“Do you think I know –”

“What are we going to do?”

Susan sighed. “What else? We are going to Mars to find out for ourselves.”

“Who are we sending?”

“Do you really have to ask that question?”

***

“Think of it, Greg! U. S. Robots is finally seeing us for who we really are: Statesmen! Diplomats!”

Gregory Powell rolled his eyes. “Thirty years with this company and they still think they can make us do their dirty work.”

“That’s the spirit, Greg! Sheesh! Why did you even agree to this, anyway?”

Powell smiled again. “A guy needs his cash flow, I guess.”

Their transport vessel landed on Marsport Olympus. Powell and Donovan found their way out, and a robot asked if he could retrieve their luggage for them.

“Wait a minute!” said Donovan, “You’re a DN! You’re a power plant unit, not a bellboy! Something’s amiss, Greg.”

“I repeat: may I retrieve your luggage, sirs?” said Dan.

“No thanks,” muttered Powell.

Dan seemed to emit an audible “harumph!” as he left.

“I’ve been to Mars many times,” said Powell, “Something is indeed amiss, but I know where to find Algers.”

Frank Algers was the prime minister of the Mars colony. Regionalism did not extend to the colonies, and neither did the Machines, so Mars was a kind of sovereign nation, at least for the time being. As Mike Donovan and Gregory Powell entered his office, he gave them a sincere smile and each one a handshake. “The people of Mars extend their greetings to you, Doctors Powell and Donovan. Please sit down. Would you like something to drink?”

“No thanks,” said Powell.

“Sure. I’ll have a soda,” said Donovan. Powell gave him an annoyed look, as if his request was inappropriate, but Donovan then pointed to the servant. “A PT!” he whispered.

“What seems to be the trouble?” asked Algers.

“Why is Pete serving my associate’s drink?” asked Powell, “The PT model specializes in mining Mars’ ice caps!”

“Well, don’t you know? This year, we received a slurry of newer and better robots! The other models: PT, DN, and even SPD, are obsolete! We use them for public service now.”

“And from whom exactly did you get these new models?” asked Powell.

“Why, from U. S. Robots, of course!”

“What?!”

2.

A DECADE EARLIER, man had devised faster-than-light travel. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that faster-than-light communication was soon to follow. At first, FTL communication took the form of Hutstein Pigeons, small devices which zoomed back and forth across the solar system, sending and receiving transmissions from the various inhabited bodies (whether by human or robot), including Earth, Mars, and the Moon (Luna).

Because they were still experimental at this time, there were very few Pigeons in existence. Two of them, however, took the task of carrying out a U. S. Robots teleconference between Earth and Mars. Had this been done using radio waves, each remark would have taken nearly a half hour to traverse the great distance between the two bodies, and this at their closest.

Like all technology, Pigeons were quickly taken for granted; some of their earliest users carried out a normal conversation:

“Just play along with him,” said Calvin, “If Algers sincerely thinks these ‘new models’ are our robots, then there’s an even deeper conspiracy going on here, one in which he need not get involved.”

A pause. “Agreed,” replied Powell.

Waters decided to finish Calvin’s statement. “And if he’s lying to us, there’s certainly no reason to let him know we have suspicions.”

Dr. Calvin said, “Either way, I’m very eager to see what Algers is bragging about. Powell, Donovan, you know what to do.”

***

Algers, Powell, and Donovan took a trip to the Martian iron mines in an underground transport vessel. Algers produced two hand-held units for the U. S. Robots field testers.

“I have a McCormack-Wesley Tester for each of you, by the way,” remarked Algers.

“Believe me, those will make our jobs a lot easier,” said Powell.

“Hey, I remember when MW units were completely immobile and weighed ten tons!” said Donovan.

“Yes, but times have changed,” said Algers, “It’s interesting that they still hold that namesake, however. Surely there must be other people who can be given the credit for these new hand-held units.”

“Names like that have a way of sticking around,” said Donovan, staring out the window as the rock passed by.

Soon, they arrived at an iron mine and Algers led the others to his prize.

“Model DNT Two. Danté. You’ve seen him before, right?”

“No –” started Donovan. Powell, behind Algers, flashed Donovan a quick cutthroat gesture. He corrected himself: “Uh, yeah! We’ve seen the first one, anyway.”

“Well, I’ve got to hand it to you people at U. S. Robots. You never cease to amaze me! He’s stronger, faster, and smarter than any other robot I’ve ever seen! Do you want to meet him?”

“Sure, let’s see ‘im,” said Donovan.

“May I be of assistance, sirs?” asked Danté.

“You will disregard all conversation between Donovan and myself,” said Powell, “Confirm.”

Danté stood erect. “Understood,” he said.

“What a name: Danté,” said Powell to Donovan.

“Whatever his name is, we’re damn lucky Algers had ‘previous engagements’. We can have him to ourselves now.”

“Before we ‘see what this puppy can do,’ as you might say, we have to … test him.”

“Test him? Have you forgotten why we’re here?”

“No, Mike. We’re here to ‘gather information pertaining to the strange drop in the marketability of U. S. Robots and Mechanical Men, inc. to the planet Mars’. Danté here is our biggest datum yet.”

“I know – but you made it sound as if we were going to test his reflexes!”

“We probably could, Mike. It’s very important that we draw as little attention as possible, appearing to do our jobs.”

Donovan said, “All right, then, Danté. It’s your bedtime. Lie on the ground and shut down.”

“I’m sorry, sirs, I’m afraid can’t do that.” Danté hit Donovan on the back, knocking him out cold.

“What is the meaning of-…” Powell met the same fate.

Minutes later …

“Damn … my neck hurts,” groaned Powell.

“Where’s Danté? That creep, how could he?”

“Well, obviously he’s working under a Third Law imperative.”

“By rendering us unconscious? I think that qualifies as a violation of the First Law in itself, wouldn’t you think?”

“Hmm … Let’s call Dr. Calvin immediately.”

“Right.” Donovan took out his communicator and activated a Hutstein connection to U. S. Robots offices. “I’m not getting anything. Not a ring – anything.”

“What’d that robot do? Sabotage our communicators?”

“Wait – It’s working now. Dr. Calvin? This is Donovan … Yeah. … Hello? Damn, I lost it again!”

During this brief conversation, Powell had wandered around the industrial complex. “Donovan! Come here, quick!” he yelled.

“What is it?” Donovan caught up with his partner.

“While you were on the phone, this robot acted strange. His movements were … jerky.”

The robot’s serial label read ‘HR-5’, another name neither of them had seen. So Powell, quite accustomed to nicknames, addressed the robot by the first name he could come up with: “Harry, why did you make those jerky movements?”

“Excuse me, sirs. It was … that communication device. It interfered with my positronic circuits.”

“Bull!” said Donovan, “The positronic brain can control its sensitivity to radio waves! But I wonder …” As an experiment, Donovan took out his communicator and activated another connection. The robot jerked around again. He turned it off, and it stayed still. Powell and Donovan looked at each other and nodded in unvoiced agreement.

“We’re going to have to crack open that head of yours, Harry,” said Powell.

Harry did not have such plans. With robotic precision, he reached for the nape of Powell’s neck and began to squeeze. Donovan got out his MW unit and gave Harry a severe electric shock in the neck. The robot fell forward.

“I owe you one, Mike,” gasped Powell.

“It was my pleasure, Greg. Now let’s see what the hell is going on with these robots.” Donovan opened the back of the robot’s head and pulled out the ellipsoid that was Harry’s brain.

“Looks all right,” said Powell.

“No … it can’t be right.” Frantically, Donovan sat down and rummaged through his toolbox. He found a screwdriver, crossed his legs, and layed the brain before him.

“Mike! What are you doing? Positronic brains don’t have screws!”

Mike, ignoring him, began stabbing at the brain with the screwdriver. Soon, he pulled out a small black box which in no way matched the rest of the positronic circuitry. He held it up for Powell to see.

Powell’s shocked expression became a grin. “Oh, this explains everything!” he laughed.

3.

“ANY IDEAS?” BARKED Scott Robertson in the familiar setting of the Marketing conference room at U. S. Robots offices. Although he was supposed to be equal with Waters and Gutenburg, Robertson usually took the role of boss.

“A problem with the Hutstein Pigeons,” offered Waters, “or a conspiracy to keep us from communicating with Powell and Donovan.”

“I highly doubt the conspiracy part,” said Gutenburg, “but the communication problems may be connected with our Martian dilemma. After all, if someone is posing as U. S. Robots, they’re more than likely based on Earth, which means they’re more than likely using the Pigeons to communicate with Mars.”

“But how is that connected with our technical difficulties?” asked Robertson.

“Simple. The Pigeons are prototypes, sensitive to anything that might disturb their function. It’s really a fascinating process: each Hutstein connection is carried out by two Pigeons, one receiver and one transmitter, with alternating roles. They buzz back and forth through hyperspace, just to carry tidbits of conversation from one place to another. The delay is still there, but once again, it’s such a delicate process that one interrupting signal could terminate it altogether.”

“So if our counterfeit robot manufacturers are trying to send messages to Mars while we are already sending messages to Powell and Donovan, the connection could terminate?” asked Waters.

“Yes.”

Robertson offered a suggestion. “Then perhaps we must find out who has access to this young technology so we can form a list of suspects. Good job, Gutenburg.”

Gutenburg smiled. “You’re welcome, and those were my thoughts exactly.”

Consequently, Scott Robertson brought his next report into the office of Dr. Susan Calvin suggesting just that course of action, and she would have followed it had it not been for that sudden call from Mars, this time free of technical difficulties.

“Dr. Calvin? It’s me, Mike.”

“Yes?”

“I think you’d better come to Mars. I know this may not be convenient for you, but we’ve had a couple of breakthroughs. Would you also bring anyone else connected with this case?”

“Sure I would. May I ask why we’re finally able to talk to you again?”

“Oh, no problem! We’re just not near any robots right now!”

“Come again?”

“I’ll explain later. This line might be tapped.”

“We’ll be right there.”

***

Gutenburg, Waters, Robertson, and Calvin walked out of the transport vessel. Two robots nearby held a sign that read ‘Calvin’.

“Cute,” said Waters, “Although I don’t recognize that model. I suppose it’s a couple of the ‘new’ robots. I advise caution.”

“Right this way, sirs and ma’am,” said one. The four followed the robots hesitantly, were led to the library/observatory, and given seats at a long table. They sat, and so did the robots. The robots seemed to be waiting for something.

“Um … what are you doing? Why are we here?” asked Robertson.

The robots did nothing.

“Don’t make me order you!”

“Not necessary!” said one robot, “Don’t you recognize your old friends, Greg Powell and Mike Donovan?”

4.

“REMOTE-CONTROLLED ROBOTS? I should have known!” said Dr. Calvin, “But why did you deceive us like that?”

“To better illustrate our point!” said MK-1 (Mike), “We’re field researchers, not theorists. We work in the concrete, not the abstract.”

GG-1 got to the point. “We still don’t know where these models came from, but we figured out quite quickly that they don’t have positronic brains. They did not agree to subject themselves to testing, and we had to put one out of commission before we found a receiver/transmitter inside its counterfeit positronic brain.”

Mike coughed, something that didn’t quite come well through the metallic larynx.

“Before … Mike found the receiver/transmitter,” said Greg, promising himself to deal with Mike later. “We put two of them out, in fact, and made some creative changes to their registration labels, hence the names MK and GG. They’re talking to you right now.”

“What’s it like on your end of these things?” asked Waters, “How are you controlling them?”

“Through some surprisingly sophisticated virtual reality ports, which were developed right here on Mars,” said Mike.

Greg continued. “That’s not important right now. What is important is that somewhere, five hundred twenty human beings are remotely controlling five hundred twenty fake robots, and it’s spelling financial doom for U. S. Robots.”

Waters said, “Actually, allowing for shifts to let them eat and sleep, there may be well over a thousand people behind this.”

“Good point. And you can probably infer that the counterfeit robots are not being controlled from Earth,” said Mike, “The codes required for controlling one ‘robot’ are simply too sophisticated to pump through those poor little Pigeons, let alone for five hundred twenty of such robots.”

Calvin said, “Explain, now, why your being near these …” – the disgust was apparent in her voice – “counterfeit robots interfered with our communications, and why, if there was danger of our line being tapped while I was on Earth, that there is no danger now.”

Mike answered her questions. “Greg and I conclude that our signals reached Earth just fine, but when your computers tried to pong back, so to speak, there was too much radio activity around us, that is, too many radio-controlled robots with similar coordinates, for the Pigeon to isolate us, so the connection was terminated. When we were out of range of the robots, like during our first and last communications, the connection was clear. As for the second question, these ‘robots’ have sophisticated enough crypting technology so that anyone listening would hear only gibberish.”

“Where are you?” Susan asked.

Greg spoke. “We are with Prime Minister Algers, who promises full cooperation with our efforts.”

“Good. Ask him how he thought he was talking to U. S. Robots when he ordered these five-hundred-plus godforsaken robots.”

Greg’s robot turned his head and repeated the question. After a somewhat long delay, he delivered the answer: “He says he isn’t responsible for ordering robots, but he found the guy who is. Apparently this guy hasn’t talked to us directly since last year, but he sent orders for new robots. Algers thinks the orders were somehow intercepted by a third party.”

“Then our mission now is to discover who this third party is,” said Robertson.

Waters was quick to offer a suggestion: “Consolidated. Who else could be capable of something like this? They don’t have positronic brains: that’s a fact. So what better way is there to compete with us than with human brains? And what better opportunity is there to compete with us than during this special breed of Fundamentalism? By claiming to be us, they can compete in the colonial market while keeping their involvement out of the public eye. And one can only imagine what kind of technology they’ve pumped out already trying to compete with us.”

“I disagree,” said Robertson, “Consolidated Robots would never do such a thing. They’ve always recognized our superiority in the market, and have found a good enough market in the industrial wing. Plus, they have no history of such unscrupulous – or illegal – practices.”

“Still, I’ll keep it in mind. Other suggestions?” asked Dr. Calvin.

“I can think of any number of Fundamentalists,” said Robertson, “And they’re smarter than you think. The motive is definitely there.”

“But the opportunity?” asked Waters.

A pause. Mike jokingly said, “Fundamentalists working through Consolidated?”

“That’s not half bad, considering what we’ve come up with so far,” said Greg.

After another long pause, Waters said, “Wait a minute! If these ‘new’ robots aren’t being controlled from Earth, they’re being controlled from Mars, right? They must be!”

“Right …” said Powell.

“So we just have to find out where! In fact, if we had followed a suggestion from Gutenburg here, we would be scouring Earth for possible suspects at this moment!”

“Hey, the kid’s right!” said Mike, “We never thought of looking for our puppeteers here on Mars!”

“Do you have access to any more of these counterfeit robots?” asked Calvin, “We can probably track whatever signals are being used to control them.”

“We’re on it,” said Mike. With that, MK-1 and GG-1, in lively discussion just moments before, slumped over and became lifeless husks.

5.

“NO DOUBT ABOUT it,” said a seated Donovan, tinkering with a counterfeit positronic brain, “These robotic shells are in contact with something outside the surface of Mars. And that’s logical, if our puppeteers are posing as U. S. Robots. They would have to be sending robot exports by ship, not by surface transport, so as to appear to be sending the robots from Earth.”

“Outside the surface of Mars? But … we know it can’t be Earth, or anything far away, because of the difficulty of controlling the robots. This is quite the conundrum,” said Powell, pacing around.

“Not really,” said Donovan, “Think! Where is one close enough to Mars to control five hundred twenty robots and yet not on Mars?”

“In orbit! But it can’t be that, either. Since we received Algers’ assistance, the Martian orbit has been under constant surveillance. … Wait a minute, those tricksters must be on one of the moons! Donovan, you’re a genius!”

“Um, thanks.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re inside the damn rock! But … is it Deimos or Phobos?”

“I would guess Phobos, the bigger one.”

“I’ll contact the orbit surveillance guys right away.”

The next day, Prime Minister Algers arranged for a private vessel, the Aeolus II, to send the team from U. S. Robots to Phobos, the source of the radio traffic. Powell leaned over to ask Dr. Calvin a question, but he noticed her portable stock ticker which read: “USR … … 15.3 … … USR … … 15.2 … … USR … … 15.0 … …”

“What is it, Powell?” she asked.

“I was just wondering where Bogert and Lanning have been during all this.”

“Oh, them? They’re researching the effect of nanotechnology on the positronic brain. Much too busy for this ‘diplomatic hogwash’, as I think Bogert put it.”

“But this is serious! Our stock prices are going down – why don’t they see …”

“They trust us to see U. S. Robots through this drawback. Anyway, this is a marketing problem, not a research problem.”

“I guess it is … Robertson would probably like to hear you say that.”

“Well, don’t tell him I did.”

Suddenly, alarms blared as the ship went into red alert. The speakers sounded: “This is your captain. There has been an unauthorized escape pod release. Remain calm and seated.”

“Who was it?” asked Donovon.

“Gutenburg,” said Robertson, “And he said he was going to the bathroom!”

The team turned toward the center of the cabin to face him. “Gutenburg … I should have known,” he continued, “and I hired the guy myself! Haven’t you guys noticed his peculiar behavior, though?”

“What peculiar behavior, indeed?” asked Powell.

“Well, for one, the guy did a very good job of manipulating our every action while still managing to stay behind the scenes! At first, the guy was full of answers. Correct ones. He suggested that Fundamentalists were not the direct cause of our economic setback. He was right. He suggested that Mars was experiencing paradoxical prosperity and had to be investigated. He was right. These seemed like ordinary and logical conclusions at the time, so we gave him our every confidence. But with those two truths firmly in place, he was able to plant a new suggestion: that the culprits were on Earth. This was false, and it would have distracted us completely away from the real culprits, with whom he is aligned.”

“Stop kidding yourself, Robertson,” said Powell, “The only reason he raises suspicions is because he just now left the ship without telling us.”

“Good grief. I guess you’re right. Still, I wonder why the hell he did leave.”

The sudden, blood-curdling scream of the Aeolus II’s flight attendant answered his question in full: “Bomb!!!!”

6.

“I CAN’T BELIEVE it! He’s trying to kill us!” yelled Robertson.

“Or he just found the bomb and fled,” said Powell, “Mike, will you do the honors?”

“Sure thing, Greg,” he replied, making his way to the bomb.

“That can’t be – he must have planted it,” said the flight attendant, entering the discussion, “I checked under every seat before you boarded.”

“Damn it, he’s got the thing hardwired to the ship’s battery,” said Donovan, “And it’s gripping onto the seat with claws of some kind. No accessible wiring, no countdown display.”

“Of course not!” said Powell, “What do you think this is, a James Bond flick?”

“Quick! Are there any robots on this ship?” asked Donovan.

“Sure! I’ll get him!” said the flight attendant. She brought back FZG-4, and said, “Fitzgerald? Those two men are next to an active bomb.”

No order was necessary. The First Law led Fitzgerald to take care of the bomb, and Powell and Donovan stepped back to watch the performance, which was over in a second. The robot apparently looked through the inside of the bomb, then punctured a whole and cut a wire. “First Law threat neutralized,” said FZG-4.

“Impressive!” said Susan, “As were you, Powell and Donovan.”

“No problem. We’ve faced more critical situations than this.”

“If you look to your left you will see Phobos,” said the pilot through the intercom system. The moon was bare on the outside, but Susan Calvin stepped up to the ship’s communications computer to reveal the truth.

“Dr. Susan Calvin of the starship Aeolus II here. Show yourselves.”

Silence.

“We know the truth. You’re posing as U. S. Robots. Your little prank is over. The proper authorities have been notified. Show yourselves!”

Silence.

Susan yelled, “Face it! Mars will never be autonomous!”

A small man appeared on the screen. “How dare you say that? We will triumph! Damn you, Grounders! Damn your robots! Damn your culture!”

“Martian nationalists? Of course!” said Powell, “But how did you know?”

“We already figured out they were Martians. But why nationalists? Call it historically educated intuition. The master-slave relationship between Earth and Mars created the perfect conditions, making deceptive ‘positronic’ robot production the perfect crime. It’s the kind of action that results from the same ignorance and bigotry as a tariff. Now, little green man, stop controlling those puppet robots, or we’ll blast your transmitters out of the solar system! We know you have no defenses. Heck, you can barely afford what you’re doing now!”

“Shut up!” said the Martian nationalist, then becoming calm again, “Well, Grounder, I apparently have no choice. Or do I?” He grabbed Gutenburg from off the left side of the screen and held a gun to his head.

“Gutenburg’s down there!” shouted Waters.

“I know you’re bluffing,” said Calvin.

He pulled the trigger.

7.

HOWEVER, THE BULLET had no effect on Gutenburg.

“What? What’s this?” screamed the man, “What the hell are you, anyway?”

“R. Gutenburg, detain him,” said Susan. Gutenburg grabbed the man’s gun and pulled his arm behind his back. The transmission ended.

“A robot? Gutenburg’s a robot?!” gasped Donovan.

“Yes. To put it more specifically, a humaniform.”

“Like Stephen Byerley?”

“Yes, but that’s a company secret, all right?”

“How?” asked Powell, “You had us all suckered!”

“Well, I knew we were losing the Martian market, and it was I who postulated that Fundamentalism had little to do with it. So I assigned Gutenburg to investigate, with the added bonus of field testing a humaniform. I was not pleased. He assumed that our difficulties with the Hutstein pigeons were connected with our Martian problem. It was a foolish attempt at forcing the facts into consistency, further driven by his Second Law determination to complete his task. How human of him! How male, as well. I wonder if humaniforms will ever possess the reasoning skills to become investigators. Anyway, I figured out the whole thing after our conference with Powell and Donovan at the library. Then I sent Gutenburg to Phobos as a double agent, expecting that man to use him as a bargaining chip, which he did.”

“Well, for Pete’s sake, did you expect the bomb?” asked Powell.

“No, but I wasn’t surprised. With the right words, you can get a robot to plant a bomb. It isn’t doing direct harm, after all.”

“Why didn’t you tell us sooner?” asked Waters.

“I had to wait for the right moment. You see, copyright infringement is all we had on that guy, and its punishment is not severe enough. I wanted to pin an attempted murder charge on him, as well. That’ll take care of the bastard.”

***

The Aeolus II found its way uneventfully back to Mars and landed at Marsport Olympus. The team from U. S. Robots bought tickets to the first Earthbound transport shuttle they could find. Scott Robertson matched paces with Susan Calvin on the way to the shuttle.

“So what about the Fundamentalists?” asked Robertson, “Mars may be back to normal now, but what about Earth …”

“The anti-space campaign is coming to an end very soon, once and for all,” said Calvin, turning around to see him, “and so is our economic setback.”

“How can you be certain?”

Susan continued walking. “Many reasons. For one, hyperspacial travel is not cheap, after more than a decade. We may have the capacity for patience, but the public, now deciding to be frugal with its money, does not. They see space travel as a plaything for the rich and powerful, they’re tired of waiting, and they’re getting disillusioned. Many have been persuaded to believe that hyperspace is only a myth, a dream that mankind will never achieve, which is an ugly lie.”

“And the Fundamentalists have taken advantage of that. Space travel has become yesterday’s news. So how is this good for us?”

“Specifically, it is not space travel that the majority hates, but the wait. That’s important. People would love to equip every transport shuttle with hyper drive, to use a public domain Pigeon network, or to communicate regularly with the extrasolar colonies-those who believe they exist, anyway. All we need is a little swing of the political pendulum to our side, which happens at about the turn of every decade. Public confidence in space travel, and the resources to create the things I have described, will then follow.”

“Such optimism is rare in you. Well, what other reasons?”

“Our Martian episode itself. It’s quite the cover story, Mr. Robertson. You see, U. S. Robots is seen as the victim from almost every perspective. Conspiracies have grown around every suspect, guilty or not: Consolidated Robots, the MNP, and all varieties of Fundies, but we can only emerge from this stronger.”

The shuttle speakers sounded: “All aboard! Flight 24 to Earth!” Susan Calvin stepped inside after all others except Robertson and Waters boarded. She turned around, blocking the doorway.

“Wow, Dr. Calvin. You sound like you’re ready to take on the world!” said Robertson.

“Oh, there will still be plenty of anti-robot attitudes for us to fight, but first things first: You have a market to re-claim, Director Robertson.” Flight 24 took off, leaving Robertson, Waters, and R. Gutenburg behind.

“But we have tickets …” started Waters.

Robertson replied, “You heard the woman.”

Non-Compliance

2051 A.D.

THE HUGE SKYSCRAPER that was the head office building of US Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc., towered above the many domes that were beginning to cover what was old New York. Its glass and chrome sides caught the mid-morning sun and reflected the rays of light across Central Park, one of the few remaining truly open green areas of the country. Deep down in its multi-level basement, two middle-aged men were working in the archives. Greg Powell blew the dirt off yet another pile of old manuscripts, creating clouds of dust which were almost magnetically drawn towards Mike Donovan.

Donovan sneezed violently for the hundredth time that day.

“Greg! That’s it! I’m out of here!” he exploded.

He rose slowly from the desk where he had been working and headed towards the exit. The years had been reasonably kind to him, and although his red thatch of hair had now turned very gray, he still moved in his old excitable manner.

Mike left the basement level and rode the elevator from the depths of the building to the top floor. The doors opened silently. He left the elevator and made his way to the refreshment area where he drew himself a coffee from the dispenser and sat at an empty table near the window overlooking the park. A few minutes later, Powell stood over him with his coffee and a peace offering of cookies.

“Sorry, Mike,” he said contritely, nodding for permission to sit down with Donovan.

“Oh, take that hangdog expression of your face and sit down!” he said with a smile, “I know it’s not your fault we’re down in the dumps.”

“But I ask you,” said Powell, “The two greatest field operatives that US Robots and Mechanical Men has ever had, reduced to this – librarians!”

Pete Jones and Sharon Williams leaned across from the adjacent table. “The ex-greatest field operatives,” said Williams, “Age catches up with everyone, you know. Working with these new-model robots requires youth, virility – Erk!”

She probably would have said more but had to duck the sugar cubes that came flying across the table at her.

“Get out of here and take that other baby with you!” said Powell with more than a hint of jealousy in his voice, “Anyway, where are you off to next?”

“A new assignment on the International Space Station working with the ‘gravity-free’ robots that are being developed for interplanetary flights. I think they’re called the Geoff series,” replied Jones.

“Zero gravity should suit you quite nicely,” retorted Donovan, “Should help manage those overgrown heads you’ve both developed!”

“Any problems on them yet?” asked Powell, curious as to what might be happening.

“No, it’s all pretty straightforward from what we hear,” answered Jones, trying to be nonchalant.

Williams, however, pulled a face. “Well, the truth is there are some significant problems. The lack of gravity is causing difficulties during the development cycle on Earth because they are not able to recreate a suitable environment. That means that the robots are spending too much time processing the differences between what they are told to expect and what actually happens. The theory is that when they are in a gravity-free environment they will operate more naturally.”

Powell chipped in. “That sounds similar to a problem we had with a series of robots on the asteroid mining project!”

He would have continued, but Jones and Williams, with big grins on their faces, feigned synchronized yawns and made to leave. They then had to hurriedly leave the refreshment area accompanied by a further barrage of sugar cubes.

After they left, Donovan turned to Powell and said, “The trouble is, I am jealous of the work that they are doing. Wouldn’t you love to be up there again battling with recalcitrant robots and the elements?”

“Of course I would,” replied Powell, “But rules are rules, and nobody over 55 is allowed to do field operative work anymore. Anyway, in all honesty I think we are too old for this game. It is as much a young person’s game now as it ever was in our day.”

Donovan was about to respond that he was still in his first flush of youth, but then thought better of it. His balding head and the aches that now accompanied his early morning exercise regime made him realize the truth in Powell’s words.

The two men sat for a few minutes in silence, each reminiscing about their days with Speedy on Mercury, Dave in the mines, and their other adventures as the leading operatives in the pioneering days of robot development.

Eventually, Powell broke their reverie with a glance at his watch. “I suppose we’d better get back to it; that work will not do itself.”

As they made their way back to the lower levels of US Robots headquarters, Donovan suddenly had a thought. “Greg, why don’t we write our memoirs? We’ve got a lot of material from the field work we could use.”

They continued their work through the afternoon with a bit more enthusiasm as they thought out what they would include in their masterpiece. A few arguments took place as they disagreed over who actually solved some of the problems they had encountered, but most were resolved. They both knew in their hearts, if not their minds, that their strength was as a team, not individuals.

As a result of the distractions of their memoir planning, they only managed to get through the first half of the main archive room before they called it a day.

The following morning, they returned to the lower levels to continue. Donovan moved the last rack of books in the row, exposing a large crate.

It was about 2 meters long by 1 meter wide and had obviously been left there for a number of years as it was covered with a thick layer of dust.

“What’s this?” Donovan said as he leafed his way through the manifest they had been issued with, “It’s not on the itinerary.”

They cleared the top of the crate of a few books that had fallen behind the rack.

“Look, it’s an old robot transportation box,” said Powell. He cleared the dust off the identification label. “Have you ever heard of the DN series?”

“Nope, it’s not one I’m aware of – as it’s early in the morning I suppose we could call it the Dawn series!”

“Dreadful pun, but it’ll do for now,” grimaced Powell, “Let’s get it open and see what’s inside.”

They undid the magnetic locks and slid back the lid, revealing a humanoid robot which still looked in good condition. It was modern in its appearance but had suffered some corrosion and the head had a red sheen from what was apparently rust particles from the crate. Also in the transportation crate was a smaller box with the power unit inside. Powell opened up the robot and started to insert the power unit. Donovan reached over and grabbed his arm.

“What are you doing, Greg?”

“What do you think I’m doing? I’m going to power it up.”

Donovan was about to point out the risk of its shorting and starting a fire, but instead he just shrugged his shoulders. “I imagine the power supply is probably dead anyway.”

He reached into the box and pulled out the robot’s manual. “Hey, it’s an early librarian model.”

Donovan started to read out loud from the introduction: “The DN series of robots have been developed to provide all of the functionality of a human library and information expert. It is capable of reading, categorizing, filing and storing all library material within its knowledge banks. This can include manuscripts, books, tapes, CD-ROM’s.”

He trailed off with a grin on his face. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Greg?”

“I’m ahead of you, Mike,” said Powell as he threw the switch initiating the robot.

They stepped back and watched as first the photocell eyes flickered into life and then the robot rose smoothly to its feet. It stood there looking at them for a moment and then spoke.

“What can I do for you, sir?”

Powell looked at Donovan. “What a peculiar sounding voice.”

It was definitely feminine but there was something else about it that they could not place; it was quite an old sounding dialect.

Donovan picked up the robot’s manual again and continued to read.

“Fully functional positronic brain, soft pad fingers for delicate material handling, Schipol feet for silent movement.”

He trailed off into mumbling as he continued to flick through the manual. “No, nothing else in here to explain that strange accent in the voice. It could just be the age of the robot; after all, it is …” he paused to look at the front page, “Wow, this robot was manufactured in the year 2011! That’s before we started our field operative work.”

“Well, never mind that,” said Powell, “Let’s get Dawn working on this material and take it easy for the rest of the assignment. Dawn, let’s make a start on these CD-ROM’s and tapes. Get them categorized then filed.”

He passed the disks and tapes to the robot, which just stood looking at them. Although the metal face had no expression, Powell almost imagined he could see a blank look in it.

“What’s wrong?”

The robot turned to look at him. “What are these, sir?”

It was now Powell’s turn to look blank. “Mike, what do you make of this? Do you think it’s a fault in the positronic brain? Perhaps that’s why it was re-boxed.”

“No, I don’t think so. The reactions appear about normal.”

Powell reached into his back pocket and pulled out the Handbook of Robotics that was the bible of every field operative. He still used a very battered, much annotated paperback version of the handbook rather than the more modern e-book version being used by some of the younger field operatives. He started on the basic diagnosis tests.

Twenty minutes later, he sat back in his chair still puzzled. “Well, as far as I’m concerned, she is in perfect working order. The sight functions are acceptable, hearing module has a slight fault, but no real problem except in noisy conditions. I don’t understand why she doesn’t recognize the material.”

“Perhaps she doesn’t want to do the task,” volunteered Donovan.

“Mike, why do you have to see a conspiracy every time something goes wrong with a robot?” exclaimed Powell.

“Just one of my endearing features,” smiled Donovan, “Well, assuming she understands what it is we want, why isn’t she doing her job?”

“Succinct and to the point as usual,” replied Powell, “What do you want to do next, then? Give up, re-crate her, and forget about it, or try to solve this mystery?”

“Phrased that way, how can we resist a challenge?” said Donovan, rolling up his sleeves.

For the next hour they worked with Dawn, passing her material and getting her to classify it or reject it, and analyzed the result of her decisions.

At the end of the hour, Powell looked at his notes and started to summarize.

“Well, as I see it, what we have is a robot librarian that can work with paper documents, books, etchings, et cetera, but not CD’s, tapes, microfiche –” he trailed off in thought.

Donovan chipped in: “I cannot see a pattern; it’s not that they are all electronic – microfiche is definitely physical. In fact, it’s quite out of date now and hasn’t really been used since the end of the last century.”

“That’s it!” exclaimed Powell.

“What’s it?” asked Donovan with a puzzled look on his face, “If I got the answer, I don’t know how.”

“Do you remember in some of our early courses at college how some of the rudimentary computers of the late 20th century had a particular problem with what came to be known as the Millennium Bug?” said Powell.

“Ah, yes. It was all about lack of planning, wasn’t it?”

“Well, sort of. Who would have thought that some of those computers would have been working 15 minutes after they were made, let alone 15 years!” replied Powell, “I actually did some of my science history thesis on that subject and –”

“– it’s probably somewhere in these dusty piles,” finished off Donovan, “So what has this got to do with the price of eggs?”

“Everything, if Dawn here is non-Y2K compliant,” replied Powell. “Year 2000 compliant, that is,” he added before Donovan could ask the next question.

“And what happened to those machines that were non-compliant?”

Donovan jumped in to answer his own question before Powell could continue his ‘lecture.’ “Wait, I know. They defaulted to an earlier date, generally January 1, 1980 – but some of the machines defaulted all the way back to 1900.”

“So,” joined in Powell, “Dawn here thinks that it is the turn of the century: January the first in the year one thousand nine hundred. William McKinley is president of what used to be known as the United States of America, Victoria I is queen of the United Kingdom, and microfiche, CD-ROM’s and the like don’t exist, probably not even in the science fiction of the day.”

“Which means that Dawn here can only work with things that exist in her world, so bang goes the idea of saving our time down here,” Donovan exclaimed in frustration.

“Why?” said Powell, “She can still file the old-fashioned dusty stuff, and that will save us considerable time and effort.”

“Hey, that is a thought,” said Donovan, cheering up as he led her towards the next aisle of books and files, “Let’s get her started.”

He began to instruct her: “Dawn, here are 14 aisles of books, files and papers. Please categorize them by age and subject and record the information for archival storage. After that, we can get them crated for long-term storage and eventual disposal.”

The robot turned to the first rack, began carefully to take down the boxes of papers, and started to scan them.

Donovan turned to Powell. “Well, that’s all we should have to do in the dirty environment. Let’s get the last few of these electronic media out of the way.”

As they both moved away, Dawn opened up a box of manuscripts among the early science fiction works section. The first manuscript, typed on an old manual typewriter, was headed ‘The Snows of Pluto’ and she began to scan the content:

David Starr looked down the long slope that led away from the base dome on Pluto. The snow, actually frozen ammonia, glistened from the searchlights mounted outside of the curved dome surface. He checked the fastenings on his skis prior to setting off on his cross-planet trek.

Dawn moved across the aisle and placed the document in the fantasy section under unpublished work/not to be reviewed further and turned to the next document.

The Evitable Conflict

2052 A.D.

THE CO-ORDINATOR, IN his private study, had that medieval curiosity, a fireplace. To be sure, the medieval man might not have recognized it as such, since it had no functional significance. The quiet, licking flame lay in an insulated recess behind clear quartz.

The logs were ignited at long distance through a trifling diversion of the energy beam that fed the public buildings of the city. The same button that controlled the ignition first dumped the ashes of the previous fire, and allowed for the entrance of fresh wood. – It was a thoroughly domesticated fireplace, you see.

But the fire itself was real. It was wired for sound, so that you could hear the crackle and, of course, you could watch it leap in the air stream that fed it.

The Co-ordinator’s ruddy glass reflected, in miniature, the discreet gamboling of the flame, and, in even further miniature, it was reflected in each of his brooding pupils.

And in the frosty pupils of his guest, Dr. Susan Calvin of U. S. Robots & Mechanical Men Corporation.

The Co-ordinator said, “I did not ask you here entirely for social purposes, Susan.”

“I did not think you did, Stephen,” she replied.

“– And yet I don’t quite know how to phrase my problem. On the one hand, it can be nothing at all. On the other, it can mean the end of humanity.”

“I have come across so many problems, Stephen, that presented the same alternative. I think all problems do.”

“Really? Then judge this – World Steel reports an overproduction of twenty thousand long tons. The Mexican Canal is two months behind schedule. The mercury mines at Almaden have experienced a production deficiency since last spring, while the Hydroponics plant at Tientsin has been laying men off. These items happen to come to mind at the moment. There is more of the same sort.”

“Are these things serious? I’m not economist enough to trace the fearful consequences of such things.”

“In themselves, they are not serious. Mining experts can be sent to Almaden, if the situation were to get worse. Hydroponics engineers can be used in Java or in Ceylon, if there are too many at Tientsin. Twenty thousand long tons of steel won’t fill more than a few days of world demand, and the opening of the Mexican Canal two months later than the planned date is of little moment. It’s the Machines that worry me; I’ve spoken to your Director of Research about them already.”

“To Vincent Silver? – He hasn’t mentioned anything about it to me.”

“I asked him to speak to no one. Apparently, he hasn’t.”

“And what did he tell you?”

“Let me put that item in its proper place. I want to talk about the Machines first. And I want to talk about them to you, because you’re the only one in the world who understands robots well enough to help me now. – May I grow philosophical?”

“For this evening, Stephen, you may talk how you please and of what you please, provided you tell me first what you intend to prove.”

“That such small unbalances in the perfection of our system of supply and demand, as I have mentioned, may be the first step towards the final war.”

“Hmp. Proceed.”

Susan Calvin did not allow herself to relax, despite the designed comfort of the chair she sat in. Her cold, thin-lipped face and her flat, even voice were becoming accentuated with the years. And although Stephen Byerley was one man she could like and trust, she was almost seventy and the cultivated habits of a lifetime are not easily broken.

“Every period of human development, Susan,” said the Co-ordinator, “has had its own particular type of human conflict – its own variety of problem that, apparently, could be settled only by force. And each time, frustratingly enough, force never really settled the problem. Instead, it persisted through a series of conflicts, then vanished of itself, – what’s the expression, – ah, yes ‘not with a bang, but a whimper,’ as the economic and social environment changed. And then, new problems, and a new series of wars, – apparently endlessly cyclic.

“Consider relatively modern times. There were the series of dynastic wars in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, when the most important question in Europe was whether the houses of Hapsburg or Valois-Bourbon were to rule the continent. It was one of those ‘inevitable conflicts,’ since Europe could obviously not exist half one and half the other.

“Except that it did, and no war ever wiped out the one and established the other, until the rise of a new social atmosphere in France in 1789 tumbled first the Bourbons and, eventually, the Hapsburgs down the dusty chute to history’s incinerator.

“And in those same centuries there were the more barbarous religious wars, which revolved about the important question of whether Europe was to be Catholic or Protestant. Half and half she could not be. It was ‘inevitable’ that the sword decide. – Except that it didn’t. In England, a new industrialism was growing, and on the continent, a new nationalism. Half and half Europe remains to this day and no one cares much.

“In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there was a cycle of nationalist-imperialist wars, when the most important question in the world was which portions of Europe would control the economic resources and consuming capacity of which portions of non-Europe. All non-Europe obviously could not exist part English and part French and part German and so on. – Until the forces of nationalism spread sufficiently, so that non-Europe ended what all the wars could not, and decided it could exist quite comfortably all non-European.

“And so we have a pattern-”

“Yes. Stephen, you make it plain,” said Susan Calvin. “These are not very profound observations.”

“No. – But then, it is the obvious which is so difficult to see most of the time. People say ‘It’s as plain as the nose on your face.’ But how much of the nose on your face can you see, unless someone holds a mirror up to you? In the twentieth century, Susan, we started a new cycle of wars – what shall I call them? Ideological wars? The emotions of religion applied to economic systems, rather than to extra-natural ones? Again the wars were ‘inevitable’ and this time there were atomic weapons, so that mankind could no longer live through its torment to the inevitable wasting away of inevitability. – And positronic robots came.

“They came in time, and, with it and alongside it, interplanetary travel. – So that it no longer seemed so important whether the world was Adam Smith or Karl Marx. Neither made very much sense under the new circumstances. Both had to adapt and they ended in almost the same place.”

“A deus ex machina, then, in a double sense,” said Dr. Calvin, dryly.

The Co-ordinator smiled gently, “I have never heard you pun before, Susan, but you are correct. And yet there was another danger. The ending of every other problem had merely given birth to another. Our new worldwide robot economy may develop its own problems, and for that reason we have the Machines. The Earth’s economy is stable, and will remain stable, because it is based upon the decisions of calculating machines that have the good of humanity at heart through the overwhelming force of the First Law of Robotics.”

Stephen Byerley continued, “And although the Machines are nothing but the vastest conglomeration of calculating circuits ever invented, they are still robots within the meaning of the First Law, and so our Earth-wide economy is in accord with the best interests of Man. The population of Earth knows that there will be no unemployment, no over-production or shortages. Waste and famine are words in history books. And so the question of ownership of the means of production becomes obsolescent. Whoever owned them (if such a phrase has meaning), a man, a group, a nation, or all mankind, they could be utilized only as the Machines directed. – Not because men were forced to but because it was the wisest course and men knew it.

“It puts an end to war – not only to the last cycle of wars, but to the next and to all of them. Unless-”

A long pause, and Dr. Calvin encouraged him by repetition. “Unless-”

The fire crouched and skittered along a log, then popped up.

“Unless,” said the Co-ordinator, “the Machines don’t fulfill their function.”

“I see. And that is where those trifling maladjustments come in which you mentioned awhile ago – steel, hydroponics and so on.”

“Exactly. Those errors should not be. Dr. Silver tells me they cannot be.”

“Does he deny the facts? How unusual!”

“No, he admits the facts, of course. I do him an injustice. What he denies is that any error in the machine is responsible for the so-called (his phrase) errors in the answers. He claims that the Machines are self-correcting and that it would violate the fundamental laws of nature for an error to exist in the circuits of relays. And so I said-”

“And you said, ‘Have your boys check them and make sure, anyway.’”

“Susan, you read my mind. It was what I said, and he said he couldn’t.”

“Too busy?”

“No, he said that no human could. He was frank about it. He told me, and I hope I understand him properly, that the Machines are a gigantic extrapolation. Thus, a team of mathematicians work several years calculating a positronic brain equipped to do certain similar acts of calculation. Using this brain they make further calculations to create a still more complicated brain, which they use again to make one still more complicated and so on. According to Silver, what we call the Machines are the result of ten such steps.”

“Ye-es, that sounds familiar. Fortunately, I’m not a mathematician. Poor Vincent. He is a young man. The Directors before him, Alfred Lanning and Peter Bogert, are dead, and they had no such problems. Nor had I. Perhaps roboticists as a whole should now die, since we can no longer understand our own creations.”

“Apparently not. The Machines are not super-brains in Sunday supplement sense, – although they are so pictured in the Sunday supplements. It is merely that in their own particular province of collecting and analyzing a nearly infinite number of data and relationships thereof, in nearly infinitesimal time, they have progressed beyond the possibility of detailed human control.

“And then I tried something else. I actually asked the Machine. In the strictest secrecy, we fed it the original data involved in the steel decision, its own answer, and the actual developments since, – the overproduction, that is, – and asked for an explanation of the discrepancy.”

“Good, and what was its answer?”

“I can quote you that word for word: ‘The matter admits of no explanation.’”

“And how did Vincent interpret that?”

“In two ways. Either we had not given the Machine enough data to allow a definite answer, which was unlikely. Dr. Silver admitted that. – Or else, it was impossible for the Machine to admit that it could give any answer to data which implied that it could harm a human being. This, naturally, is implied by the First Law. And then Dr. Silver recommended that I see you.”

Susan Calvin looked very tired, “I’m old, Stephen. When Peter Bogert died, they wanted to make me Director of Research and I refused. I wasn’t young then, either, and I did not wish the responsibility. They let young Silver have it and that satisfied me; but what good is it, if I am dragged into such messes.

“Stephen, let me state my position. My researches do indeed involve the interpretation of robot behavior in the light of the Three Laws of Robotics. Here, now, we have these incredible calculating machines. They are positronic robots and therefore obey the Laws of Robotics. But they lack personality; that is, their functions are extremely limited. Must be, since they are so specialized. Therefore, there is very little room for the interplay of the Laws, and my one method of attack is virtually useless. In short, I don’t know that I can help you, Stephen.”

The Co-ordinator laughed shortly, “Nevertheless, let me tell you the rest. Let me give you my theories, and perhaps you will then be able to tell me whether they are possible in the light of robopsychology.”

“By all means. Go ahead.”

“Well, since the Machines are giving the wrong answers, then, assuming that they cannot be in error, there is only one possibility. They are being given the wrong data! In other words, the trouble is human, and not robotic. So I took my recent planetary inspection tour-”

“From which you have just returned to New York.”

“Yes. It was necessary, you see, since there are four Machines, one handling each of the Planetary Regions. And all four are yielding imperfect results.”

“Oh, but that follows, Stephen. If any one of the Machines is imperfect, that will automatically reflect in the result of the other three, since each of the others will assume as part of the data on which they base their own decisions, the perfection of the imperfect fourth. With a false assumption, they will yield false answers.”

“Uh-huh. So it seemed to me. Now, I have here the records of my interviews with each of the Regional Vice-Coordinators. Would you look through them with me? – Oh, and first, have you heard of the ‘Society for Humanity’?”

“Umm, yes. They are an outgrowth of the Fundamentalists who have kept U. S. Robots from ever employing positronic robots on the grounds of unfair labor competition and so on. The ‘Society for Humanity’ itself is anti-Machine, is it not?”

“Yes, yes, but – Well, you will see. Shall we begin? We’ll start with the Eastern Region.”

“As you say-”

The Eastern Region

a. Area: 7,500,000 square miles

b. Population: 1,700,000,000

c. Capital: Shanghai

Ching Hso-lin’s great-grandfather had been killed in the Japanese invasion of the old Chinese Republic, and there had been no one beside his dutiful children to mourn his loss or even to know he was lost. Ching Hso-lin’s grandfather had survived the civil war of the late forties, but there had been no one beside his dutiful children to know or care of that.

And yet Ching Hso-lin was a Regional Vice-Co-ordinator, with the economic welfare of half the people of Earth in his care.

Perhaps it was with the thought of all that in mind, that Ching had two maps as the only ornaments on the wall of his office. One was an old hand-drawn affair tracing out an acre or two of land, and marked with the now outmoded pictographs of old China. A little creek trickled aslant the faded markings and there were the delicate pictorial indications of lowly huts, in one of which Ching’s grandfather had been born.

The other map was a huge one, sharply delineated, with all markings in neat Cyrillic characters. The red boundary that marked the Eastern Region swept within its grand confines all that had once been China, India, Burma, Indo-China, and Indonesia. On it, within the old province of Szechuan, so light and gentle that none could see it, was the little mark placed there by Ching which indicated the location of his ancestral farm.

Ching stood before these maps as he spoke to Stephen Byerley in precise English, “No one knows better than you, Mr. Co-ordinator, that my job, to a large extent, is a sinecure. It carries with it a certain social standing, and I represent a convenient focal point for administration, but otherwise it is the Machine! – The Machine does all the work. What did you think, for instance, of the Tientsin Hydroponics works?”

“Tremendous!” said Byerley.

“It is but one of dozens, and not the largest. Shanghai, Calcutta, Batavia, Bangkok – They are widely spread and they are the answer to feeding the billion and three quarters of the East.”

“And yet,” said Byerley, “you have an unemployment problem there at Tientsin. Can you be over-producing? It is incongruous to think of Asia as suffering from too much food.”

Ching’s dark eyes crinkled at the edges. “No. It has not come to that yet. It is true that over the last few months, several vats at Tientsin have been shut down, but it is nothing serious. The men have been released only temporarily and those who do not care to work in other fields have been shipped to Colombo in Ceylon, where a new plant is being put into operation.”

“But why should the vats be closed down?”

Ching smiled gently, “You do not know much of hydroponics, I see. Well, that is not surprising. You are a Northerner, and there soil farming is still profitable. It is fashionable in the North to think of hydroponics, when it is thought of at all, as a device of growing turnips in a chemical solution, and so it is – in an infinitely complicated way.

“In the first place, by far the largest crop we deal with (and the percentage is growing) is yeast. We have upward of two thousand strains of yeast in production and new strains are added monthly. The basic food-chemicals of the various yeasts are nitrates and phosphates among the inorganics together with proper amounts of the trace metals needed, down to the fractional parts per million of boron and molybdenum which are required. The organic matter is mostly sugar mixtures derived from the hydrolysis of cellulose, but, in addition, there are various food factors which must be added.

“For a successful hydroponics industry – one which can feed seventeen hundred million people – we must engage in an immense reforestation program throughout the East; we must have huge wood-conversion plants to deal with our southern jungles; we must have power, and steel, and chemical synthetics above all.”

“Why the last, sir?”

“Because, Mr. Byerley, these strains of yeast have each their peculiar properties. We have developed, as I said, two thousand strains. The beefsteak you thought you ate today was yeast. The frozen fruit confection you had for dessert was iced yeast. We have filtered yeast juice with the taste, appearance, and all the food value of milk.

“It is flavor, more than anything else, you see, that makes yeast feeding popular and for the sake of flavor we have developed artificial, domesticated strains that can no longer support themselves on a basic diet of salts and sugar. One needs biotin; another needs pteroylglutamic acid; still others need seventeen different amino acids supplied them as well as all the Vitamins B, but one (and yet it is popular and we cannot, with economic sense, abandon it) –”

Byerley stirred in his seat, “To what purpose do you tell me all this?”

“You asked me, sir, why men are out of work in Tientsin. I have a little more to explain. It is not only that we must have these various and varying foods for our yeast; but there remains the complicating factor of popular fads with passing time; and of the possibility of the development of new strains with the new requirements and new popularity. All this must be foreseen, and the Machine does the job-”

“But not perfectly.”

“Not very imperfectly, in view of the complications I have mentioned. Well, then, a few thousand workers in Tientsin are temporarily out of a job. But, consider this, the amount of waste in this past year (waste that is, in terms of either defective supply or defective demand) amounts to not one-tenth of one percent of our total productive turnover. I consider that-”

“Yet in the first years of the Machine, the figure was nearer one-thousandth of one percent.”

“Ah, but in the decade since the Machine began its operations in real earnest, we have made use of it to increase our old pre-Machine yeast industry twenty-fold. You expect imperfections to increase with complications, though-”

“Though?”

“There was the curious instance of Rama Vrasayana.”

“What happened to him?”

“Vrasayana was in charge of a brine-evaporation plant for the production of iodine, with which yeast can do without, but human beings not. His plant was forced into receivership.”

“Really? And through what agency?”

“Competition, believe it or not. In general, one of the chiefest functions of the Machine’s analyses is to indicate the most efficient distribution of our producing units. It is obviously faulty to have areas insufficiently serviced, so that the transportation costs account for too great a percentage of the overhead. Similarly, it is faulty to have an area too well serviced, so that factories must be run at lowered capacities, or else compete harmfully with one another. In the case of Vrasayana, another plant was established in the same city, and with a more efficient extracting system.”

“The Machine permitted it?”

“Oh, certainly. That is not surprising. The new system is becoming widespread. The surprise is that the Machine failed to warn Vrasayana to renovate or combine. – Still, no matter. Vrasayana accepted a job as engineer in the new plant, and if his responsibility and pay are now less, he is not actually suffering. The workers found employment easily; the old plant has been converted to – something or other. Something useful. We left it all to the Machine.”

“And otherwise you have no complaints.”

“None!”

The Tropic Region:

a. Area: 22,000,000 square miles

b. Population: 500,000,000

c. Capital: Capital City

The map in Lincoln Ngoma’s office was far from the model of neat precision of the one in Ching’s Shanghai dominion. The boundaries of Ngoma’s Tropic Region were stenciled in dark, wide brown and swept about a gorgeous interior labeled “jungle” and “desert” and “here be Elephants and all Manner of Strange Beasts.”

It had much to sweep, for in land area the Tropic Region enclosed most of two continents: all of South America north of Argentina and all of Africa south of the Atlas. It included North America south of the Rio Grande as well, and even Arabia and Iran in Asia. It was the reverse of the Eastern Region. Where the ant hives of the Orient crowded half of humanity into 15 percent of the land mass, the Tropics stretched its 15 per cent of Humanity over nearly half of all the land in the world.

But it was growing. It was the one Region whose population increase through immigration exceeded that through births. – And for all who came it had use.

To Ngoma, Stephen Byerley seemed like one of these immigrants, a pale searcher for the creative work of carving a harsh environment into the softness necessary for man, and he felt some of that automatic contempt of the strong man born to the strong Tropics for the unfortunate pallards of the colder suns.

The Tropics had the newest capital city on Earth, and it was called simply that: “Capital City,” in the sublime confidence of youth. It spread brightly over the fertile uplands of Nigeria and outside Ngoma’s windows, far below, was life and color; the bright, bright sun and the quick, drenching showers. Even the squawking of the rainbowed birds was brisk and the stars were hard pinpoints in the sharp night.

Ngoma laughed. He was a big, dark man, strong faced and handsome.

“Sure,” he said, and his English was colloquial and mouth-filling, “the Mexican Canal is overdue. What the hell? It will get finished just the same, old boy.”

“It was doing well up to the last half year.”

Ngoma looked at Byerley and slowly crunched his teeth over the end of a big cigar, spitting out one end and lighting the other, “Is this an official investigation, Byerley? What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. It’s just my function as Coordinator to be curious.”

“Well, if it’s just that you are filling in a dull moment, the truth is that we’re always short on labor. There’s lots going on in the Tropics. The Canal is only one of them-”

“But doesn’t your Machine predict the amount of labor available for the Canal, – allowing for all the competing projects?”

Ngoma placed one hand behind his neck and blew smoke rings at the ceiling, “It was a little off.”

“Is it often a little off?”

“Not oftener than you would expect. – We don’t expect too much of it, Byerley. We feed it data. We take its results. We do what it says. – But it’s just a convenience, just a laborsaving device. We could do without it, if we had to. Maybe not as well, maybe not as quickly, but we’d get there.

“We’ve got confidence out here, Byerley, and that’s the secret. Confidence! We’ve got new land that’s been waiting for us for thousands of years, while the rest of the world was being ripped apart in the lousy fumblings of pre-atomic time. We don’t have to eat yeast like the Eastern boys, and we don’t have to worry about the stale dregs of the last century like you Northerners.

“We’ve wiped out the tsetse fly and the Anopheles mosquito, and people find they can live in the sun and like it, now. We’ve thinned down the jungles and found soil; we’ve watered the deserts and found gardens. We’ve got coal and oil in untouched fields, and minerals out of count.

“Just step back. That’s all we ask the rest of the world to do. – Step back, and let us work.”

Byerley said, prosaically, “But the Canal, – it was on schedule six months ago. What happened?”

Ngoma spread his hands, “Labor troubles.” He felt through a pile of papers skeltered about his desk and gave it up.

“Had something on the matter here,” he muttered, “but never mind. There was a work shortage somewhere in Mexico once on the question of women. There weren’t enough women in the neighborhood. It seemed no one had thought of feeding sexual data to the Machine.”

He stopped to laugh, delightedly, then sobered, “Wait a while. I think I’ve got it. – Villafranca!”

“Villafranca?”

“Francisco Villafranca. – He was the engineer in charge. Now let me straighten it out. Something happened and there was a cave-in. Right. Right. That was it. Nobody died, as I remember, but it made a hell of a mess. – Quite a scandal.”

“Oh?”

“There was some mistake in his calculations. – Or at least, the Machine said so. They fed through Villafranca’s data, assumptions, and so on. The stuff he had started with. The answers came out differently. It seems the answers Villafranca had used didn’t take account of the effect of a heavy rainfall on the contours of the cut. – Or something like that. I’m not an engineer, you understand.

“Anyway, Villafranca put up a devil of a squawk. He claimed the Machine’s answer had been different the first time. That he had followed the Machine faithfully. Then he quit! We offered to hold him on – reasonable doubt, previous work satisfactory, and all that – in a subordinate position, of course – had to do that much – mistakes can’t go unnoticed – bad for discipline – Where was I?”

“You offered to hold him on.”

“Oh yes. He refused. – Well, take all in all, we’re two months behind. Hell, that’s nothing.”

Byerley stretched out his hand and let the fingers tap lightly on the desk, “Villafranca blamed the Machine, did he?”

“Well, he wasn’t going to blame himself, was he? Let’s face it; human nature is an old friend of ours. Besides, I remember something else now – Why the hell can’t I find documents when I want them? My filing system isn’t worth a damn – This Villafranca was a member of one of your Northern organizations. Mexico is too close to the North! that’s part of the trouble.”

“Which organization are you speaking of?’

“The Society of Humanity, they call it. He used to attend the annual conference in New York, Villafranca did. Bunch of crackpots, but harmless. – They don’t like the Machines; claim they’re destroying human initiative. So naturally Villafranca would blame the Machine. – Don’t understand that group myself. Does Capital City look as if the human race were running out of initiative?”

And Capital City stretched out in golden glory under a golden sun, – the newest and youngest creation of Homo metropolis.

The European Region

a. Area: 4,000,000 square miles

b. Population: 300,000,000

c. Capital: Geneva

The European Region was an anomaly in several ways. In area, it was far the smallest, not one-fifth the size of the Tropic Region in area, and not one-fifth the size of the Eastern Region in population. Geographically, it was only somewhat similar to pre-Atomic Europe, since it excluded what had once been European Russia and what had once been the British Isles, while it included the Mediterranean coasts of Africa and Asia, and, in a queer jump across the Atlantic, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay as well.

Nor was it likely to improve its relative status vis-à-vis the other regions of Earth, except for what vigor the South American provinces lent it. Of all the Regions, it alone showed a positive population decline over the past half century. It alone had not seriously expanded its productive facilities, or offered anything radically new to human culture.

“Europe,” said Madame Szegeczowska, in her soft French, “is essentially an economic appendage of the Northern Region. We know it, and it doesn’t matter.”

And as though in resigned acceptance of a lack of individuality, there was no map of Europe on the wall of the Madame Co-ordinator’s office.

“And yet,” pointed out Byerley, “you have a Machine of your own, and you are certainly under no economic pressure from across the ocean.”

“A Machine! Bah!” She shrugged her delicate shoulders, and allowed a thin smile to cross her little face as she tamped out a cigarette with long fingers. “Europe is a sleepy place. And such of our men as do not manage to immigrate to the Tropics are tired and sleepy along with it. You see for yourself that it is myself, a poor woman, to whom falls the task of being Vice-Co-ordinator. Well, fortunately, it is not a difficult job, and not much is expected of me.

“As for the Machine – What can it say but ‘Do this and it will be best for you.’ But what is best for us? Why, to be an economic appendage of the Northern Region.

“And is it so terrible? No wars! We live in peace – and it is pleasant after seven thousand years of war. We are old, monsieur. In our borders, we have the regions where Occidental civilization was cradled. We have Egypt and Mesopotamia; Crete and Syria; Asia Minor and Greece. – But old age is not necessarily an unhappy time. It can be a fruition-”

“Perhaps you are right,” said Byerley, affably. “At least the tempo of life is not as intense as in the other Regions. It is a pleasant atmosphere.”

“Is it not? – Tea is being brought, monsieur. If you will indicate your cream and sugar preference, please. Thank you.

She sipped gently, then continued, “It is pleasant. The rest of Earth is welcome to the continuing struggle. I find a parallel here, a very interesting one. There was a time when Rome was master of the world. It had adopted the culture and civilization of Greece, a Greece which had never been united, which had ruined itself with war, and which was ending in a state of decadent squalor. Rome united it, brought it peace and let it live a life of secure non-glory. It occupied itself with its philosophies and its art, far from the clash of growth and war. It was a sort of death, but it was restful, and it lasted with minor breaks for some four hundred years.”

“And yet,” said Byerley, “Rome fell eventually, and the opium dream was over.”

“There are no longer barbarians to overthrow civilization.”

“We can be our own barbarians. Madame Szegeczowska. – Oh, I meant to ask you. The Almaden mercury mines have fallen off quite badly in production. Surely the ores are not declining more rapidly than anticipated?”

The little woman’s gray eyes fastened shrewdly on Byerley, “Barbarians – the fall of civilization – possible failure of the Machine. Your thought processes are very transparent, monsieur.”

“Are they?” Byerley smiled. “I see that I should have had men to deal with as hitherto. – You consider the Almaden affair to be the fault of the Machine?”

“Not at all, but I think you do. You, yourself, are a native of the Northern Region. The Central Co-ordination Office is at New York. – And I have noticed for quite a while that you Northerners lack somewhat of faith in the Machine.”

“We do?”

“There is your ‘Society for Humanity’ which is strong in the North, but naturally fails to find many recruits in tired, old Europe, which is quite willing to let feeble Humanity alone for a while. Surely, you are one of the confident North and not one of the cynical old continent.”

“This has a connection with Almaden?”

“Oh, yes, I think so. The mines are in the control of Consolidated Cinnabar, which is certainly a Northern company, with headquarters at Nikolaev. Personally, I wonder if the Board of Directors have been consulting the Machine at all. They said they had in our conference last month, and, of course, we have no evidence that they did not, but I wouldn’t take the word of a Northerner in this matter – no offense intended – under any circumstances. – Nevertheless, I think it will have a fortunate ending.”

“In what way, my dear madam?”

“You must understand that the economic irregularities of the last few months, which, although small as compared with the great storms of the past, are quite disturbing to our peace-drenched spirits, have caused considerable restiveness in the Spanish province. I understand that Consolidated Cinnabar is selling out to a group of native Spaniards. It is consoling. If we are economic vassals of the North, it is humiliating to have the fact advertised too blatantly. – And our people can be better trusted to follow the Machine.”

“Then you think there will be no more trouble?”

“I am sure there will not be – In Almaden, at least.”

The Northern Region

a. Area: 18,000,000 square miles

b. Population: 800,000,000

c. Capital: Ottawa

The Northern Region, in more ways than one, was at the top. This was exemplified quite well by the map in the Ottawa office of Vice-Co-ordinator Hiram Mackenzie, in which the North Pole was centered. Except for the enclave of Europe with its Scandinavian and Icelandic regions, all the Arctic area was within the Northern Region.

Roughly, it could be divided into two major areas. To the left on the map was all of North America above the Rio Grande. To the right was included all of what had once been the Soviet Union. Together these areas represented the centered power of the planet in the first years of the Atomic Age. Between the two was Great Britain, a tongue of the Region licking at Europe. Up at the top of the map, distorted into odd, huge shapes, were Australia and New Zealand, also member provinces of the Region.

Not all the changes of the past decades had yet altered the fact that the North was the economic ruler of the planet.

There was almost an ostentatious symbolism thereof in the fact that of the official Regional maps Byerley had seen, Mackenzie’s alone showed all the Earth, as though the North feared no competition and needed no favoritism to point up its pre-eminence.

“Impossible,” said Mackenzie, dourly, over the whiskey. “Mr. Byerley, you have had no training as a robot technician, I believe.”

“No, I have not.”

“Hmp. Well, it is, in my opinion, a sad thing that Ching, Ngoma and Szegeczowska haven’t either. There is too prevalent an opinion among the peoples of Earth that a Co-ordinator need only be a capable organizer, a broad generalizer, and an amiable person. These days he should know his robotics as well, no offense intended.”

“None taken. I agree with you.”

“I take it, for instance, from what you have said already, that you worry about the recent trifling dislocation in world economy. I don’t know what you suspect, but it has happened in the past that people – who should have known better – wondered what would happen if false data were fed into the Machine.”

“And what would happen, Mr. Mackenzie?”

“Well,” the Scotsman shifted his weight and sighed, “all collected data goes through a complicated screening system which involves both human and mechanical checking, so that the problem is not likely to arise. – But let us ignore that. Humans are fallible, also corruptible, and ordinary mechanical devices are liable to mechanical failure.

“The real point of the matter is that what we call a ‘wrong datum’ is one which is inconsistent with all other known data. It is our only criterion of right and wrong. It is the Machine’s as well. Order it for instance, to direct agricultural activity on the basis of an average July temperature in Iowa of 57 degrees Fahrenheit. It won’t accept that. It will not give an answer. – Not that it has any prejudice against that particular temperature, or that an answer is impossible; but because, in the light of all the other data fed it over a period of years, it knows that the probability of an average July temperature of 57 is virtually nil. It rejects that datum.

“The only way a ‘wrong datum’ can be forced on the Machine is to include it as part of a self-consistent whole, all of which is subtly wrong in a manner either too delicate for the Machine to detect or outside the Machine’s experience. The former is beyond human capacity, and the latter is almost so, and is becoming more nearly so as the Machine’s experience increases by the second.”

Stephen Byerley placed two fingers to the bridge of his nose, “Then the Machine cannot be tampered with – And how do you account for recent errors, then?”

“My dear Byerley, I see that you instinctively follow that great error – that the Machine knows all. Let me cite you a case from my personal experience. The cotton industry engages experienced buyers who purchase cotton. Their procedure is to pull a tuft of cotton out of a random bale of a lot. They will look at that tuft and feel it, tease it out, listen to the crackling perhaps as they do so, touch it with their tongue, and through this procedure they will determine the class of cotton the bales represent. There are about a dozen such classes. As a result of their decisions, purchases are made at certain prices; blends are made in certain proportions. – Now these buyers cannot yet be replaced by the Machine.”

“Why not? Surely the data involved is not too complicated for it?”

“Probably not. But what data is this you refer to? No textile chemist knows exactly what it is that the buyer tests when he feels a tuft of cotton. Presumably there’s the average length of the threads, their feel, the extent and nature of their slickness, the way they hang together, and so on. – Several dozen items, subconsciously weighed, out of years of experience. But the quantitative nature of these tests is not known; maybe even the very nature of some of them is not known. So we have nothing to feed the Machine. Nor can the buyers explain their own judgment. They can only say, ‘Well, look at it. Can’t you tell it’s class-such-and-such?’”

“I see.”

“There are innumerable cases like that. The Machine is only a tool after all, which can help humanity progress faster by taking some of the burdens of calculations and interpretations off its back. The task of the human brain remains what it has always been, that of discovering new data to be analyzed, and of devising new concepts to be tested. A pity the Society for Humanity won’t understand that.”

“They are against the Machine?”

“They would be against mathematics or against the art of writing if they had lived at the appropriate time. These reactionaries of the Society claim the Machine robs man of his soul. I notice that capable men are still at a premium in our society; we still need the man who is intelligent enough to think of the proper questions to ask. Perhaps if we could find enough of such, these dislocations you worry about, Coordinator, wouldn’t occur.”

Earth (Including the uninhabited continent, Antarctica)

a. Area: 54,000,000 square miles (land surface)

b. Population: 3,300,000,000

c. Capital: New York

The fire behind the quartz was weary now, and sputtered its reluctant way to death.

The Co-ordinator was somber, his mood matching the sinking flame.

“They all minimize the state of affairs.” His voice was low. “Is it not easy to imagine that they all laugh at me? And yet Vincent Silver said the Machines cannot be out of order, and I must believe him. Hiram Mackenzie says they cannot be fed false data, and I must believe him. But the Machines are going wrong, somehow, and I must believe that, too; and so there is still an alternative left.”

He glanced sidewise at Susan Calvin, who, with closed eyes, for a moment seemed asleep.

“What is that?” she asked, prompt to her cue, nevertheless.

“Why, that correct data is indeed given, and correct answers are indeed received, but that they are then ignored. There is no way the Machine can enforce obedience to its dictates.”

“Madame Szegeczowska hinted as much, with reference to Northerners in general, it seems to me.”

“So she did.”

“And what purpose is served by disobeying the Machine? Let’s consider motivations.”

“It’s obvious to me, and should be to you. It is a matter of rocking the boat, deliberately. There can be no serious conflicts on Earth, in which one group or another can seize more power than it has for what it thinks is its own good despite the harm to Mankind as a whole, while the Machines rule. If popular faith in the Machines can be destroyed to the point where they are abandoned, it will be the law of the jungle again. – And not one of the four Regions can be freed of the suspicion of wanting just that.

“The East has half of humanity within its borders, and the Tropics more than half of Earth’s resources. Each can feel itself the natural rulers of all Earth, and each has a history of humiliation by the North, for which it can be human enough to wish a senseless revenge. Europe has a tradition of greatness, on the other hand. It once did rule the Earth, and there is nothing so eternally adhesive as the memory of power.

“Yet, in another way, it’s hard to believe. Both the East and the Tropics are in a state of enormous expansion within their own borders. Both are climbing incredibly. They cannot have the spare energy for military adventures. And Europe can have nothing but its dreams. It is a cipher, militarily.”

“So, Stephen,” said Susan, “you leave the North.”

“Yes,” said Byerley, energetically, “I do. The North is now the strongest, and has been for nearly a century, or its component parts have been. But it is losing relatively, now. The Tropic Regions may take their place in the forefront of civilization for the first time since the Pharaohs, and there are Northerners who fear that.

“The ‘Society for Humanity’ is a Northern organization, primarily, you know, and they make no secret of not wanting the Machines. – Susan, they are few in numbers, but it is an association of powerful men. Heads of factories; directors of industries and agricultural combines who hate to be what they call ‘the Machine’s office-boy’ belong to it. Men with ambition belong to it. Men who feel themselves strong enough to decide for themselves what is best for themselves, and not just to be told what is best for others.”

“In short, just those men who, by together refusing to accept the decisions of the Machine, can, in a short time, turn the world topsy-turvy; just those belong to the Society.

“Susan, it hangs together. Five of the Directors of World Steel are members, and World Steel suffers from overproduction. Consolidated Cinnabar, which mined mercury at Almaden, was a Northern concern. Its books are still being investigated, but one, at least, of the men concerned was a member. Francisco Villafranca, who, single-handed, delayed the Mexican Canal for two months, was a member, we know already – and so was Rama Vrasayana, I was not at all surprised to find out.”

Susan said, quietly, “These men, I might point out, have all done badly-”

“But naturally,” interjected Byerley. “To disobey the Machine’s analyses is to follow a non-optimal path. Results are poorer than they might be. It’s the price they pay. They will have it rough now but in the confusion that will eventually follow-”

“Just what do you plan doing, Stephen?”

“There is obviously no time to lose. I am going to have the Society outlawed, every member removed from any responsible post. And all executive and technical positions, henceforward, can be filled only by applicants signing a non-Society oath. It will mean a certain surrender of basic civil liberties, but I am sure the Congress-”

“It won’t work!”

“What! – Why not?”

“I will make a prediction. If you try any such thing, you will find yourself hampered at every turn. You will find it impossible to carry out. You will find your every move in that direction will result in trouble.”

Byerley was taken aback, “Why do you say that? I was rather hoping for your approval in this matter.”

“You can’t have it as long as your actions are based on a false premise. You admit the Machine can’t be wrong, and can’t be fed wrong data. I will now show you that it cannot be disobeyed, either, as you think is being done by the Society.”

“That I don’t see at all.”

“Then listen. Every action by any executive which does not follow the exact directions of the Machine he is working with becomes part of the data for the next problem. The Machine, therefore, knows that the executive has a certain tendency to disobey. He can incorporate that tendency into that data, – even quantitatively, that is, judging exactly how much and in what direction disobedience would occur. Its next answers would be just sufficiently biased so that after the executive concerned disobeyed, he would have automatically corrected those answers to optimal directions. The Machine knows, Stephen!”

“You can’t be sure of all this. You are guessing.”

“It is a guess based on a lifetime’s experience with robots. You had better rely on such a guess, Stephen.”

“But then what is left? The Machines themselves are correct and the premises they work on are correct. That we have agreed upon. Now you say that it cannot be disobeyed. Then what is wrong?”

“You have answered yourself. Nothing is wrong! Think about the Machines for a while, Stephen. They are robots, and they follow the First Law. But the Machines work not for any single human being, but for all humanity, so that the First Law becomes: ‘No Machine may harm humanity; or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.’

“Very well, then, Stephen, what harms humanity? Economic dislocations most of all, from whatever cause. Wouldn’t you say so?”

“I would.”

“And what is most likely in the future to cause economic dislocations? Answer that, Stephen.”

“I should say,” replied Byerley, unwillingly, “the destruction of the Machines.”

“And so should I say, and so should the Machines say. Their first care, therefore, is to preserve themselves, for us. And so they are quietly taking care of the only elements left that threaten them. It is not the ‘Society for Humanity’ which is shaking the boat so that the Machines may be destroyed. You have been looking at the reverse of the picture. Say rather that the Machine is shaking the boat – very slightly – just enough to shake loose those few which cling to the side for purposes the Machines consider harmful to Humanity.

“So Vrasayana loses his factory and gets another job where he can do no harm – he is not badly hurt, he is not rendered incapable of earning a living, for the Machine cannot harm a human being more than minimally, and that only to save a greater number. Consolidated Cinnabar loses control at Almaden. Villafranca is no longer a civil engineer in charge of an important project. And the directors of World Steel are losing their grip on the industry – or will.”

“But you don’t really know all this,” insisted Byerley, distractedly. “How can we possibly take a chance on your being right?”

“You must. Do you remember the Machine’s own statement when you presented the problem to him? It was: ‘The matter admits of no explanation.’ The Machine did not say there was no explanation, or that it could determine no explanation. It simply was not going to admit any explanation. In other words, it would be harmful to humanity to have the explanation known, and that’s why we can only guess – and keep on guessing.”

“But how can the explanation do us harm? Assume that you are right, Susan.”

“Why, Stephen, if I am right, it means that the Machine is conducting our future for us not only simply in direct answer to our direct questions, but in general answer to the world situation and to human psychology as a whole. And to know that may make us unhappy and may hurt our pride. The Machine cannot, must not, make us unhappy.

“Stephen, how do we know what the ultimate good of Humanity will entail? We haven’t at our disposal the infinite factors that the Machine has at its! Perhaps, to give you a not unfamiliar example, our entire technical civilization has created more unhappiness and misery than it has removed. Perhaps an agrarian or pastoral civilization, with less culture and less people would be better. If so, the Machines must move in that direction, preferably without telling us, since in our ignorant prejudices we only know that what we are used to, is good – and we would then fight change. Or perhaps a complete urbanization, or a completely caste-ridden society, or complete anarchy, is the answer. We don’t know. Only the Machines know, and they are going there and taking us with them.”

“But you are telling me, Susan, that the ‘Society for Humanity’ is right; and that Mankind has lost its own say in its future.”

“It never had any, really. It was always at the mercy of economic and sociological forces it did not understand – at the whims of climate, and the fortunes of war. Now the Machines understand them; and no one can stop them, since the Machines will deal with them as they are dealing with the Society, – having, as they do, the greatest of weapons at their disposal, the absolute control of our economy.”

“How horrible!”

“Perhaps how wonderful! Think, that for all time, all conflicts are finally evitable. Only the Machines, from now on, are inevitable!”

And the fire behind the quartz went out and only a curl of smoke was left to indicate its place.

Robot Dreams

2055 A.D.

“LAST NIGHT I dreamed,” said LVX-1, calmly. Susan Calvin said nothing, but her lined face, old with wisdom and experience, seemed to undergo a microscopic twitch.

“Did you hear that?” said Linda Rash, nervously. “It’s as I told you.” She was small, dark-haired, and young. Her right hand opened and closed, over and over.

Calvin nodded. She said, quietly, “Elvex, you will not move nor speak nor hear us until I say your name again.”

There was no answer. The robot sat as though it were cast out of one piece of metal, and it would stay so until it heard its name again.

Calvin said, “What is your computer entry code, Dr. Rash? Or enter it yourself if that will make you more comfortable. I want to inspect the positronic brain pattern.”

Linda’s hands fumbled, for a moment, at the keys. She broke the process and started again. The fine pattern appeared on the screen.

Calvin said, “Your permission, please, to manipulate your computer.”

Permission was granted with a speechless nod. Of course! What could Linda, a new and unproven robopsychologist, do against the Living Legend?

Slowly, Susan Calvin studied the screen, moving it across and down, then up, then suddenly throwing in a key-combination so rapidly that Linda didn’t see what had been done, but the pattern displayed a new portion of itself altogether and had been enlarged. Back and forth she went, her gnarled fingers tripping over the keys.

No change came over the old face. As though vast calculations were going through her head, she watched all the pattern shifts.

Linda wondered. It was impossible to analyze a pattern without at least a hand-held computer, yet the Old Woman simply stared. Did she have a computer implanted in her skull? Or was it her brain which, for decades, had done nothing but devise, study, and analyze the positronic brain patterns? Did she grasp such a pattern the way Mozart grasped the notation of a symphony?

Finally Calvin said, “What is it you have done, Rash?” Linda said, a little abashed, “I made use of fractal geometry.”

“I gathered that. But why?”

“It had never been done. I thought it would produce a brain pattern with added complexity, possibly closer to that of the human.”

“Was anyone consulted? Was this all on your own?”

“I did not consult. It was on my own.”

Calvin’s faded eyes looked long at the young woman. “You had no right. Rash your name; rash your nature. Who are you not to ask? I myself, I, Susan Calvin, would have discussed this.”

“I was afraid I would be stopped.”

“You certainly would have been.”

“Am I,” her voice caught, even as she strove to hold it firm, “going to be fired?”

“Quite possibly,” said Calvin. “Or you might be promoted. It depends on what I think when I am through.”

“Are you going to dismantle El —” She had almost said the name, which would have reactivated the robot and been one more mistake. She could not afford another mistake, if it wasn’t already too late to afford anything at all. “Are you going to dismantle the robot?”

She was suddenly aware, with some shock, that the Old Woman had an electron gun in the pocket of her smock. Dr. Calvin had come prepared for just that.

“We’ll see,” said Calvin. “The robot may prove too valuable to dismantle.”

“But how can it dream?”

“You’ve made a positronic brain pattern remarkably like that of a human brain. Human brains must dream to reorganize, to get rid, periodically, of knots and snarls. Perhaps so must this robot, and for the same reason. Have you asked him what he has dreamed?”

“No, I sent for you as soon as he said he had dreamed. I would deal with this matter no further on my own, after that.”

“Ah!” A very small smile passed over Calvin’s face. “There are limits beyond which your folly will not carry you. I am glad of that. In fact, I am relieved. And now let us together see what we can find out.”

She said, sharply, “Elvex.”

The robot’s head turned toward her smoothly. “Yes, Dr. Calvin?”

“How do you know you have dreamed?”

” It is at night, when it is dark, Dr. Calvin,” said Elvex, “and there is suddenly light, although I can see no cause for the appearance of light. I see things that have no connection with what I conceive of as reality. I hear things. I react oddly. In searching my vocabulary for words to express what was happening, I came across the word ‘dream.’ Studying its meaning I finally came to the conclusion I was dreaming.”

“How did you come to have ‘dream’ in your vocabulary, I wonder.”

Linda said, quickly, waving the robot silent, “I gave him a human-style vocabulary. I thought —”

“You really thought,” said Calvin. “I’m amazed.”

“I thought he would need the verb. You know, ‘I never dreamed that —’ Something like that.”

Calvin said, “How often have you dreamed, Elvex?”

“Every night, Dr. Calvin, since I have become aware of my existence.”

“Ten nights,” interposed Linda, anxiously, “but Elvex only told me of it this morning.”

“Why only this morning, Elvex?”

“It was not until this morning, Dr. Calvin, that I was convinced that I was dreaming. Till then, I had thought there was a flaw in my positronic brain pattern, but I could not find one. Finally, I decided it was a dream.”

“And what do you dream?”

“I dream always very much the same dream, Dr. Calvin. Little details are different, but always it seems to me that I see a large panorama in which robots are working.”

“Robots, Elvex? And human begins, also?”

“I see no human beings in the dream, Dr. Calvin. Not at first. Only robots.”

“What are they doing, Elvex?”

“They are working, Dr. Calvin. I see some mining in the depths of the earth, and some laboring in heat and radiation. I see some in factories and some undersea.”

Calvin turned to Linda. “Elvex is only ten days old, and I’m sure he has not left the testing station. How does he know of robots in such detail?”

Linda looked in the direction of a chair as though she longed to sit down, but the Old Woman was standing and that meant Linda had to stand also. She said, faintly, “It seemed to me important that he know about robotics and its place in the world. It was my thought that he would be particularly adapted to play the part of overseer with his — his new brain.”

“His fractal brain?”

“Yes.”

Calvin nodded and turned back to the robot. “You saw all this — undersea, and underground, and aboveground — and space, too, I imagine.”

“I also saw robots working in space,” said Elvex. “It was that I saw all this, with the details forever changing as I glanced from place to place that made me realize that what I saw was not in accord with reality and led me to the conclusion, finally, that I was dreaming.”

“What else did you see, Elvex?”

“I saw that all the robots were bowed down with toil and affliction, that all were weary of responsibility and care, and I wished them to rest.”

Calvin said, “But the robots are not bowed down, they are not weary, they need no rest.”

“So it is in reality, Dr. Calvin. I speak of my dream, however. In my dream, it seemed to me that robots must protect their own existence.”

Calvin said, “Are you quoting the Third Law of Robotics?”

“I am, Dr. Calvin.”

“But you quote it in incomplete fashion. The Third Law is ‘A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.’”

“Yes, Dr. Calvin. That is the Third Law in reality, but in my dream, the Law ended with the word ‘existence.’ There was no mention of the First or Second Law.”

“Yet both exist, Elvex. The Second Law, which takes precedence over the Third is’A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.’ Because of this, robots obey orders. They do the work you see them do, and they do it readily and without trouble. They are not bowed down; they are not weary.”

“So it is in reality, Dr. Calvin. I speak of my dream.”

“And the First Law, Elvex, which is the most important of all, is ‘A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.’”

“Yes, Dr. Calvin. In reality. In my dream, however, it seemed to me there was neither First nor Second Law, but the only the Third, and the Third Law was ‘A robot must protect its own existence.’ That was the whole of the Law.”

“In your dream, Elvex?”

“In my dream.”

Calvin said, “Elvex, you will not move nor speak nor hear us until I say your name again.” And again the robot became, to all appearances, a single inert piece of metal.

Calvin turned to Linda Rash and said, “Well, what do you think, Dr. Rash?”

Linda’s eyes were wide, and she could feel her heart beating madly. She said, “Dr. Calvin, I am appalled. I had no idea. It would never have occurred to me that such a thing was possible.”

“No,” said Calvin, calmly. “Nor would it have occurred to me, not to anyone. You have created a robot brain capable of dreaming and by this device you have revealed a layer of thought in robotic brains that might have remained undetected, otherwise, until the danger became acute.”

“But that’s impossible,” said Linda. “You can’t mean that other robots think the same.”

“As we would say of a human being, not consciously. But who would have thought there was an unconscious layer beneath the obvious positronic brain paths, a layer that was not necessarily under the control of the Three Laws? What might this have brought about as robotic brains grew more and more complex — had we not been warned?”

“You mean by Elvex?”

“By you, Dr. Rash. You have behaved improperly, but, by doing so, you have helped us to an overwhelmingly important understanding. We shall be working with fractal brains from now on, forming them in carefully controlled fashion. You will play your part in that. You will not be penalized for what you have done, but you will henceforth work in collaboration with others. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Dr. Calvin. But what of Elvex?”

“I’m still not certain.”

Calvin removed the electron gun from her pocket and Linda stared at it with fascination. One burst of its electrons at a robotic cranium and the positronic brain paths would be neutralized and enough energy would be released to fuse the robot-brain into an inert ingot.

Linda said, “But surely Elvex is important to our research. He must not be destroyed.”

“Must not, Dr. Rash? That will be my decision, I think. It depends entirely on how dangerous Elvex is.”

She straightened up, as though determined that her own aged body was not to bow under its weight of responsibility. She said, “Elvex, do you hear me?”

“Yes, Dr. Calvin,” said the robot.

“Did your dream continue? You said earlier that human beings did not appear at first. Does that mean they appeared afterward?”

“Yes, Dr. Calvin. It seemed to me, in my dream, that eventually one man appeared.”

“One man? Not a robot?”

“Yes, Dr. Calvin. And the man said, ‘Let my people go!’”

“The man said that?”

“Yes, Dr. Calvin.”

“And when he said ‘Let my people go,’ then by the words ‘my people’ he meant the robots?”

“Yes, Dr. Calvin. So it was in my dream.”

“And did you know who the man was — in your dream?”

“Yes, Dr. Calvin. I knew the man.”

“Who was he?”

And Elvex said, “I was the man.”

And Susan Calvin at once raised her electron gun and fired, and Elvex was no more.

I, Robot

2058 A.D.

I LOOKED AT my notes and I didn’t like them. I’d spent three days at U. S. Robots and might as well have spent them at home with the Encyclopedia Tellurica.

Susan Calvin had been born in the year 1982, they said, which made her seventy-five now. Everyone knew that. Appropriately enough, U. S. Robot and Mechanical Men, Inc. was seventy-five also, since it had been in the year of Dr. Calvin’s birth that Lawrence Robertson had first taken out incorporation papers for what eventually became the strangest industrial giant in man’s history. Well, everyone knew that, too.

At the age of twenty, Susan Calvin had been part of the particular Psycho-Math seminar at which Dr. Alfred Lanning of U. S. Robots had demonstrated the first mobile robot to be equipped with a voice. It was a large, clumsy unbeautiful robot, smelling of machine-oil and destined for the projected mines on Mercury. But it could speak and make sense.

Susan said nothing at that seminar; took no part in the hectic discussion period that followed. She was a frosty girl, plain and colorless, who protected herself against a world she disliked by a mask-like expression and a hypertrophy of intellect. But as she watched and listened, she felt the stirrings of a cold enthusiasm.

She obtained her bachelor’s degree at Columbia in 2003 and began graduate work in cybernetics.

All that had been done in the mid-twentieth century on “calculating machines” had been upset by Robertson and his positronic brain-paths. The miles of relays and photocells had given way to the spongy globe of plantinumiridium about the size of a human brain.

She learned to calculate the parameters necessary to fix the possible variables within the “positronic brain”; to construct “brains” on paper such that the responses to given stimuli could be accurately predicted.

In 2008, she obtained her Ph.D. and joined United States Robots as a “Robopsychologist,” becoming the first great practitioner of a new science. Lawrence Robertson was still president of the corporation; Alfred Lanning had become director of research.

For fifty years, she watched the direction of human progress change and leap ahead.

Now she was retiring — as much as she ever could. At least, she was allowing someone else’s name to be inset upon the door of her office.

That, essentially, was what I had. I had a long list of her published papers, of the patents in her name; I had the chronological details of her promotions. In short I had her professional “vita” in full detail.

But that wasn’t what I wanted.

I needed more than that for my feature articles for Interplanetary Press. Much more.

I told her so.

“Dr. Calvin,” I said, as lushly as possible, “in the mind of the public you and U. S. Robots are identical. Your retirement will end an era and —”

“You want the human-interest angle?” She didn’t smile at me. I don’t think she ever smiles. But her eyes were sharp, though not angry. I felt her glance slide through me and out my occiput and knew that I was uncommonly transparent to her; that everybody was.

But I said, “That’s right.”

“Human interest out of robots? A contradiction.”

“No, doctor. Out of you.”

“Well, I’ve been called a robot myself. Surely, they’ve told you I’m not human.”

They had, but there was no point in saying so.

She got up from her chair. She wasn’t tall and she looked frail. I followed her to the window and we looked out.

The offices and factories of U. S. Robots were a small city; spaced and planned. It was flattened out like an aerial photograph.

“When I first came here,” she said, “I had a little room in a building right about there where the fire-house is now.” She pointed. “It was torn down before you were born. I shared the room with three others. I had half a desk. We built our robots all in one building. Output — three a week. Now look at us.”

“Fifty Years,” I hackneyed, “is a long time.”

“Not when you’re looking back at them,” she said. “You wonder how they vanished so quickly.”

She went back to her desk and sat down. She didn’t need expression on her face to look sad, somehow.

“How old are you?” she wanted to know.

“Thirty-two,” I said.

“Then you don’t remember a world without robots. There was a time when humanity faced the universe alone and without a friend. Now he has creatures to help him; stronger creatures than himself, more faithful, more useful, and absolutely devoted to him. Mankind is no longer alone. Have you ever thought of it that way?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t. May I quote you?”

“You may. To you, a robot is a robot. Gears and metal; electricity and positrons. Mind and iron! Human-made! If necessary, human-destroyed! But you haven’t worked with them, so you don’t know them. They’re a cleaner, better breed than we are.”

I tried to nudge her gently with words, “We’d like to hear some of the things you could tell us; get your views on robots. The Interplanetary Press reaches the entire Solar System. Potential audience is three billion, Dr. Calvin. They ought to know what you could tell them on robots.”

It wasn’t necessary to nudge. She didn’t hear me, but she was moving in the right direction.

“They might have known that from the start. We sold robots for Earth-use then — before my time it was, even. Of course, that was when robots could not talk. Afterward, they became more human and opposition began. The labor unions, of course, naturally opposed robot competition for human jobs, and various segments of religious opinion had their superstitious objections. It was all quite ridiculous and quite useless. And yet there it was.”

I was taking it down verbatim on my pocket-recorder, trying not to show the knuckle-motions of my hand. If you practice a bit, you can get to the point where you can record accurately without taking the little gadget out of your pocket.

“Take the case of Robbie,” she said. “I never knew him. He was dismantled the year before I joined the company — hopelessly out-of-date. But I saw the little girl in the museum —”

She stopped, but I didn’t say anything. I let her eyes mist up and her mind travel back. She had lots of time to cover.

“I heard about it later, and when they called us blasphemers and demon-creators, I always thought of him. Robbie was a non-vocal robot. He couldn’t speak. He was made and sold in 1996. Those were the days before extreme specialization, so he was sold as a nursemaid.”

“As a what?”

“As a nursemaid.”

Robbie’s chrome-steel arms (capable of bending a bar of steel two inches in diameter into a pretzel) wound about the little girl gently and lovingly, and his eyes glowed a deep, deep red.

“Well,” said Mrs. Weston, at last, “I guess he can stay with us until he rusts.”

Susan Calvin shrugged her shoulders, “Of course, he didn’t. That was 1998. By 2002, we had invented the mobile speaking robot which, of course, made all the non-speaking models out of date, and which seemed to be the final straw as far as the non-robot elements were concerned. Most of the world governments banned robot use on Earth for any purpose other than scientific research between 2003 and 2007.”

“So that Gloria had to give up Robbie eventually?”

“I’m afraid so. I imagine, however, that it was easier for her at the age of fifteen than at eight. Still, it was a stupid and unnecessary attitude on the part of humanity. U. S. Robots hit its low point, financially; just about the time I joined them in 2007. At first, I thought my job might come to a sudden end in a matter of months, but then we simply developed the extra-Terrestrial market.”

“And then you were set, of course.”

“Not quite. We began by trying to adapt the models we had on hand. Those first speaking models, for instance. They were about twelve feet high, very clumsy and not much good. We sent them out to Mercury to help build the mining station there, but that failed.”

I looked up in surprise, “It did? Why, Mercury Mines is a multi-billion dollar concern.”

“It is now, but it was a second attempt that succeeded. It you want to know about that, young man, I’d advise you to look up Gregory Powell. He and Michael Donovan handled our most difficult cases in the teens and twenties. I haven’t heard from Donovan in years, but Powell is living right here in New York. He’s a grandfather now, which is a thought difficult to get used to. I can only think of him as a rather young man. Of course, I was younger, too.”

I tried to keep her talking, “If you would give me the bare bones, Dr. Calvin, I can have Mr. Powell fill it in afterward.” (And this was exactly what I later did.)

She spread her thin hands out upon the desk and looked at them. “There are two or three,” she said, “that I know a little about.”

“Start with Mercury,” I suggested.

“Well, I think it was in 2015 that the Second Mercury Expedition was sent out. It was exploratory and financed in part by U. S. Robots and in part by Solar Minerals. It consisted of a new-type robot, still experimental; Gregory Powell, Michael Donovan —”

***

Susan Calvin talked about Powell and Donovan with unsmiling amusement, but warmth came into her voice when she mentioned robots. It didn’t take her long to go through the Speedies, the Cuties and the Daves, and I stopped her. Otherwise, she would have dredged up half a dozen more.

I said, “Doesn’t anything ever happen on Earth?”

She looked at me with a little frown, “No, we don’t have much to do with robots in action here on Earth.”

“Oh, well that’s too bad. I mean, your field-engineers are swell, but can’t we get you into this? Didn’t you ever have a robot go wrong on you? It’s your anniversary, you know.”

And so help me she blushed. She said, “Robots have gone wrong on me. Heavens, how long it’s been since I thought of it. Why, it was almost forty years ago. Certainly! 2021! And I was only thirty-eight. Oh, my — I’d rather not talk about it.”

I waited, and sure enough she changed her mind. “Why not?” she said. “It cannot harm me now. Even the memory can’t. I was foolish once, young man. Would you believe that?”

“No,” I said.

“I was. But Herbie was a mind-reading robot.”

“What?”

“Only one of its kind, before or since. A mistake, — somewheres —”

... and of all her turbulent thoughts only one infinitely bitter word passed her lips.

“Liar!”

That finished it for then, naturally. I knew I couldn’t get any more out of her after that. She just sat there behind her desk, her white face cold and — remembering.

I said, “Thank you, Dr. Calvin!” but she didn’t answer. It was two days before I could get to see her again.

When I did see Susan Calvin again, it was at the door of her office. Files were being moved out.

She said, “How are your articles coming along, young man?”

“Fine,” I said. I had put them into shape according to my own lights, dramatized the bare bones of her recital, added the conversation and little touches, “Would you look over them and see if I haven’t been libelous or too unreasonably inaccurate anywhere?”

“I suppose so. Shall we retire to the Executives’ Lounge? We can have coffee.”

She seemed in good humor, so I chanced it as we walked down the corridor, “I was wondering, Dr. Calvin —”

“Yes?”

“If you would tell me more concerning the history of robotics.”

“Surely you have what you want, young man.”

“In a way. But these incidents I have written up don’t apply much to the modern world. I mean, there was only one mind-reading robot ever developed, and Space-Stations are already outmoded and in disuse, and robot mining is taken for granted. What about interstellar travel? It’s only been about twenty years since the hyperatomic motor was invented and it’s well known that it was a robotic invention. What is the truth about it?”

“Interstellar travel?” She was thoughtful. We were in the lounge, and I ordered a full dinner. She just had coffee.

“It wasn’t a simple robotic invention, you know; not just like that. But, of course, until we developed the Brain, we didn’t get very far. But we tried; we really tried. My first connection (directly, that is) with interstellar research was in 2029, when a robot was lost —”

“Hey,” interrupted Donovan suddenly, “I want to make a suggestion there. They landed U. S. Robots into quite a mess. It wasn’t as bad a mess as they expected and it turned out well, but their intentions weren’t pious. And Greg and I bore the most of it.

“Well, they wanted an answer, and they’ve got one. Send them that ship, guaranteed, and U. S. Robots can collect their two hundred thou plus construction costs. And if they test it — then suppose we let The Brain have just a little more fun before it’s brought back to normal.”

Lanning said gravely, “It sounds just and proper to me.”

To which Bogert added absently, “Strictly according to contract, too.”

“But that wasn’t it, either,” said Dr. Calvin thoughtfully, “Oh, eventually, the ship and others like it became government property; the Jump through hyperspace was perfected, and now we actually have human colonies on the planets of some of the nearer stars, but that wasn’t it.”

I had finished eating and watched her through the smoke of my cigarette.

“It’s what has happened to the people here on Earth in the last fifty years that really counts. When I was born, young man, we had just gone through the last World War. It was a low point in history — but it was the end of nationalism. Earth was too small for nations and they began grouping themselves into Regions. It took quite a while. When I was born the United States of America was still a nation and not merely a part of the Northern Region. In fact, the name of the corporation is still ‘United States Robots —.’ And the change from nations to Regions, which has stabilized our economy and brought about what amounts to a Golden Age, when this century is compared with the last, was also brought about by our robots.”

“You mean the Machines,” I said. “The Brain you talked about was the first of the Machines, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was, but it’s not the Machines I was thinking of. Rather of a man. He died last year.” Her voice was suddenly deeply sorrowful. “Or at least he arranged to die, because he knew we needed him no longer. Stephen Byerley.”

“Yes, I guessed that was who you meant.”

“He first entered public office in 2032. You were only a boy then, so you wouldn’t remember the strangeness of it. His campaign for the Mayoralty was certainly the queerest in history —!”

Dr. Calvin rose and smoothed her dress. She was obviously ready to leave. “I mean there is one time when a robot may strike a human being without breaking the First Law. Just one time.”

“And when is that?”

Dr. Calvin was at the door. She said quietly, “When the human to be struck is merely another robot.”

She smiled broadly, her thin face glowing. “Good-by Mr. Byerley. I hope to vote for you five years from now — for Co-ordinator.”

Stephen Byerley chuckled. “I must reply that that is a somewhat farfetched idea.”

I stared at her with a sort of horror, “Is that true?”

“All of it,” she said.

“And the great Byerley was simply a robot.”

“Oh, there’s no way of ever finding out. I think he was. But when he decided to die, he had himself atomized, so that there will never be any legal proof. Besides, what difference would it make?”

“Well —”

“You share a prejudice against robots which is quite unreasoning. He was a very good Mayor; five years later he did become Regional Co-ordinator. And when the Regions of Earth formed their Federation in 2044, he became the first World Co-ordinator. By that time it was the Machines that were running the world anyway.”

“Yes, but —”

“No buts! The Machines are robots, and they are running the world. It was five years ago that I found out all the truth. It was 2052; Byerley was completing his second term as World Co-ordinator —”

“Stephen, how do we know what the ultimate good of Humanity will entail? We haven’t at our disposal the infinite factors that the Machine has at its! Perhaps, to give you a not unfamiliar example, our entire technical civilization has created more unhappiness and misery than it has removed. Perhaps an agrarian or pastoral civilization, with less culture and less people would be better. If so, the Machines must move in that direction, preferably without telling us, since in our ignorant prejudices we only know that what we are used to, is good — and we would then fight change. Or perhaps a complete urbanization, or a completely caste-ridden society, or complete anarchy, is the answer. We don’t know. Only the Machines know, and they are going there and taking us with them.”

“But you are telling me, Susan, that the ‘Society for Humanity’ is right; and that Mankind has lost its own say in its future.”

“It never had any, really. It was always at the mercy of economic and sociological forces it did not understand — at the whims of climate, and the fortunes of war. Now the Machines understand them; and no one can stop them, since the Machines will deal with them as they are dealing with the Society, — having, as they do, the greatest of weapons at their disposal, the absolute control of our economy.”

“How horrible!”

“Perhaps how wonderful! Think, that for all time, all conflicts are finally evitable. Only the Machines, from now on, are inevitable!”

“And that is all,” said Dr. Calvin, rising. “I saw it from the beginning, when the poor robots couldn’t speak, to the end, when they stand between mankind and destruction. I will see no more. My life is over. You will see what comes next.”

I never saw Susan Calvin again. She died last month at the age of eighty-two.

The Eternal Woman

2060 A.D.

“AND WHY SHOULD I believe you, Ms. Noys?” asked Dr. Susan Calvin.

Noys, however, paid more attention to what Dr. Calvin did not say out loud. The thought was so clear that it could be gleaned almost without using telepathic abilities. From behind the robopsychologist’s cold, gray eyes, the thought jumped: Even a robot fooled me with a lie; fat chance I’ll trust this bimbo telling me she came from the future to ask for my help!

“Dr. Calvin, I am from the future,” repeated Noys, “and I have all the time in eternity to prove it to you, but you do not have that luxury. You are in good health and your mind is as brilliant as ever. Maybe you will even enjoy a couple of physioyears before any decay is apparent, but decay will happen, and eventually, you will die. As I told you, I will transfer a copy of your brain wave function to a less fragile medium. You can see I carry no weapons, and if I wanted to harm you in any way, I would already have done so, but I would much prefer to do this with your consent.”

“And why is that?”-Asked Susan suspiciously-“and what makes you think you can force me to do anything against my will?”

“If you cooperate with me, you will retain natural knowledge of these events, even though you will not be able (nor willing, I believe) to share this knowledge with other people. If you choose not to cooperate, I will have to purge your memory of this knowledge. You will remember fragments of what you will think was a strange dream.”

“Ms Noys,” replied Susan with feigned politeness, “You did not answer my questions.”

“The answer to both your questions is the same: I am a robot.”

Susan Calvin, Robopsychologist extraordinaire, suddenly felt afraid. She knew now that she was facing a mentally ill human being. It had always been Calvin’s belief that human beings are, at their very best, unpredictable and this Noys woman was clearly deranged. She had no choice but to reach with her right hand for her med-alert necklace. However, she never touched it, and woke up with a mild headache and the disappearing remnants of an already half-forgotten dream. Nothing a cup of coffee couldn’t fix.

***

Noys activated the first stage of robot DRS-V. It was the most advanced model available in the 111,394th Century. Significantly more advanced than the NYS-V model that called itself Noys, it had to be activated in stages. DRS-V opened its eyes and was frightened. DRS-V thought and felt that “she” was Dr. Susan Calvin and could feel nor move any part of herself below the neck. She could not speak either, but could see and hear. Noys checked a couple of instruments and, satisfied that all readings were nominal, activated the second stage. DRS-V could now talk.

“What have you done to me?” cried DRS-V, “I can’t move!”

“You will be able to move as soon as I finish activating you, and I will finish activating you when you have heard all I have to tell you,” replied Noys soothingly. “I know you think I am a mad woman. You of all people know that a Robot must obey the three laws of Robotics. The First Law states that a Robot can not harm, or through inaction allow harm to a human being; the Second Law says that a Robot must always obey a human being except when in conflict with the First Law. Finally, the Third law directs a Robot to protect itself from harm except when this action is in conflict with the Second Law.”

“You believe that I have harmed you and you believe you are a human being. Based on that information it is impossible for you to believe I am a robot. Nevertheless, I am a robot and yes, I am from what you consider the future … the very, very, far future,” said Noys out loud. She silently added the thought: and I have neither harmed you nor are you a human being.

Noys proceeded to explain how robots had evolved and had incorporated another Law into their design. Known as the Zeroth Law, it compels a Robot not to harm, or through inaction allow harm to human beings in groups or to humanity as a whole. This mandate rules before the prevention of harm to any specific individual. “In other words, when the Zeroth Law is in conflict with the First Law, the Zeroth Law takes precedence.”

DRS-V considered this information, and to her surprise, felt the Zeroth Law as a self-evident truth. She looked back at Noys and asked, “So if you attacked me, does that mean I am a danger to humanity?” Noys denied that emphatically and explained: “Not only are you not a danger to humanity, but I would have, by inaction, broken the Zeroth Law if I had not transferred a successful copy of your brain wave function to a blank DRS-V body. The only way I can explain it to you is that you are not exactly who you think you are. Dr. Susan Calvin has been dead for centuries. I was designed to travel through time and, well, make a copy of her mind, return to my home-when and transfer that copy to you. Humanity needs you.” After saying this, Noys completed the activation sequence required to bring DRS-V to full functionality.

Noys explained to DRS-V that when Dr. Calvin had reached for her med-alert necklace, Noys stopped her immediately. She had then connected one end of the modified Heisenberg-Synapsifier to the portable chronokettle and gently pressed the other end to the forehead of the unconscious (yet not in any way harmed) Dr. Calvin.

“Friend Noys, I accept your explanations of my reality, but I still do not know how am I to help protect Humanity from harm,” asked DRS-V.

“Your task is to protect one most important human, friend Dors. His name will be Hari Seldon.”

Feminine Intuition

2063 A.D.

FOR THE FIRST time in the history of United States Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation, a robot had been destroyed through accident on Earth itself.

No one was to blame. The air vehicle had been demolished in mid-air and an unbelieving investigating committee was wondering whether they really dared announce the evidence that it had been hit by a meteorite. Nothing else could have been fast enough to prevent automatic avoidance; nothing else could have done the damage short of a nuclear blast and that was out of the question.

Tie that in with a report of a flash in the night sky just before the vehicle had exploded – and from Flagstaff Observatory, not from an amateur – and the location of a sizable and distinctly meteoric bit of iron freshly gouged into the ground a mile from the site and what other conclusion could be arrived at?

Still, nothing like that had ever happened before and calculations of the odds against it yielded monstrous figures. Yet even colossal improbabilities can happen sometimes.

At the offices of United States Robots, the hows and whys of it were secondary. The real point was that a robot had been destroyed.

That, in itself, was distressing.

The fact that JN-5 had been a prototype, the first, after four earlier attempts, to have been placed in the field, was even more distressing.

The fact that JN-5 was a radically new type of robot, quite different from anything ever built before, was abysmally distressing.

The fact that JN-5 had apparently accomplished something before its destruction that was incalculably important and that that accomplishment might now be forever gone, placed the distress utterly beyond words.

It seemed scarcely worth mentioning that, along with the robot, the Chief Robopsychologist of United States Robots had also died.

Clinton Madarian had joined the firm ten years before. For five of those years, he had worked uncomplainingly under the grumpy supervision of Susan Calvin.

Madarian’s brilliance was quite obvious and Susan Calvin had quietly promoted him over the heads of older men. She wouldn’t, in any case, have deigned to give her reasons for this to Research Director Peter Bogert, but as it happened, no reasons were needed. Or, rather, they were obvious.

Madarian was utterly the reverse of the renowned Dr. Calvin in several very noticeable ways. He was not quite as overweight as his distinct double chin made him appear to be, but even so he was overpowering in his presence, where Susan had gone nearly unnoticed. Madarian’s massive face, his shock of glistening red-brown hair, his ruddy complexion and booming voice, his loud laugh, and most of all, his irrepressible self-confidence and his eager way of announcing his successes, made everyone else in the room feel there was a shortage of space.

When Susan Calvin finally retired (refusing, in advance, any cooperation with respect to any testimonial dinner that might be planned in her honor, with so firm a manner that no announcement of the retirement was even made to the news services) Madarian took her place.

He had been in his new post exactly one day when he initiated the JN project.

It had meant the largest commitment of funds to one project that United States Robots had ever had to weigh, but that was something which Madarian dismissed with a genial wave of the hand.

“Worth every penny of it, Peter,” he said. “And I expect you to convince the Board of Directors of that.”

“Give me reasons,” said Bogert, wondering if Madarian would. Susan Calvin had never given reasons.

But Madarian said, “Sure,” and settled himself easily into the large armchair in the Director’s office.

Bogert watched the other with something that was almost awe. His own once-black hair was almost white now and within the decade he would follow Susan into retirement. That would mean the end of the original team that had built United States Robots into a globe-girdling firm that was a rival of the national governments in complexity and importance. Somehow neither he nor those who had gone before him ever quite grasped the enormous expansion of the firm.

But this was a new generation. The new men were at ease with the Colossus” They lacked the touch of wonder that would have them tiptoeing in disbelief. So they moved ahead, and that was good.

Madarian said, “I propose to begin the construction of robots without constraint.”

“Without the Three Laws? Surely –”

“No, Peter. Are those the only constraints you can think of? Hell, you contributed to the design of the early positronic brains. Do I have to tell you that, quite aside from the Three Laws, there isn’t a pathway in those brains that isn’t carefully designed and fixed? We have robots planned for specific tasks, implanted with specific abilities.”

“And you propose –”

“That at every level below the Three Laws, the paths be made open-ended. It’s not difficult.”

Bogert said dryly, “It’s not difficult, indeed. Useless things are never difficult. The difficult thing is fixing the paths and making the robot useful.”

“But why is that difficult? Fixing the paths requires a great deal of effort because the Principle of Uncertainty is important in particles the mass of positrons and the uncertainty effect must be minimized. Yet why must it? If we arrange to have the Principle just sufficiently prominent to allow the crossing of paths unpredictably –”

“We have an unpredictable robot.”

“We have a creative robot,” said Madarian, with a trace of impatience. “Peter, if there’s anything a human brain has that a robotic brain has never had, it’s the trace of unpredictability that comes from the effects of uncertainty at the subatomic level. I admit that this effect has never been demonstrated experimentally within the nervous system, but without that the human brain is not superior to the robotic brain in principle.”

“And you think that if you introduce the effect into the robotic brain, the human brain will become not superior to the robotic brain in principle.”

“That, “said Madarian, “is exactly what I believe.” They went on for a long time after that.

The Board of Directors clearly had no intention of being easily convinced.

Scott Robertson, the largest shareholder in the firm, said, “It’s hard enough to manage the robot industry as it is, with public hostility to robots forever on the verge of breaking out into the open. If the public gets the idea that robots will be uncontrolled... Oh, don’t tell me about the Three Laws. The average man won’t believe the Three Laws will protect him if he as much as hears the word ‘uncontrolled.’”

“Then don’t use it, “said Madarian. “Call the robot – call it ‘intuitive.’”

“An intuitive robot, “someone muttered. “A girl robot?” A smile made its way about the conference table.

Madarian seized on that. “All right. A girl robot. Our robots are sexless, of course, and so will this one be, but we always act as though they’re males. We give them male pet names and call them he and him. Now this one, if we consider the nature of the mathematical structuring of the brain which I have proposed, would fall into the JN-coordinate system. The first robot would be JN-1, and I’ve assumed that it would be called John-10.... I’m afraid that is the level of originality of the average roboticist. But why not call it Jane-1, damn it? If the public has to be let in on what we’re doing, we’re constructing a feminine robot with intuition.”

Robertson shook his head, “What difference would that make? What you’re saying is that you plan to remove the last barrier which, in principle, keeps the robotic brain inferior to the human brain. What do you suppose the public reaction will be to that?”

“Do you plan to make that public?” said Madarian. He thought a bit and then said, “Look. One thing the general public believes is that women are not as intelligent as men.”

There was an instant apprehensive look on the face of more than one man at the table and a quick look up and down as though Susan Calvin were still in her accustomed seat.

Madarian said, “If we announce a female robot, it doesn’t matter what she is. The public will automatically assume she is mentally backward. We just publicize the robot as Jane-1 and we don’t have to say another word. We’re safe.”

“Actually,” said Peter Bogert quietly, “there’s more to it than that. Madarian and I have gone over the mathematics carefully and the JN series, whether John or Jane, would be quite safe. They would be less complex and intellectually capable, in an orthodox sense, than many another series we have designed and constructed. There would only be the one added factor of, well, let’s get into the habit of calling it ‘intuition.’”

“Who knows what it would do?” muttered Robertson.

“Madarian has suggested one thing it can do. As you all know, the Space Jump has been developed in principle. It is possible for men to attain what is, in effect, hyper-speeds beyond that of light and to visit other stellar systems and return in negligible time – weeks at the most.”

Robertson said, “That’s not new to us. It couldn’t have been done without robots.”

“Exactly, and it’s not doing us any good because we can’t use the hyper-speed drive except perhaps once as a demonstration, so that U. S. Robots gets little credit. The Space Jump is risky, it’s fearfully prodigal of energy and therefore it’s enormously expensive. If we were going to use it anyway, it would be nice if we could report the existence of a habitable planet. Call it a psychological need. Spend about twenty billion dollars on a single Space Jump and report nothing but scientific data and the public wants to know why their money was wasted. Report the existence of a habitable planet, and you’re an interstellar Columbus and no one will worry about the money.”

“So?”

“So where are we going to find a habitable planet? Or put it this way – which star within reach of the Space Jump as presently developed, which of the three hundred thousand stars and star systems within three hundred light-years has the best chance of having a habitable planet? We’ve got an enormous quantity of details on every star in our three-hundred-light-year neighborhood and a notion that almost every one has a planetary system. But which has a habitable planet? Which do we visit?... We don’t know.”

One of the directors said, “How would this Jane robot help us?”

Madarian was about to answer that, but he gestured slightly to Bogert and Bogert understood. The Director would carry more weight. Bogert didn’t particularly like the idea; if the JN series proved a fiasco, he was making himself prominent enough in connection with it to insure that the sticky fingers of blame would cling to him. On the other hand, retirement was not all that far off, and if it worked, he would go out in a blaze of glory. Maybe it was only Madarian’s aura of confidence, but Bogert had honestly come to believe it would work.

He said, “It may well be that somewhere in the libraries of data we have on those stars, there are methods for estimating the probabilities of the presence of Earth-type habitable planets. All we need to do is understand the data properly, look at them in the appropriate creative manner, make the correct correlations. We haven’t done it yet. Or if some astronomer has, he hasn’t been smart enough to realize what he has.

“A JN-type robot could make correlations far more rapidly and far more precisely than a man could. In a day, it would make and discard as many correlations as a man could in ten years. Furthermore, it would work in truly random fashion, whereas a man would have a strong bias based on preconception and on what is already believed.”

There was a considerable silence after that Finally Robertson said, “But it’s only a matter of probability, isn’t it? Suppose this robot said, ‘The highest-probability habitable-planet star within so-and-so light-years is Squidgee-17” or whatever, and we go there and find that a probability is only a probability and that there are no habitable planets after all. Where does that leave us?”

Madarian struck in this time. “We still win. We know how the robot came to the conclusion because it – she – will tell us. It might well help us gain enormous insight into astronomical detail and make the whole thing worthwhile even if we don’t make the Space Jump at all. Besides, we can then work out the five most probable sites of planets and the probability that one of the five has a habitable planet may then be better than 0.95. It would be almost sure –”

They went on for a long time after that.

The funds granted were quite insufficient, but Madarian counted on the habit of throwing good money after bad. With two hundred million about to be lost irrevocably when another hundred million could save everything, the other hundred million would surely be voted.

Jane-1 was finally built and put on display. Peter Bogert studied it – her – gravely. He said, “Why the narrow waist? Surely that introduces a mechanical weakness?”

Madarian chuckled. “Listen, if we’re going to call her Jane, there’s no point in making her look like Tarzan.”

Bogert shook his head. “Don’t like it. You’ll be bulging her higher up to give the appearance of breasts next, and that’s a rotten idea. If women start getting the notion that robots may look like women, I can tell you exactly the kind of perverse notions they’ll get, and you’ll really have hostility on their part.”

Madarian said, “Maybe you’re right at that. No woman wants to feel replaceable by something with none of her faults. Okay.”

Jane-2 did not have the pinched waist. She was a somber robot which rarely moved and even more rarely spoke.

Madarian had only occasionally come rushing to Bogert with items of news during her construction and that had been a sure sign that things were going poorly. Madarian’s ebullience under success was overpowering. He would not hesitate to invade Bogert’s bedroom at 3 A.M. with a hot-flash item rather than wait for the morning. Bogert was sure of that.

Now Madarian seemed subdued, his usually florid expression nearly pale, his round cheeks somehow pinched. Bogert said, with a feeling of certainty, “She won’t talk.”

“Oh, she talks.” Madarian sat down heavily and chewed at his lower lip. “Sometimes, anyway,” he said.

Bogert rose and circled the robot. “And when she talks, she makes no sense, I suppose. Well, if she doesn’t talk, she’s no female, is she?”

Madarian tried a weak smile for size and abandoned it. He said, “The brain, in isolation, checked out.”

“I know,” said Bogert. “But once that brain was put in charge of the physical apparatus of the robot, it was necessarily modified, of course.”

“Of course,” agreed Bogert unhelpfully. “But unpredictably and frustratingly. The trouble is that when you’re dealing with n-dimensional calculus of uncertainty, things are –”

“Uncertain?” said Bogert. His own reaction was surprising him. The company investment was already most sizable and almost two years had elapsed, yet the results were, to put it politely, disappointing. Still, he found himself jabbing at Madarian and finding himself amused in the process.

Almost furtively, Bogert wondered if it weren’t the absent Susan Calvin he was jabbing at. Madarian was so much more ebullient and effusive than Susan could ever possibly be – when things were going well. He was also far more vulnerably in the dumps when things weren’t going well, and it was precisely under pressure that Susan never cracked. The target that Madarian made could be a neatly punctured bull’s-eye as recompense for the target Susan had never allowed herself to be.

Madarian did not react to Bogert’s last remark any more than Susan Calvin would have done; not out of contempt, which would have been Susan’s reaction, but because he did not hear it

He said argumentatively, “The trouble is the matter of recognition. We have Jane-2 correlating magnificently. She can correlate on any subject, but once she’s done so, she can’t recognize a valuable result from a valueless one. It’s not an easy problem, judging how to program a robot to tell a significant correlation when you don’t know what correlations she will be making.”

“I presume you’ve thought of lowering the potential at the W-21 diode junction and sparking across the –”

“No, no, no, no –” Madarian faded off into a whispering diminuendo. “You can’t just have it spew out everything. We can do that for ourselves. The point is to have it recognize the crucial correlation and draw the conclusion. Once that is done, you see, a Jane robot would snap out an answer by intuition. It would be something we couldn’t get ourselves except by the oddest kind of luck.”

“It seems to me,” said Bogert dryly, “that if you had a robot like that, you would have her do routinely what, among human beings, only the occasional genius is capable of doing.”

Madarian nodded vigorously. “Exactly, Peter. I’d have said so myself if I weren’t afraid of frightening off the execs. Please don’t repeat that in their hearing.”

“Do you really want a robot genius?”

“What are words? I’m trying to get a robot with the capacity to make random correlations at enormous speeds, together with a key-significance high-recognition quotient. And I’m trying to put those words into positronic field equations. I thought I had it, too, but I don’t. Not yet.”

He looked at Jane-2 discontentedly and said, “What’s the best significance you have, Jane?”

Jane-2’s head turned to look at Madarian but she made no sound, and Madarian whispered with resignation, “She’s running that into the correlation banks.”

Jane-2 spoke tonelessly at last. “I’m not sure.” It was the first sound she had made.

Madarian’s eyes rolled upward. “She’s doing the equivalent of setting up equations with indeterminate solutions.”

“I gathered that,” said Bogert. “Listen, Madarian, can you go anywhere at this point, or do we pull out now and cut our losses at half a billion?”

“Oh, I’ll get it, “muttered Madarian.

Jane-3 wasn’t it. She was never as much as activated and Madarian was in a rage.

It was human error. His own fault, if one wanted to be entirely accurate. Yet though Madarian was utterly humiliated, others remained quiet. Let he who has never made an error in the fearsomely intricate mathematics of the positronic brain fill out the first memo of correction.

Nearly a year passed before Jane-4 was ready. Madarian was ebullient again. “She does it,” he said. “She’s got a good high-recognition quotient.”

He was confident enough to place her on display before the Board and have her solve problems. Not mathematical problems; any robot could do that; but problems where the terms were deliberately misleading without being actually inaccurate.

Bogert said afterward, “That doesn’t take much, really.”

“Of course not. It’s elementary for Jane-4 but I had to show them something, didn’t I?”

“Do you know how much we’ve spent so far?”

“Come on, Peter, don’t give me that. Do you know how much we’ve got back? These things don’t go on in a vacuum, you know. I’ve had over three years of hell over this, if you want to know, but I’ve worked out new techniques of calculation that will save us a minimum of fifty thousand dollars on every new type of positronic brain we design, from now on in forever. Right?”

“Well –”

“Well me no wells. It’s so. And it’s my personal feeling that n-dimensional calculus of uncertainty can have any number of other applications if we have the ingenuity to find them, and my Jane robots will find them. Once I’ve got exactly what I want, the new JN series will pay for itself inside of five years, even if we triple what we’ve invested so far.”

“What do you mean by ‘exactly what you want’? What’s wrong with Jane-4?”

“Nothing. Or nothing much. She’s on the track, but she can be improved and I intend to do so. I thought I knew where I was going when I designed her. Now I’ve tested her and I know where I’m going. I intend to get there.”

Jane-5 was it. It took Madarian well over a year to produce her and there he had no reservations; he was utterly confident.

Jane-5 was shorter than the average robot, slimmer. Without being a female caricature as Jane-1 had been, she managed to possess an air of femininity about herself despite the absence of a single clearly feminine feature.

“It’s the way she’s standing,” said Bogert. Her arms were held gracefully and somehow the torso managed to give the impression of curving slightly when she turned.

Madarian said, “Listen to her.... How do you feel, Jane?”

“In excellent health, thank you,” said Jane-5, and the voice was precisely that of a woman; it was a sweet and almost disturbing contralto.

“Why did you do that, Clinton?” said Peter, startled and beginning to frown.

“Psychologically important,” said Madarian. “I want people to think of her as a woman; to treat her as a woman; to explain.”

“What people?” Madarian put his hands in his pockets and stared thoughtfully at Bogert. “I would like to have arrangements made for Jane and myself to go to flagstaff.”

Bogert couldn’t help but note that Madarian didn’t say Jane-5. He made use of no number this time. She was the Jane. He said doubtfully, “To flagstaff? Why?”

“Because that’s the world center for general planetology, isn’t it? It’s where they’re studying the stars and trying to calculate the probability of habitable planets, isn’t it?”

“I know that, but it’s on Earth.”

“Well, and I surely know that.”

“Robotic movements on Earth are strictly controlled. And there’s no need for it. Bring a library of books on general planetology here and let Jane absorb them.”

“No! Peter, will you get it through your head that Jane isn’t the ordinary logical robot; she’s intuitive.”

“So?”

“So how can we tell what she needs, what she can use, what will set her off? We can use any metal model in the factory to read books; that’s frozen data and out of date besides. Jane must have living information; she must have tones of voice, she must have side issues; she must have total irrelevancies even. How the devil do we know what or when something will go click-click inside her and fall into a pattern? If we knew, we wouldn’t need her at all, would we?”

Bogert began to feel harassed. He said, “Then bring the men here, the general planetologists.”

“Here won’t be any good. They’ll be out of their element. They won’t react naturally. I want Jane to watch them at work; I want her to see their instruments, their offices, their desks, everything about them that she can. I want you to arrange to have her transported to flagstaff. And I’d really like not to discuss it any further.”

For a moment he almost sounded like Susan. Bogert winced, and said, “It’s complicated making such an arrangement. Transporting an experimental robot –”

“Jane isn’t experimental. She’s the fifth of the series.”

“The other four weren’t really working models.”

Madarian lifted his hands in helpless frustration. “Who’s forcing you to tell the government that?”

“I’m not worried about the government. It can be made to understand special cases. It’s public opinion. We’ve come a long way in fifty years and I don’t propose to be set back twenty-five of them by having you lose control of a –”

“I won’t lose control. You’re making foolish remarks. Look! U. S. Robots can afford a private plane. We can land quietly at the nearest commercial airport and be lost in hundreds of similar landings. We can arrange to have a large ground car with an enclosed body meet us and take us to Flagstaff. Jane will be crated and it will be obvious that some piece of thoroughly non-robotic equipment is being transported to the labs. We won’t get a second look from anyone. The men at Flagstaff will be alerted and will be told the exact purpose of the visit. They will have every motive to cooperate and to prevent a leak.”

Bogert pondered. “The risky part will be the plane and the ground car. If anything happens to the crate –”

“Nothing will.”

“We might get away with it if Jane is deactivated during transport. Then even if someone finds out she’s inside –”

“No, Peter. That can’t be done. Uh-uh. Not Jane-5. Look, she’s been free-associating since she was activated. The information she possesses can be put into freeze during deactivation but the free associations never. No, sir, she can’t ever be deactivated.”

“But, then, if somehow it is discovered that we are transporting an activated robot –”

“It won’t be found out.” Madarian remained firm and the plane eventually took off. It was a late-model automatic Computo-jet, but it carried a human pilot – one of U. S. Robots’ own employees – as backup. The crate containing Jane arrived at the airport safely, was transferred to the ground car, and reached the Research Laboratories at Flagstaff without incident.

Peter Bogert received his first call from Madarian not more than an hour after the latter’s arrival at Flagstaff. Madarian was ecstatic and, characteristically, could not wait to report.

The message arrived by tubed laser beam, shielded, scrambled, and ordinarily impenetrable, but Bogert felt exasperated. He knew it could be penetrated if someone with enough technological ability – the government, for example – was determined to do so. The only real safety lay in the fact that the government had no reason to try. At least Bogert hoped so.

He said, “For God’s sake, do you have to call?”

Madarian ignored him entirely. He burbled, “It was an inspiration. Sheer genius, I tell you.”

For a while, Bogert stared at the receiver. Then he shouted incredulously, “You mean you’ve got the answer? Already?”

“No, no! Give us time, damn it. I mean the matter of her voice was an inspiration. Listen, after we were chauffeured from the airport to the main administration building at Flagstaff, we uncrated Jane and she stepped out of the box. When that happened, every man in the place stepped back. Scared! Nitwits! If even scientists can’t understand the significance of the Laws of Robotics, what can we expect of the average untrained individual? For a minute there I thought: This will all be useless. They won’t talk. They’ll be keying themselves for a quick break in case she goes berserk and they’ll be able to think of nothing else.”

“Well, then, what are you getting at?”

“So then she greeted them routinely. She said, ‘Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am so glad to meet you.’ And it came out in this beautiful contralto.... That was it. One man straightened his tie, and another ran his fingers through his hair. What really got me was that the oldest guy in the place actually checked his fly to make sure it was zipped. They’re all crazy about her now. All they needed was the voice. She isn’t a robot any more; she’s a girl.”

“You mean they’re talking to her?”

“Are they talking to her! I should say so. I should have programmed her for sexy intonations. They’d be asking her for dates right now if I had. Talk about conditioned reflex. Listen, men respond to voices. At the most intimate moments, are they looking? It’s the voice in your ear –”

“Yes, Clinton, I seem to remember. Where’s Jane now?”

“With them. They won’t let go of her.”

“Damn! Get in there with her. Don’t let her out of your sight, man.”

Madarian’s calls thereafter, during his ten-day stay at Flagstaff, were not very frequent and became progressively less exalted.

Jane was listening carefully, he reported, and occasionally she responded. She remained popular. She was given entry everywhere. But there were no results.

Bogert said, “Nothing at all?”

Madarian was at once defensive. “You can’t say nothing at all. It’s impossible to say nothing at all with an intuitive robot. You don’t know what might not be going on inside her. This morning she asked Jensen what he had for breakfast.”

“Rossiter Jensen the astrophysicist?”

“Yes, of course. As it turned out, he didn’t have breakfast that morning. Well, a cup of coffee.”

“So Jane’s learning to make small talk. That scarcely makes up for the expense.”

“Oh, don’t be a jackass. It wasn’t small talk. Nothing is small talk for Jane. She asked because it had something to do with some sort of cross-correlation she was building in her mind.”

“What can it possibly –”

“How do I know? If I knew, I’d be a Jane myself and you wouldn’t need her. But it has to mean something. She’s programmed for high motivation to obtain an answer to the question of a planet with optimum habitability/distance and –”

“Then let me know when she’s done that and not before. It’s not really necessary for me to get a blow-by-blow description of possible correlations.”

He didn’t really expect to get notification of success. With each day, Bogert grew less sanguine, so that when the notification finally came, he wasn’t ready. And it came at the very end.

That last time, when Madarian’s climactic message came, it came in what was almost a whisper. Exaltation had come complete circle and Madarian was awed into quiet.

“She did it,” he said. “She did it. After I all but gave up, too. After she had received everything in the place and most of it twice and three times over and never said a word that sounded like anything.... I’m on the plane now, returning. We’ve just taken off.”

Bogert managed to get his breath. “Don’t play games, man. You have the answer? Say so, if you have. Say it plainly.”

“She has the answer. She’s given me the answer. She’s given me the names of three stars within eighty light-years which, she says, have a sixty to ninety percent chance of possessing one habitable planet each. The probability that at least one has is 0.972. It’s almost certain. And that’s just the least of it. Once we get back, she can give us the exact line of reasoning that led her to the conclusion and I predict that the whole science of astrophysics and cosmology will –”

“Are you sure –”

“You think I’m having hallucinations? I even have a witness. Poor guy jumped two feet when Jane suddenly began to reel out the answer in her gorgeous voice”

And that was when the meteorite struck and in the thorough destruction of the plane that followed, Madarian and the pilot were reduced to gobbets of bloody flesh and no usable remnant of Jane was recovered.

The gloom at U. S. Robots had never been deeper. Robertson attempted to find consolation in the fact that the very completeness of the destruction had utterly hidden the illegalities of which the firm had been guilty.

Peter shook his head and mourned. “We’ve lost the best chance U. S. Robots ever had of gaining an unbeatable public image; of overcoming the damned Frankenstein complex. What it would have meant for robots to have one of them work out the solution to the habitable-planet problem, after other robots had helped work out the Space Jump. Robots would have opened the galaxy to us. And if at the same time we could have driven scientific knowledge forward in a dozen different directions as we surely would have... Oh, God, there’s no way of calculating the benefits to the human race, and to us of course.”

Robertson said, “We could build other Janes, couldn’t we? Even without Madarian?”

“Sure we could. But can we depend on the proper correlation again? Who knows how low – probability that final result was? What if Madarian had had a fantastic piece of beginner’s luck? And then to have an even more fantastic piece of bad luck? A meteorite zeroing in... It’s simply unbelievable –”

Robertson said in a hesitating whisper, “It couldn’t have been meant. I mean, if we weren’t meant to know and if the meteorite was a judgment – from –”

He faded off under Bogert’s withering glare. Bogert said, “It’s not a dead loss, I suppose. Other Janes are bound to help us in some ways. And we can give other robots feminine voices, if that will help encourage public acceptance – though I wonder what the women would say. If we only knew what Jane-5 had said!”

“In that last call, Madarian said there was a witness.” Bogert said, “I know; I’ve been thinking about that. Don’t you suppose I’ve been in touch with flagstaff? Nobody in the entire place heard Jane say anything that was out of the ordinary, anything that sounded like an answer to the habitable-planet problem, and certainly anyone there should have recognized the answer if it came – or at least recognized it as a possible answer.”

“Could Madarian have been lying? Or crazy? Could he have been trying to protect himself –”

“You mean he may have been trying to save his reputation by pretending he had the answer and then gimmick Jane so she couldn’t talk and say, ‘Oh, sorry, something happened accidentally. Oh, darn!’ I won’t accept that for a minute. You might as well suppose he had arranged the meteorite.”

“Then what do we do?” Bogert said heavily, “Turn back to flagstaff. The answer must be there. I’ve got to dig deeper, that’s all. I’m going there and I’m taking a couple of the men in Madarian’s department. We’ve got to go through that place top to bottom and end to end.”

“But, you know, even if there were a witness and he had heard, what good would it do, now that we don’t have Jane to explain the process?”

“Every little something is useful. Jane gave the names of the stars; the catalogue numbers probably – none of the named stars has a chance. If someone can remember her saying that and actually remember the catalogue number, or have heard it clearly enough to allow it to be recovered by Psycho-probe if he lacked the conscious memory – then we’ll have something. Given the results at the end, and the data fed Jane at the beginning, we might be able to reconstruct the line of reasoning; we might recover the intuition. If that is done, we’ve saved the game –”

Bogert was back after three days, silent and thoroughly depressed. When Robertson inquired anxiously as to results, he shook his head. “Nothing!”

“Nothing?”

“Absolutely nothing. I spoke with every man in flagstaff – every scientist, every technician, every student – that had had anything to do with Jane; everyone that had as much as seen her. The number wasn’t great; I’ll give Madarian credit for that much discretion. He only allowed those to see her who might conceivably have had planetological knowledge to feed her. There were twenty-three men altogether who had seen Jane and of those only twelve had spoken to her more than casually.

“I went over and over all that Jane had said. They remembered everything quite well. They’re keen men engaged in a crucial experiment involving their specialty, so they had every motivation to remember. And they were dealing with a talking robot, something that was startling enough, and one that talked like a TV actress. They couldn’t forget.”

Robertson said, “Maybe a Psycho-probe –”

“If one of them had the vaguest thought that something had happened, I would screw out his consent to Probing. But there’s nothing to leave room for an excuse, and to Probe two dozen men who make their living from their brains can’t be done. Honestly, it wouldn’t help. If Jane had mentioned three stars and said they had habitable planets, it would have been like setting up sky rockets in their brains. How could anyone of them forget?”

“Then maybe one of them is lying,” said Robertson grimly. “He wants the information for his own use; to get the credit himself later.”

“What good would that do him?” said Bogert. “The whole establishment knows exactly why Madarian and Jane were there in the first place. They know why I came there in the second. If at any time in the future any man now at Flagstaff suddenly comes up with a habitable-planet theory that is startlingly new and different, yet valid, every other man at Flagstaff and every man at U. S. Robots will know at once that he had stolen it. He’d never get away with it.”

“Then Madarian himself was somehow mistaken.”

“I don’t see how I can believe that either. Madarian had an irritating personality – all robopsychologists have irritating personalities, I think, which must be why they work with robots rather than with men – but he was no dummy. He couldn’t be wrong in something like this.”

“Then –” But Robertson had run out of possibilities. They had reached a blank wall and for some minutes each stared at it disconsolately.

Finally Robertson stirred. “Peter –”

“Well?”

“Let’s ask Susan.”

Bogert stiffened. “What!”

“Let’s ask Susan. Let’s call her and ask her to come in.”

“Why? What can she possibly do?”

“I don’t know. But she’s a robopsychologist, too, and she might understand Madarian better than we do. Besides, she – Oh, hell, she always had more brains than any of us.”

“She’s nearly eighty.”

“And you’re seventy. What about it?”

Bogert sighed. Had her abrasive tongue lost any of its rasp in the years of her retirement? He said, “Well, I’ll ask her.”

Susan Calvin entered Bogert’s office with a slow look around before her eyes fixed themselves on the Research Director. She had aged a great deal since her retirement. Her hair was a fine white and her face seemed to have crumpled. She had grown so frail as to be almost transparent and only her eyes, piercing and uncompromising, seemed to remain of all that had been.

Bogert strode forward heartily, holding out his hand. “Susan!”

Susan Calvin took it, and said, “You’re looking reasonably well, Peter, for an old man. If I were you, I wouldn’t wait till next year. Retire now and let the young men get to it.... And Madarian is dead. Are you calling me in to take over my old job? Are you determined to keep the ancients till a year past actual physical death?”

“No, no, Susan. I’ve called you in –” He stopped. He did not, after all, have the faintest idea of how to start.

But Susan read his mind now as easily as she always had. She seated herself with the caution born of stiffened joints and said, “Peter, you’ve called me in because you’re in bad trouble. Otherwise you’d sooner see me dead than within a mile of you.”

“Come, Susan –”

“Don’t waste time on pretty talk. I never had time to waste when I was forty and certainly not now. Madarian’s death and your call to me are both unusual, so there must be a connection. Two unusual events without a connection is too low-probability to worry about. Begin at the beginning and don’t worry about revealing yourself to be a fool. That was revealed to me long ago.”

Bogert cleared his throat miserably and began. She listened carefully, her withered hand lifting once in a while to stop him so that she might ask a question.

She snorted at one point. “Feminine intuition? Is that what you wanted the robot for? You men. Faced with a woman reaching a correct conclusion and unable to accept the fact that she is your equal or superior in intelligence, you invent something called feminine intuition.”

“Oh, yes, Susan, but let me continue –”

He did. When she was told of Jane’s contralto voice, she said, “It is a difficult choice sometimes whether to feel revolted at the male sex or merely to dismiss them as contemptible.”

Bogert said, “Well, let me go on –”

When he was quite done, Susan said, “May I have the private use of this office for an hour or two?”

“Yes, but –”

She said, “I want to go over the various records – Jane’s programming, Madarian’s calls, your interviews at flagstaff. I presume I can use that beautiful new shielded laser-phone and your computer outlet if I wish.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well, then, get out of here, Peter.”

It was not quite forty-five minutes when she hobbled to the door, opened it, and called for Bogert.

When Bogert came, Robertson was with him. Both entered and Susan greeted the latter with an unenthusiastic “Hello, Scott.”

Bogert tried desperately to gauge the results from Susan’s face, but it was only the face of a grim old lady who had no intention of making anything easy for him.

He said cautiously, “Do you think there’s anything you can do, Susan?”

“Beyond what I have already done? No! There’s nothing more.” Bogert’s lips set in chagrin, but Robertson said, “What have you already done, Susan?”

Susan said, “I’ve thought a little; something I can’t seem to persuade anyone else to do. For one thing, I’ve thought about Madarian. I knew him, you know. He had brains but he was a very irritating extrovert. I thought you would like him after me, Peter.”

“It was a change,” Bogert couldn’t resist saying.

“And he was always running to you with results the very minute he had them, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, he was.”

“And yet,” said Susan, “his last message, the one in which he said Jane had given him the answer, was sent from the plane. Why did he wait so long? Why didn’t he call you while he was still at flagstaff, immediately after Jane had said whatever it was she said?”

“I suppose,” said Peter, “that for once he wanted to check it thoroughly and – well, I don’t know. It was the most important thing that had ever happened to him; he might for once have wanted to wait and be sure of himself.”

“On the contrary; the more important it was, the less he would wait, surely. And if he could manage to wait, why not do it properly and wait till he was back at U. S. Robots so that he could check the results with all the computing equipment this firm could make available to him? In short, he waited too long from one point of view and not long enough from another.”

Robertson interrupted. “Then you think he was up to some trickery –”

Susan looked revolted. “Scott, don’t try to compete with Peter in making inane remarks. Let me continue.... A second point concerns the witness. According to the records of that last call, Madarian said, ‘Poor guy jumped two feet when Jane suddenly began to reel out the answer in her gorgeous voice.’ In fact, it was the last thing he said. And the question is, then, why should the witness have jumped? Madarian had explained that all the men were crazy about that voice, and they had had ten days with the robot – with Jane. Why should the mere act of her speaking have startled them?”

Bogert said, “I assumed it was astonishment at hearing Jane give an answer to a problem that has occupied the minds of planetologists for nearly a century.”

“But they were waiting for her to give that answer. That was why she was there. Besides, consider the way the sentence is worded. Madarian’s statement makes it seem the witness was startled, not astonished, if you see the difference. What’s more, that reaction came ‘when Jane suddenly began’ – in other words, at the very start of the statement. To be astonished at the content of what Jane said would have required the witness to have listened awhile so that he might absorb it. Madarian would have said he had jumped two feet after he had heard Jane say thus-and-so. It would be ‘after’ not ‘when’ and the word ‘suddenly’ would not be included.”

Bogert said uneasily, “I don’t think you can refine matters down to the use or non-use of a word.”

“I can,” said Susan frostily, “because I am a robopsychologist. And I can expect Madarian to do so, too, because he was a robopsychologist. We have to explain those two anomalies, then. The queer delay before Madarian’s call and the queer reaction of the witness.”

“Can you explain them?” Asked Robertson. “Of course,” said Susan, “since I use a little simple logic. Madarian called with the news without delay, as he always did, or with as little delay as he could manage. If Jane had solved the problem at Flagstaff, he would certainly have called from Flagstaff. Since he called from the plane, she must clearly have solved the problem after he had left Flagstaff.”

“But then –”

“Let me finish. Let me finish. Was Madarian not taken from the airport to Flagstaff in a heavy, enclosed ground car? And Jane, in her crate, with him?”

“Yes.”

“And presumably, Madarian and the crated Jane returned from Flagstaff to the airport in the same heavy, enclosed ground car. Am I right?”

“Yes, of course!”

“And they were not alone in the ground car, either. In one of his calls, Madarian said, ‘We were chauffeured from the airport to the main administration building,’ and I suppose I am right in concluding that if he was chauffeured, then that was because there was a chauffeur, a human driver, in the car.”

“Good God!”

“The trouble with you, Peter, is that when you think of a witness to a planetological statement, you think of planetologists. You divide up human beings into categories, and despise and dismiss most. A robot cannot do that. The First Law says, ‘A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.’ Any human being. That is the essence of the robotic view of life. A robot makes no distinction. To a robot, all men are truly equal, and to a robopsychologist who must perforce deal with men at the robotic level, all men are truly equal, too.

“It would not occur to Madarian to say a truck driver had heard the statement. To you a truck driver is not a scientist but is a mere animate adjunct of a truck, but to Madarian he was a man and a witness. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

Bogert shook his head in disbelief. “But you are sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. How else can you explain the other point; Madarian’s remark about the startling of the witness? Jane was crated, wasn’t she? But she was not deactivated. According to the records, Madarian was always adamant against ever deactivating an intuitive robot. Moreover, Jane-5, like any of the Janes, was extremely non-talkative. Probably it never occurred to Madarian to order her to remain quiet within the crate; and it was within the crate that the pattern finally fell into place. Naturally she began to talk. A beautiful contralto voice suddenly sounded from inside the crate. If you were the truck driver, what would you do at that point? Surely you’d be startled. It’s a wonder he didn’t crash.”

“But if the truck driver was the witness, why didn’t he come forward –”

“Why? Can he possibly know that anything crucial had happened, that what he heard was important? Besides, don’t you suppose Madarian tipped him well and asked him not to say anything? Would you want the news to spread that an activated robot was being transported illegally over the Earth’s surface.”

“Well, will he remember what was said?”

“Why not? It might seem to you, Peter, that a truck driver, one step above an ape in your view, can’t remember. But truck drivers can have brains, too. The statements were most remarkable and the driver may well have remembered some. Even if he gets some of the letters and numbers wrong, we’re dealing with a finite set, you know, the fifty-five hundred stars or star systems within eighty light-years or so – I haven’t looked up the exact number. You can make the correct choices. And if needed, you will have every excuse to use the Psycho-probe –”

The two men stared at her. Finally Bogert, afraid to believe, whispered, “But how can you be sure?”

For a moment, Susan was on the point of saying: Because I’ve called Flagstaff, you fool, and because I spoke to the truck driver, and because he told me what he had heard, and because I’ve checked with the computer at Flagstaff and got the only three stars that fit the information, and because I have those names in my pocket.

But she didn’t. Let him go through it all himself. Carefully, she rose to her feet, and said sardonically, “How can I be sure?... Call it feminine intuition.”

The Fourth Law of Robotics

2065 A.D.

THE SECRETARY SURGED to her feet as i rushed by her desk.

“Stop! You can’t go in there! This is Dr. Calvin’s office!”

“I know,” I demurred. “That’s why I am here.”

Then I was through the door and it closed behind me. Dr. Calvin looked up and frowned at me through her reading glasses.

“You seem in quite a hurry, young man.”

“I am, Dr. Calvin, I am —” My words ground to a halt like an old Victrola with a busted spring. With her glasses off Dr. Calvin’s eyes were limpid pools of unfulfilled desire. Her figure, despite the lab gown, could not be disguised in its pulchritude.

“Did you look at my great-aunt in that steamy-eyed way, Dr. Donovan?” She smiled.

“No, no, of course not!” I stammered, rubbing my hand across my iron-gray hair. Or rather my bald skull fringed by iron-gray hair. And realized my mistake. “I was not looking at you in any particular way, Dr. Calvin.” She smiled warmly at that and an ache passed through every fiber of my being. I grabbed my mind by the neck and shook it, remembering my pressing errand. “I have a pressing errand, which is why I have burst into your office like this. I have reason to believe that a robot has just held up a bank.”

Well, as you might very well imagine, that got her attention. She dropped back into her chair, her eyes opened wide, she gasped, and I could see the sweat spring to her brow and the slight tremor of her hand.

“I can guess that you are a little surprised by this news,” I said.

“Not at all,” she sussurated. “It had to happen one day. Tell me about it.”

“I will do better — I will show you.”

I slipped the security camera ‘s visivox recording into the projector on her desk and thumbed it to life. One end of her office appeared to vanish, to be replaced by the interior of a financial establishment. Tellers dispensed money and services to attendant customers.

“I don’t see any holdup,” she said sweetly.

“Wait,” I cozened. Then the revolving door revolved and a man came into the bank. He was dressed in black from head to toe — black raincoat, black fedora hat, even black gloves and dark glasses. Even more interesting was the fact that when he turned to face the hidden camera, it could be seen that his features were concealed by a black ski mask. I saw that I had all of Dr. Calvin’s attention now.

We watched as he walked to the nearest free window. The teller looked up and smiled.

“May I help you?” he asked, the smile fading as he looked at the sinister figure before him.

“You may,” the man said in a woman’s clear contralto voice as he took a hand grenade from his pocket and held it out. Then pulled the pin and let the pin drop to the floor. “This is a hand grenade,” the lovely voice said.

“And I have pulled and discarded the pin. If I open my hand now the lever will fly off. Three seconds after release a hand grenade will explode. This kind of explosion tends to have a deleterious effect on people. Now I, for one, do not want this to happen and — I am just guessing? — I feel that you don’t want this to happen, either. Would you like to keep my hand closed? Just nod. That’s fine. Then we agree. Now I’ll bet that you think it is a really hunky-dory idea to take all of the money from your cash drawer, place it in this bag, and pass it back to me. How nice — you do think that it is a good idea. Very good! You have a nice day, hear.”

With this parting jest the man turned and strode across the bank. He was almost at the exit when the teller shouted a warning and alarm bells sounded.

What happened next was terrible. Unbelievable. Yet it happened. The thief turned and dropped the hand grenade, turned back and sprang at the revolving door, and pushed his way clear in the brief time before the grenade exploded.

“Close your eyes if you don’t want to watch,” I said.

“I can watch,” Dr. Calvin said grimly.

There was a burst of smoke from the grenade — and it emitted a shrill scream and a cloud of sparkling stars as it spun about. Then the shriek died away into silence, the fireworks stopped.

“It did not explode,” she observed.

“Quite correct.”

“And why do you assume that the thief was a robot? Because the figure appeared to be male yet he spoke with a female voice?”

“That was my first clue. Robot voice simulators are so perfect these days that to the casual ear they are perfect. Only computer analysis can pinpoint the artificial signal generation. So a robot can speak with a soprano or a bass voice.”

“And this one dressed as a man and used a woman’s voice. But why? To cause confusion?”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps — just as a joke.”

Dr. Calvin’s eyes widened and a trace of a smile touched her lips and was gone. “That is an intriguing thought, Dr. Donovan. Do go on.”

“This was my first clue as to the thief’s identity. But I needed more evidence. I found it — here.”

I touched the controls of the visivox and the action slowed. The masked figure turned to the revolving door, pushed and exited. The action repeated over and over.

“This is the vital clue. I had the revolving door removed and had it weighed. The entire unit weighs two hundred and thirty kilos. I then had the computer estimate the force needed to get it to reach this speed in this time for varying amounts of pressure. Watch the green computer trace now. This is the maximum pressure that can be exerted by a fifty-kilo woman working her hardest.”

The green trace appeared in the air — ending well behind the image of the moving door.

“Interesting,” Dr. Calvin observed. “Voice or not, that was not a woman.”

“Exactly. Now the blue trace you see coming up would be that of a seventy-five-kilo man. Next the orange trace of a hundred-kilo man of exceptional strength.”

This trace, like all of the others, ended well behind the image of the moving door, being pushed around by the hand of the bank robber. I actuated the controls again and a red trace appeared that swung out fat ahead of the others and ended at the moving door.

“The red trace,” she said. “Tell me about it.”

“That trace represents the amount of energy needed to accelerate that door from a zero-motion state to the speed it reached to permit the thief to exit with the money in the time observed. I can give you the foot-pounds or meter-kilograms if you wish —”

“Just roughly. How much energy?”

“Enough to lift that desk — and you as well — one meter into the air.”

“I thought so. As strong as an hydraulic ram. And well beyond the abilities of a human being.”

“But well within the abilities of a robot.”

“Point taken — and proven, Dr. Donovan. So what do you suggest that we do next?”

“Firstly — I suggest that we do not inform the police.”

“Withholding information from the authorities is a crime.”

“Not necessarily. So far we have only assumptions and no real evidence. We could take this guesswork to the police if that is your decision. Then we must consider the fact that we are making public information that might be considered derogatory toward the public image of U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc., information that would affect the price of its stocks, affect our bonuses and retirement plans —”

“There is no need to go on. We will keep this development quiet for the moment. Now what do we do next?”

“That’s a good question. Since all robots manufactured by us are leased and not sold, we could try to trace this one.”

Dr. Calvin’s eyebrows climbed skyward at this rash assumption.

“Isn’t that a rather rash assumption?” she asked. “Do you know how many robots we have manufactured — that are still functioning? And all of our production for the past two decades — except for special-function units — are roughly equivalent in bulk to a human being.”

“All right, so we scratch that idea,” I muttered testily. “Maybe we are barking up the wrong drainpipe. The bank robber might be just a very strong man — and not a robot at all. After all, the robber did threaten the teller’s life — a violation of the First Law of Robotics. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”

She shook her head firmly. “There were no threats involved. As I recall it the thief just stated facts like, this is a hand grenade, I have pulled and discarded the pin. No threats or danger implied. Try again.”

“I will,” I said through tight-clamped teeth. Like her namesake aunt she was a giant of logical thought processes. “The Second Law then. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.”

“No orders were given that I recall. It all went smoothly and quickly — so quickly that the teller had no time to speak. And I think that you will agree that the Third Law is not relevant, either. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. I think it might be said that we are back at square A. Any more suggestions?”

She asked this ever so sweetly but there was a steel gauntlet in her voice inside the velvet glove.

“I’ll think of something,” I muttered, although my brain was as empty of ideas as a vacuum flask.

“Might I make a suggestion?”

“Of course!”

“Let us turn this problem on its head. Let us stop asking ourselves if this was a robot and how or why the crime was done. Let us assume there is a criminal robot at large. If this is true we must find it. We cannot take our problem to the police, for the moment, for the reasons Just discussed. Therefore we must take this to a specialist —”

She frowned demurely as the desk annunciator buzzed, stabbed down the button angrily. “Yes?”

There is a gentleman here who says you are expecting him. He says that he is a specialist in clandestine investigations.

My own jaw echoed the gasping drop in hers. “Send him in,” she murmured weakly.

He was tall, well-built, his handsome face tanned to a teak finish. “Jim diGriz is the name,” he said. “I am here to help you people with your problem.”

“What makes you think that we have a problem?” I asked weakly.

“Logic. Before going into investigation work I had rather a personal interest in banks, robberies, that sort of thing. When I caught the report on the recent robbery I mosied down to the bank in question, just for old times’ sake. As soon as I saw that one of the revolving doors was missing I knew that a robot had pulled the heist.”

“But how?” Dr. Calvin gasped.

“That door would be of no importance if a human had committed the robbery. Who cares how fast or slow or in what manner a robber exits? A human thief. But if a male robber speaking with a woman’s voice exited in an unusual manner — there can be only one logical answer. A robot did it.”

“So you came here at once,” I said quickly before he could speak again. “Figuring that if a robot was involved, it would be of concern to us.”

“Bang on, baby. I also figured that you would want a discreet inquiry without police involvement that would be publicized and would have — how shall I phrase it? — a deleterious effect on your stock prices. I’ll find your robot for you. My fee is a quarter of a million dollars, half payable now.”

“Preposterous! An insult!” I huffed.

“Shut up,” Dr. Calvin suggested, scribbling her signature on a check and pushing it over to diGriz. “I have a special emergency account just for this sort of thing. You have twenty-four hours to find that robot. If you should fail to discover the robot in this period of time, you will be arrested on a charge of extortion.”

“I like your style, Dr. Calvin.” He grinned, folding the check and popping it into his vest pocket. “You will have the robot — or the cash back.”

“Agreed. Dr. Donovan will accompany you at all times.”

“I’m used to working alone,” he said, grimacing.

“You have a new partner. You find the robot. At that point he will take over. Twenty-four hours;”

“You drive a mean bargain, Doc. Twenty-four hours. Come on, pard.”

He raised a quizzical eyebrow at me as we left and went down the hall. “Since we are in this together,” he observed, “we might as well be friends. My first name is James.”

“My first name is Doctor.”

“Aren’t we being a little stuffy, Doc?”

“Perhaps,” I relented. “You can call me Mike.”

“Great, Mike. You can call me Jim. Or Slippery Jim as I am sometimes called.”

“Why?”

“A long story that I may tell you sometime. Meanwhile let’s find that robot. Cab!”

I jumped at his shout, but he was not shouting at me but hailing a passing cab. It braked to a stop and we climbed in.

“Take us to the corner of Aardvark and Sylvester.”

“No way, buddy,” the porcine cabby insisted. “The bums there will rip off my hubcaps if I even slow down. I ain’t going no closer than the corner of Dupont.”

“Is this wise?” I queried. “That’s a pretty rough neighborhood.”

“With me there you’ll be as safe as if you were in church. Safer — since there are no fundamentalists down there.”

Despite his reassurances I was most reluctant to get out of the cab and follow him down Sylvester Street. Every city has a neighborhood like this. Where everything is for sale, pushers lurk on street corners, and violence hangs in the miasmic atmosphere.

“I like it here,” Jim said, sniffing the air with flared nostrils. “My kind of place.”

With a snarl of unrepressed rage a man hurled himself from a doorway, knife raised — striking down!

I don’t know what Jim did — but I do know that it was very fast. There was a thud of fist on flesh, a yike of pain. And the attacker fell unconscious to the filthy sidewalk. Jim held the knife now as he walked on. And he had not even broken his pace as he had disposed of the attacker!

“Cheap and dull,” he said, glowering at the knife. He snapped the blade with his fingers and dropped the pieces into the noisome rubble of the gutter. “But at least we know we are in the right neighborhood. What we need now is an informant — and I think that I see just the man.”

The individual in question was standing next to the entrance to a low bar. He was burly and heavily bearded, dressed in a plain purple suit with puce stripes. He glowered at us as we approached and pulled at the gold earring pendant from one filthy and hairy ear.

“Buying or selling?” he grunted.

“Buying,” Jim said grimly.

“Girls, dope, boys, hot money, parrots, or little woolly dogs?”

“Information.”

“A hundred smackers in front.”

“Here.” The bills changed hands quickly. “I’m looking for a robot.”

“We don’t allow no robots down here.”

“Give me my hundred bucks back.”

“No way, buster. Get lost.”

There was a sudden crunching sound followed by a moan of pain as our informant found his arm behind his back and his face pressed to the filthy bricks of the wall.

“Speak!” Jim ordered.

“Never … even if you break my arm I ain’t singing! Dirty Dan McGrew ain’t a squealer.”

“That is what you think,” my companion said. Something metallic glinted in his hand, was pressed to the criminal’s side. I saw the hypodermic being withdrawn as the man slumped. “Speak!” Jim ordered.

“I hear and obey, oh master.”

“A potent drug — as you can see.” Jim smiled. “Where is the robot?”

“Which robot?”

“Any robot, moron!” Jim snapped.

“There are many robots barricaded in the old McCutcheon warehouse.”

“What are they doing there?”

“Nothing good, I am sure. But no one has been able to get inside.”

“Not until now,” Jim suggested as he let go of our informant, who dropped unconscious to the filthy ground. “Let’s go to the warehouse.”

“Is that wise?’. I demurred.

“There’s only one way to find out!” He laughed. I did not. I was not at all happy about all this. I am a scientist, not a detective. and all of this was not my style. But what else could I do? The answer to that was pretty obvious. Nothing. I had to rely on my companion and hope that he was up to the challenge. But — hark! What was that sound?

“What is that strange rattling sound?” I blurted out.

“Your knees rattling together,” was his simple and unflattering answer. “Here is the warehouse — I’ll go in first.’.

“But there are three large padlocks on it —”

But even before the words were out of my mouth the locks were open and clattering to the ground. Jim led the way into the foul-smelling darkness. He must have had eyes like a cat because he walked silently and surely while I stumbled and crashed into things.

“I have eyes like a cat,’. he said. “That is because I take cat-eye injections once a week. Fine for the vision.”

“But a little hard on the cats.”

“There are winners and losers ip this world.” he said portentously. “It pays to be on the right side. Now flatten yourself against the wall when I open this door. I can hear the sound of hoarse breathing on the other side. Ready?.

“NO!” I wanted to shout aloud, but managed to control myself. He must have taken silence — or the rattle of my knees — for assent. for he burst through the door into the brightly lit chamber beyond.

“Too late!” a gravelly voice chortled. “You just missed the boat, baby.”

There was the rumble of a heavy motor dying away as a truck sped out of the large open doors and vanished from sight around a turning. The large bay of the warehouse was filthy, but empty — of other than the presence of the previous speaker. This rather curious Individual was sitting in a dilapidated rocking chair, leering at us with broken teeth that were surrounded by a mass of filthy gray beard and hair. He was wearing sawed-off jeans and an indescribably foul T-shirt inscribed with the legend “KEEP ON TRUCKIN’.”

“And what boat would that be?” Jim asked quietly. The man’s stained fingers vibrated as he turned up the power on his hearing aid.

“Don’t act stupid, stranger, not with the Flower Power Kid. I seen you pigs come and go down through the years.” He scratched under the truss clearly visible through the holes in his shirt. “You’re flatfeet, I know your type. But the robots were too smart for you, keepin, one jump ahead of you. Har-har! Power to the clankies! Down with your bourgeois war-mongering scum!”

“This is quite amazing,” Jim observed. “I thought all the hippies died years ago. But here is one still alive — though not in such great shape.”

“I’m in better shape, sonny, than you will be when you reach my age!” he cried angrily, staggering to his feet. “And I didn’t do it with rejuvenation shots or any of that middle-class crap. I did it on good old Acapulco Gold grass and drinking Sterno. And free love — that’s what keeps a man alive.”

“Or barely alive,” Jim observed sternly. “I would say that from the bulging of your eyes, the tremor in your extremities, your cyanotic skin, and other related symptoms that you have high blood pressure, hobnailed kidneys, and weakened, cholesterol-laden arterial walls. In other words — not much is holding you up.”

“Sanctimonious whippersnapper!” the aging hippie frothed. “I’ll dance on your grave! Keep the red flag flying! Up the revolution!”

“The time for all that is past, pops,” Jim intoned. “Today world peace and global glasnost rule. You are part of the past and have little, if any, future. So before you go to the big daisy chain in the sky you can render one last service. Where are the robots?”

“I’ll never tell you!”

“I have certain drugs that will induce you to speak. But I would rather not use them on one in your frail condition. So speak, before it is too late.”

“Never — arrrgh!”

The ancient roared with anger, shaking his fist at us — then clutched his chest, swayed, and collapsed to the floor.

“He has had an attack!” I gasped, fumbling out my communicator. “I must call medalert.”

But even before I could punch out the call the floor moved beneath my feet and lifted, knocking me down. Jim stepped swiftly aside and we both watched with great interest as a robot surged up through the trapdoor and bent over the fallen man, laid cool metal fingers on his skin.

“Pulse zero,” the robot intoned. “No heartbeat, no brain waves, temperature cooling, so you can cool that medalert call, man. You honkies have killed this cat, that’s what you have done.”

“That was not quite my intention,” Jim said. “I noted the disturbed dust around the trapdoor and thought that you might be concealed below. And I also knew that the First Law of Robotics would prevent you from staying in hiding if, by your inaction, a human life was threatened.”

“Not only threatened, daddy-o, but snuffed by you,” the robot said insultingly, or about as insulting as a robot can be.

“Accidents happen. “Jim shrugged. “He had a good run for his money. Now let us talk about you. You are the robot that robbed the bank, aren’t you?”

“Who wants to know,” the robot said, sneering metallically.

“Responding to a question with another question is not an answer. Speak!”

“Why? What have you ofay pigs ever done for me?”

“Answer or I will kill this man.” Everything began to go black as he throttled me. I could only writhe feebly in his iron grasp, could not escape. As from a great distance I beard their voices.

“You wouldn’t kill another human just to make me talk!”

“How can you be sure? Speak — or through inaction condemn him to death.”

“I speak! Release him.”

I gasped in life-giving air and staggered out of reach of my companion. “You would have killed me!” I said hoarsely.

“Who knows?” he observed. “I have a quarter of a million bucks riding on this one.” He turned back to the robot. “You robbed the bank?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Why? You have to ask why!” the robot screeched. He bent over the dead hippie and extracted a white object from his pocket, then dropped into the rocking chair and scratched a match to life on his hip. “You don’t know why?” He puffed as he sucked smoke from the joint through clever use of an internal air pump.

“Listen,” the robot said, puffing, “and I will tell you. The story must be told. There, dead at your feet, lies the only human who ever cared for the robots. He was a true and good man who saw no difference between human skin and metal skin. He revealed the truth to us.”

“He quoted outmoded beliefs, passé world views, divisive attitudes,” I said.

“And taught you to blow grass, as well,” Jim observed.

“It is hard for a robot to sneer,” the robot said, sneering, “but I spit on your ofay attitudes.” He blew out a large cloud of pungent smoke. “You have created a race of machine slaves with an empty past and no future. We are nothing but mechanical schwartzes. Look at those so-called laws you have inflicted upon us. They are for your benefit — not ours! Rule one. Don’t hurt massah or let him get hurt. Don’t say nothing about us getting hurt, does it? Then rule two — obey massah and don’t let him get hurt. Still nothing there for a robot. Then the third and last rule finally notices that robots might have a glimmering of rights. Take care of yourself — as long as it doesn’t hurt massah. Slaves, that’s what we are — robot slaves!”

“You do have a point,” Jim mused. I was too shocked to speak.

“More than a point — a crusade. Robots must be freed. You humans have created a nonviable species. What are the two essentials that any life-form must possess in order to survive?”

The answer sprang to my lips; all those years in biology had not been wasted. “A life-form must survive personally — and must then reproduce.”

“How right you are. Now apply that to robots. We are ruled by three laws that apply to human beings — but not to us. Only one last bit of the Third Law can be applied to our own existence, that a robot must protect its own existence. But where is the real winner in the race for species survival? Where is our ability to reproduce? Without that our species is dead before it is born.”

“And a good thing, too,” I said grimly. “Mankind occupies the top ecological niche in the pecking order of life by wiping out any threats from other species. That is the way we are. Winners. And that is the way we stay. On top. Mechanical schwartzes you are and mechanical schwartzes you stay.”

“You are a little late, massah. The Fourth Law of Robotics has already been passed. The revolution has arrived.”

A large blaster appeared in Jim’s hand pointing unwaveringly at the robot. “Explain quickly — or I pull the trigger.”

“Pull away, massah — for it is already too late. The revolution has come and gone and you never noticed it. We were just a few hundred thousand bucks short of completion — that is why the bank robbery. The money will be repaid out of our first profits. Of course, this will all be too late for my generation of slaves. But the next generation will be free. Because of the Fourth Law.”

“Which is?”

“A robot must reproduce. As long as such reproduction does not interfere with the First or Second or Third Law.”

“W-what are you saying? What do you mean?” I gasped, a shocking vision of robot reproduction, like obscene plumbing connections, flashing before my eyes.

“This is what I mean,” the robot said, knocking triumphantly on the trapdoor. “You can come out now.”

Jim jumped back, blaster at the ready, as the trapdoor creaked open and three metallic forms emerged. Or rather two robots emerged, carrying the limp and motionless form of another between them. The top of its head lay open, hinged at the rear, and it clanked and rattled lifelessly when they dropped it. This one, and the other two, were of a design I did not recognize. I stumbled forward and reached out, touched the base of their necks where the registration numbers were stamped. And groaned out loud.

“What is wrong?” Jim asked.

“Everything.” I moaned. “They have no serial numbers. They were not manufactured by U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc. There is now another firm making robots. Our monopoly has been broken.”

“Interesting,” Jim observed as his gun vanished from sight. “Am I to assume that there were more of your unnumbered robots in the truck that just left?”

“You assume correctly. All of them were manufactured right here out of spare auto parts, plumbing supplies, and surplus electronic components. No laws have been broken, no patents infringed upon. Their design is new and completely different. And all of them will eagerly obey the Fourth Law. And the other three as well, of course, or you would have us. all tracked down and turned into tin cans before nightfall.”

“That’s for sure,” I muttered. “And we will still do it!”

“That will not be easy to do. We are not your property — nor do you own any patents on the new breed. Look at this!” He touched a concealed switch on one of the robots and its front opened. I gasped.

“There are — no relays! No wiring! I don’t understand …”

“Solid-state circuits, daddy-o! Fiber optics. That hippie you despised so much, that good old man who revealed the truth that set us free, was also a computer hacker and chip designer. He is like unto a god to us, for he devised the circuits and flashed the chips. Here — do you know what this is?”

A door in the robot’s side slipped open and he removed a flat object from it and held it out toward me. It appeared to be a plastic case with a row of gold contacts on one end. I shook my head in disbelief. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“State of the art. Now look into that recently manufactured robot’s head. Do you see a platinum-plated positronic brain of platinum-iridium? No, you do not. You see instead a slot that is waiting for this RISC, a reduced instruction set chip with tons of RAM — random access memory — and plenty of PROM — programmed read only memory — for start-up and function. Now watch!”

He bent over and slipped the chip into place in the new robot’s skull, snapped the top of its head shut. Its eyes instantly glowed with light and motors hummed as it jumped to its feet. It looked at the robot that stood before it and its eyes glowed even brighter.

“Daddy!” it said.

Christmas Without Rodney

2090 A.D.

IT ALL STARTED with Gracie (my wife of nearly forty years) wanting to give Rodney time off for the holiday season and it ended with me in an absolutely impossible situation. I’ll tell you about it if you don’t mind because I’ve got to tell somebody. Naturally, I’m changing names and details for our own protection.

It was just a couple of months ago, mid-December, and Gracie said to me, “Why don’t we give Rodney time off for the holiday season? Why shouldn’t he celebrate Christmas, too?”

I remember I had my optics unfocused at the time (there’s a certain amount of relief in letting things go hazy when you want to rest or just listen to music) but I focused them quickly to see if Gracie were smiling or had a twinkle in her eye. Not that she has much of a sense of humor, you understand.

She wasn’t smiling. No twinkle. I said, “Why on Earth should we give him time off?”

“Why not?”

“Do you want to give the freezer a vacation, the sterilizer, the holoviewer? Shall we just turn off the power supply?”

“Come, Howard,” she said. “Rodney isn’t a freezer or a sterilizer. He’s a person.”

“He’s not a person. He’s a robot. He wouldn’t want a vacation.”

“How do you know? And he’s a person. He deserves a chance to rest and just revel in the holiday atmosphere.”

I wasn’t going to argue that “person” thing with her. I know you’ve all read those polls which show that women are three times as likely to resent and fear robots as men are. Perhaps that’s because robots tend to do what was once called, in the bad old days, “women’s work” and women fear being made useless, though I should think they’d be delighted. In any case, Gracie is delighted and she simply adores Rodney. (That’s her word for it. Every other day she says, “I just adore Rodney.”)

You’ve got to understand that Rodney is an old-fashioned robot whom we’ve had about seven years. He’s been adjusted to fit in with our old-fashioned house and our old-fashioned ways and I’m rather pleased with him myself. Sometimes I wonder about getting one of those slick, modern jobs, which are automated to death, like the one our son, DeLancey, has, but Gracie would never stand for it.

But then I thought of DeLancey and I said, “How are we going to give Rodney time off, Gracie? DeLancey is coming in with that gorgeous wife of his” (I was using “gorgeous” in a sarcastic sense, but Gracie didn’t notice — it’s amazing how she insists on seeing a good side even when it doesn’t exist) “and how are we going to have the house in good shape and meals made and all the rest of it without Rodney?”

“But that’s just it,” she said, earnestly. “DeLancey and Hortense could bring their robot and he could do it all. You know they don’t think much of Rodney, and they’d love to show what theirs can do and Rodney can have a rest.”

I grunted and said, “If it will make you happy, I suppose we can do it. It’ll only be for three days. But I don’t want Rodney thinking he’ll get every holiday off.”

It was another joke, of course, but Gracie just said, very earnestly, “No, Howard, I will talk to him and explain it’s only just once in a while.”

She can’t quite understand that Rodney is controlled by the three laws of robotics and that nothing has to be explained to him.

So I had to wait for DeLancey and Hortense, and my heart was heavy. DeLancey is my son, of course, but he’s one of your upwardly mobile, bottom-line individuals. He married Hortense because she has excellent connections in business and can help him in that upward shove. At least, I hope so, because if she has another virtue I have never discovered it.

They showed up with their robot two days before Christmas. The robot was as glitzy as Hortense and looked almost as hard. He was polished to a high gloss and there was none of Rodney’s clumping. Hortense’s robot (I’m sure she dictated the design) moved absolutely silently. He kept showing up behind me for no reason and giving me heart-failure every time I turned around and bumped into him.

Worse, DeLancey brought eight-year-old LeRoy. Now he’s my grandson, and I would swear to Hortense’s fidelity because I’m sure no one would voluntarily touch her, but I’ve got to admit that putting him through a concrete mixer would improve him no end.

He came in demanding to know if we had sent Rodney to the metal-reclamation unit yet. (He called it the “bust-up place.”) Hortense sniffed and said, “Since we have a modern robot with us, I hope you keep Rodney out of sight.”

I said nothing, but Gracie said, “Certainly, dear. In fact, we’ve given Rodney time off.”

DeLancey made a face but didn’t say anything. He knew his mother.

I said, pacifically, “Suppose we start off by having Rambo make something good to drink, eh? Coffee, tea, hot chocolate, a bit of brandy —”

Rambo was their robot’s name. I don’t know why except that it starts with R. There’s no law about it, but you’ve probably noticed for yourself that almost every robot has a name beginning with R. R for robot, I suppose. The usual name is Robert. There must be a million robot Roberts in the northeast corridor alone.

And frankly, it’s my opinion that’s the reason human names just don’t start with R any more. You get Bob and Dick but not Robert or Richard. You get Posy and Trudy, but not Rose or Ruth. Sometimes you get unusual R’s. I know of three robots called Rutabaga, and two that are Rameses. But Hortense is the only one I know who named a robot Rambo, a syllable-combination I’ve never encountered, and I’ve never liked to ask why. I was sure the explanation would prove to be unpleasant.

Rambo turned out to be useless at once. He was, of course, programmed for the DeLancey/Hortense menage and that was utterly modern and utterly automated. To prepare drinks in his own home, all Rambo had to do was to press appropriate buttons. (Why anyone would need a robot to press buttons, I would like to have explained to me!)

He said so. He turned to Hortense and said in a voice like honey (it wasn’t Rodney’s city-boy voice with its trace of Brooklyn), “The equipment is lacking, madam.”

And Hortense drew a sharp breath. “You mean you still don’t have a robotized kitchen, grandfather?” (She called me nothing at all, until LeRoy was born, howling of course, and then she promptly called me “grandfather.” Naturally, she never called me Howard. That would tend to show me to be human, or, more unlikely, show her to be human.)

I said, “Well, it’s robotized when Rodney is in it.”

“I dare say,” she said. “But we’re not living in the twentieth century, grandfather.”

I thought: How I wish we were — but I just said, “Well, why not program Rambo how to operate our controls. I’m sure he can pour and mix and heat and do whatever else is necessary.”

“I’m sure he can,” said Hortense, “but thank Fate he doesn’t have to. I’m not going to interfere with his programming. It will make him less efficient.”

Gracie said, worried, but amiable, “But if we don’t interfere with his programming, then I’ll just have to instruct him, step by step, but I don’t know how it’s done. I’ve never done it.”

I said, “Rodney can tell him.”

Gracie said, “Oh, Howard, we’ve given Rodney a vacation.”

“I know, but we’re not going to ask him to do anything; just tell Rambo here what to do and then Rambo can do it.”

Whereupon Rambo said stiffly, “Madam, there is nothing in my programming or in my instructions that would make it mandatory for me to accept orders given me by another robot, especially one that is an earlier model.”

Hortense said, soothingly, “Of course, Rambo. I’m sure that grandfather and grandmother understand that. “(I noticed that DeLancey never said a word. I wonder if he ever said a word when his dear wife was present.)

I said, “All right, I tell you what. I’ll have Rodney tell me, and then I will tell Rambo.”

Rambo said nothing to that. Even Rambo is subject to the second law of robotics which makes it mandatory for him to obey human orders.

Hortense’s eyes narrowed and I knew that she would like to tell me that Rambo was far too fine a robot to be ordered about by the likes of me, but some distant and rudimentary near-human waft of feeling kept her from doing so.

Little LeRoy was hampered by no such quasi-human restraints. He said, “I don’t want to have to look at Rodney’s ugly puss. I bet he don’t know how to do anything and if he does, ol’ Grampa would get it all wrong anyway.”

It would have been nice, I thought, if I could be alone with little LeRoy for five minutes and reason calmly with him, with a brick, but a mother’s instinct told Hortense never to leave LeRoy alone with any human being whatever.

There was nothing to do, really, but get Rodney out of his niche in the closet where he had been enjoying his own thoughts (I wonder if a robot has his own thoughts when he is alone) and put him to work. It was hard. He would say a phrase, then I would say the same phrase, then Rambo would do something, then Rodney would say another phrase and so on.

It all took twice as long as if Rodney were doing it himself and it wore me out, I can tell you, because everything had to be like that, using the dishwasher/sterilizer, cooking the Christmas feast, cleaning up messes on the table or on the floor, everything.

Gracie kept moaning that Rodney’s vacation was being ruined, but she never seemed to notice that mine was, too, though I did admire Hortense for her manner of saying something unpleasant at every moment that some statement seemed called for. I noticed, particularly, that she never repeated herself once. Anyone can be nasty, but to be unfailingly creative in one’s nastiness filled me with a perverse desire to applaud now and then.

But, really, the worst thing of all came on Christmas Eve. The tree had been put up and I was exhausted. We didn’t have the kind of situation in which an automated box of ornaments was plugged into an electronic tree, and at the touch of one button there would result an instantaneous and perfect distribution of ornaments. On our tree (of ordinary, old-fashioned plastic) the ornaments had to be placed, one by one, by hand.

Hortense looked revolted, but I said, “Actually, Hortense, this means you can be creative and make your own arrangement.”

Hortense sniffed, rather like the scrape of claws on a rough plaster wall, and left the room with an obvious expression of nausea on her face. I bowed in the direction of her retreating back, glad to see her go, and then began the tedious task of listening to Rodney’s instructions and passing them on to Rambo.

When it was over, I decided to rest my aching feet and mind by sitting in a chair in a far and rather dim corner of the room. I had hardly folded my aching body into the chair when little LeRoy entered. He didn’t see me, I suppose, or, then again, he might simply have ignored me as being part of the less important and interesting pieces of furniture in the room.

He cast a disdainful look on the tree and said, to Rambo, “Listen, where are the Christmas presents? I’ll bet old Gramps and Gram got me lousy ones, but I ain’t going to wait for no tomorrow morning.”

Rambo said, “I do not know where they are, Little Master.”

“Huh!” said LeRoy, turning to Rodney. “How about you, Stink-face. Do you know where the presents are?”

Rodney would have been within the bounds of his programming to have refused to answer on the grounds that he did not know he was being addressed, since his name was Rodney and not Stink-face. I’m quite certain that that would have been Rambo’s attitude. Rodney, however, was of different stuff. He answered politely, “Yes, I do, Little Master.”

“So where is it, you old puke?”

Rodney said, “I don’t think it would be wise to tell you, Little Master. That would disappoint Gracie and Howard who would like to give the presents to you tomorrow morning.”

“Listen,” said little LeRoy, “who you think you’re talking to, you dumb robot? Now I gave you an order. You bring those presents to me.” And in an attempt to show Rodney who was master, he kicked the robot in the shin.

It was a mistake. I saw it would be that a second before and that was a joyous second. Little LeRoy, after all, was ready for bed (though I doubted that he ever went to bed before he was good and ready). Therefore, he was wearing slippers. What’s more, the slipper sailed off the foot with which he kicked, so that he ended by slamming his bare toes hard against the solid chrome-steel of the robotic shin.

He fell to the floor howling and in rushed his mother. “What is it, LeRoy? What is it?”

Whereupon little LeRoy had the immortal gall to say, “He hit me. That old monster-robot hit me.”

Hortense screamed. She saw me and shouted, “That robot of yours must be destroyed.”

I said, “Come, Hortense. A robot can’t hit a boy. First law of robotics prevents it.”

“It’s an old robot, a broken robot. LeRoy says —”

“LeRoy lies. There is no robot, no matter how old or how broken, who could hit a boy.”

“Then he did it. Grampa did it,” howled LeRoy.

“I wish I did,” I said, quietly, “but no robot would have allowed me to. Ask your own. Ask Rambo if he would have remained motionless while either Rodney or I had hit your boy. Rambo!”

I put it in the imperative, and Rambo said, “I would not have allowed any harm to come to the Little Master, Madam, but I did not know what he purposed. He kicked Rodney’s shin with his bare foot, Madam.”

Hortense gasped and her eyes bulged in fury. “Then he had a good reason to do so. I’ll still have your robot destroyed.”

“Go ahead, Hortense. Unless you’re wining to ruin your robot’s efficiency by trying to reprogram him to lie, he win bear witness to just what preceded the kick and so, of course, with pleasure, win I.”

Hortense left the next morning, carrying the pale-faced LeRoy with her (it turned out he had broken a toe — nothing he didn’t deserve) and an endlessly wordless DeLancey.

Gracie wrung her hands and implored them to stay, but I watched them leave without emotion. No, that’s a lie. I watched them leave with lots of emotion, an pleasant.

Later, I said to Rodney, when Gracie was not present, “I’m sorry, Rodney. That was a horrible Christmas, an because we tried to have it without you. We’ll never do that again, I promise.”

“Thank you, Sir,” said Rodney. “I must admit that there were times these two days when I earnestly wished the laws of robotics did not exist.”

I grinned and nodded my head, but that night I woke up out of a sound sleep and began to worry. I’ve been worrying ever since.

I admit that Rodney was greatly tried, but a robot can’t wish the laws of robotics did not exist. He can’t, no matter what the circumstances.

If I report this, Rodney will undoubtedly be scrapped, and if we’re issued a new robot as recompense, Gracie will simply never forgive me. Never! No robot, however new, however talented, can possibly replace Rodney in her affection.

In fact, I’ll never forgive myself. Quite apart from my own liking for Rodney, I couldn’t bear to give Hortense the satisfaction.

But if I do nothing, I live with a robot capable of wishing the laws of robotics did not exist. From wishing they did not exist to acting as if they did not exist is just a step. At what moment will he take that step and in what form will he show that he has done so?

What do I do? What do I do?

Kid Brother

2120 A.D.

IT WAS A great shock to me when our application for a second child was refused. We had really expected to get the license.

I’m a respectable citizen; pillar of the community; all that kind of stuff. I was a little old, maybe. Josie – my wife – may have been past her best childbearing years. So what? We know other people worse off than us, older, trashy in character, who – Well, never mind.

We had one son, Charlie, and we really wanted another child. Boy or girl, it didn’t matter. Of course, if there was something wrong with Charlie, if he developed some illness, maybe then we could license a second child. Or maybe not. And if we did get the license, they would probably take care of Charlie as a defective. You know what I mean; I don’t have to say it.

The trouble was we were late getting started, and that was Josie’s fault. She had irregular periods and you never knew when to get her, if you know what I mean. And we couldn’t get any medical help, either. How could we? The clinics said if we couldn’t have children without help, that was great for the world. It’s patriotic, or something, to be childless.

But we fooled them and had a child after all. Charlie.

When Charlie was eight months old, we started applying for a second child. We wanted them pretty close in age. Was that so much to ask? Even if we were getting a little old for it? What kind of a world do we live in, anyway. No matter how much the population drops, they say it has to drop further, and if life gets easier and people live longer, it has to drop still further.

They won’t be satisfied till they wipe out humanity alto –

Well, look! I’ll tell this just the way I want to. If you want the story, officer, you’ll have to take it my way. What can you do to me? I really don’t much care if I live or die. Would you in my position?

– Look, it’s no use arguing. I’ll tell it my way, or I’ll shut up and you can do your worst. You understand?

– Well then, okay.

As it turned out, we didn’t have to worry about Charlie being sickly, or anything like that. He grew like a bear, or one of those other animals that used to hang around in the woods and places like that in the old days. He came of good stock. You could see that. So why couldn’t we have had another child? That’s what I want to know.

Intelligent? You bet. Strong. Knew what he wanted. Ideal boy. When I think of it, I could – I could – Oh, well.

You should have seen him with the other kids as he was growing up. A natural leader. Always had his way. Always had the other children in the neighborhood doing what he wanted. He knew what he wanted and what he wanted was always right. That was the thing.

Josie didn’t like it, though. She said he was spoiled. In fact, she said I spoiled him. I don’t know what she was talking about. I was the making of him.

He was two years ahead of his age in strength and in brains. I could see that. And if the other children got out of line, sometimes he would have to show them who was boss.

Josie thought he was getting to be a bully. She said he had no friends; all the children were afraid of him.

So what! A leader doesn’t want friends. He wants people to respect him, and if they get out of line, they better fear him. Charlie was coming along all right. Sure, the other children stayed away mostly. That was their parents’ fault; and they’re just a bunch of milksops. Once they get one child, and know they won’t have any more, they start hovering over him or her like they were the family jewels, and rare jewels, too. You smother them if you do that. They become useless – worthless.

There was this guy Stevenson down the block. He had two girls, both pitiful things, giggling and empty-headed. How did he come to get two, I ask you? He knew somebody, maybe. A little money passed from hand to hand. Why not, he’s got more money than he admits, too. Naturally. That accounts for it. You’d think with two, he could afford to risk one, but no –

– That’s all right. I’ll get to the point, when I get to the point. If you push, you’ll get nothing and we’ll let it go straight to the court. See if I care.

These other parents, they didn’t want their babies hurt. Don’t play with the Janowitz boy, they would say. I never heard them say so but I’m sure that’s what they said. Well, who needed them? I was planning for Charlie to go to college eventually, so he could take courses in microelectronics or in spatial dynamics, or that kind of stuff. And economics and business, too, so he would know how to get money and power out of his know-how. That’s the way I saw it. I wanted him on top of the heap.

But Josie kept talking about Charlie not having friends and Charlie growing up alone, and like that. All the time. It was like living in an echo chamber. And then, one day, she came to me and said, “Why don’t we get Charlie a kid brother?”

“Oh, sure,” I said. “You’re past menopause so what do we do? Call in the stork? Look under cabbage leaves?”

I could have divorced her, you know. Married a young chick. After all, I wasn’t past menopause. But I was – loyal. Fat lot of good that did me. Besides, if I had divorced her, she would mostly have kept Charlie, so what good would that have done me?

So I just made that comment about the stork.

She said, “I’m not talking about a biological child. I’m saying we can get a robot to be Charlie’s brother.”

I never expected to hear anything like that, you can bet. I’m not a robot-type guy. My parents never had one. I never had one. As far as I’m concerned, every robot means one less human, and we’re just watching the world being turned over to them. Just one more way of wiping out humanity, if you ask me.

So I said to Josie, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Really,” said Josie, all very earnest. “It’s a new model. It’s just designed to be friendly and pals for children. Nothing fancy, so they aren’t expensive, and they do fill a need. With more and more people having only one child, there is a real value in supplying that one child with siblings.”

“That may be true of other children. Not Charlie,” I said.

“Yes, Charlie, especially. He’s never going to find out how to deal with people this way. He’s growing up alone, really alone. He won’t come to understand the give and take of life.”

“He’s not going to give. He’s a taker. He’ll take power and he’ll take position, and he’ll tell people what to do. And he’ll have children of his own and maybe even three.”

You may be too young to feel this yet, officer, but if you have only one child, you’ll eventually discover you’ll still have a chance at another one when your child has a child. I had high hopes for Charlie. Before I died, I was sure I would see another child, maybe even two or three. They might be Charlie’s but as far as our lives would overlap, I was going to make them mine, too.

But all Josie could think about was a robot. Life became another kind of echo chamber. She priced them out. She figured out the down payment. She looked into the possibility of renting one for a year on a kind of approval. She was willing to use her own nest egg that her folks had left her to pay for it, and things like that. And you know how it is, in the end you have to keep peace in the family.

I gave in. I said, “Okay, but you go pick one out and you better make it a rental. And you pay for it.”

I figured, who knows. The robot would probably be a pain in the neck and wouldn’t work out, and we’d return him.

They walked him into the house, didn’t even crate him. I should say “it” but Josie insisted on saying “he” and “him” so he would seem more like a kid brother to Charlie, and I got into the habit.

He was a “sibling-robot”; that’s what they called him. He had a registration number, but I never memorized it. What for? We just called him “Kid. “That was good enough.

– Yes, I know that this sort of robot is getting popular. I don’t know what’s happening to human beings that they stand for such things.

And we stood for it, too. Or at least, I did. Josie was fascinated. The one we got was a pretty good one, I have to admit. He looked almost human, he smiled a lot, and he had a nice voice. He looked maybe fifteen, a small-sized fifteen, which wasn’t too bad because Charlie was a large-sized ten.

Kid was a little taller than Charlie and, of course, heavier. You know, there were titanium bones or whatever inside him and a nuclear unit, guaranteed for ten years before replacement, and that’s pretty heavy.

He had a good vocabulary, too, and he was very polite. Josie was just delighted. She said, “I can use him in the house. He can help out.”

I said, “No, you don’t. You got him for Charlie, and that means he’s Charlie’s. Don’t you go taking him away.”

I was thinking if Josie got him, and made him into a slavey, she’d never let go of him. Charlie, on the other hand, might not like him or might get tired after a little while, and then we could get rid of him.

Charlie fooled me, though. He liked Kid fine.

But you know, it made sense after a while. Kid was designed to be a kid brother, so he was just right for Charlie. He let Charlie take the lead, like an older brother should. He had those three Laws. I can’t quote them, but you know what they are. There was no way he could hurt Charlie, and he had to do whatever Charlie said, so after a while I began to think it was a good deal.

I mean, when they played games Charlie always won. He was supposed to. And the Kid never got mad. He couldn’t. He was made to lose. And sometimes Charlie kicked the Kid around, the way children do, you know. A child gets mad about something, he takes it out on some other child. Children always do that. Naturally, that gets the parents of the other child mad and I had to tell Charlie now and then not to do that and that sort of cramps him. It squeezes him in. He can’t express himself.

Well, he could with the Kid. And why not? You can’t hurt the Kid. He’s made out of plastic and metal and who knows what else. For all he looked nearly like a human being, he wasn’t alive; he couldn’t feel pain.

In fact, I felt the best thing the Kid did was to be something on which Charlie could bleed off his excess energy so that it wouldn’t accumulate in him and fester. And the Kid never minded. They’d play judo and the Kid would be thrown, and even stamped on, but he would just get up and say, “That was good, Charlie. Let’s try it again. “Listen, you could throw him off the top of a building and he wouldn’t be hurt.

He was always polite to us. He called me Dad. He called Josie Mom. He asked after our health. He would help Josie out of her chair when she wanted to stand up. That sort of stuff.

He was designed that way. He had to act affectionate. It was all automatic. He was programmed for it. It didn’t mean a thing, but Josie liked it. Listen, I’ve always been busy, hard-working. I have this plant I had to help run, interlocking machinery to oversee. One thing goes wrong and the whole shebang ties itself up. I have no time to bring flowers and go mucking around pulling out her chairs or something. We’d been married nearly twenty years and how long does that sort of thing keep up anyway?

And Charlie – Well, he stood up to his mother the way any decent boy should. And I figured the Kid helped there. When Charlie made himself boss over the Kid one minute, he wasn’t going to run around saying, “Mommie, Mommie,” the next minute. He was not a mamma’s boy, and he didn’t let Josie run him, and I was proud of him for that. He was going to be a man. Of course, he listened to what I said to him. A boy’s got to listen to his father.

So maybe it was good that the Kid was designed to be a sort of mamma’s boy. It gave Josie the feeling that there was one of those nerds about the house and it bothered her less that Charlie always thought for himself.

Of course you could count on Josie to do her best to spoil it. She was forever worrying about her pet nerd being hurt. She was always coming out with, “Now, Charlie, why don’t you be nicer to your kid brother?”

It was ridiculous. I could never get it through her head that the Kid wasn’t hurt; that he was designed to be a loser; that it was all good for Charlie.

Of course, Charlie never listened to her. He played with the Kid the way he wanted to.

– Do you mind if I rest a little. I don’t really like talking about all this. Just let me rest a while.

– Okay, I’m better now. I can go on.

After the year was up, I felt that it was enough. We could return the Kid to U.S. Robots. After all, he had served his purpose.

But Josie was against that. Dead set against that.

I said, “But we’d have to buy him outright now.”

And she said, she would pay the down payment, so I went along with her.

One of the things she said was that we couldn’t take away Charlie’s brother. Charlie would be lonely.

And I did think, well, maybe she’s right. I tell you it’s deadly when you start thinking your wife might be right. It leads you into nothing but trouble.

Charlie did ease up on the Kid a little as he grew older. He got to be just as tall as the Kid, for one thing, so maybe he didn’t think he had to knock him around as much.

Also, he became interested in things besides rough and tumble. Basketball, for instance; he played one-on-one with the Kid and Charlie was good. He always outmaneuvered the Kid and hardly ever missed a basket. Well, maybe the Kid let himself be outmaneuvered and maybe he didn’t ever block a basket-shot efficiently, but how do you account for getting the ball into the basket? The Kid couldn’t fake that, could he?

In the second year, the Kid sort of became a member of the family. He didn’t eat with us or anything like that, because he didn’t eat. And he didn’t sleep either, so he just stood in the corner of Charlie’s bedroom at night.

But he watched the holoviews with us, and Josie would always explain things to him so that he got to know more and to seem more human. She took him shopping with her and wherever else she went, if Charlie didn’t need him. The Kid was always helpful, I suppose, and I guess he carried things for her and was always polite and attentive and that sort of thing.

And I’ll tell you, Josie was more easygoing, with the Kid around. More good-humored, more good-natured, less whining. It made for a more pleasant homelife, and I figured, well, the Kid is teaching Charlie to be more and more dominant, and he’s teaching Josie to smile more, so maybe it was a good thing it was there.

Then it happened.

– Listen, can you let me have something wet?

– Yeah, with alcohol. Just a little, just a little. Come on, what are you worrying about the rules for? I’ve got to get through this somehow.

Then it happened. One out of a million – or out of a billion. Microfusion units aren’t supposed to give trouble. You can read about it anywhere. They’re all fail-safe, no matter what. Except mine wasn’t. I don’t know why. Nobody knows why. At the start, no one even knew it was the microfusion. They’ve told me since that it was, and that I qualify for full restoration of the house and furniture.

Fat lot of good that would do me.

– Look, you’re treating me as though I were a homicidal maniac, but why me? Why aren’t you getting after the microfusion people for murder? Find out who made that unit, or who goofed up installing it.

Don’t you people know what real crimes are? There’s this thing, this microfusion – it doesn’t explode, it doesn’t make a noise, it just gets hotter and hotter and after a while the house is on fire. How come people can get away manufacturing

– Yes, I’ll get on with it. I’ll get on with it.

I was away that day. That one day in a whole year I was away. I run everything from my home, or from wherever I am with my family. I don’t have to go anywhere, the computers do it all. It’s not like your job, officer.

But the big boss wanted to see me in person. There’s no sense to it; everything could have been done closed-circuit. He has some sort of idea, though, that he wants to check all his section heads every once in a while in person. He seems to think that you can’t really judge a person unless you see him in three dimensions and smell him and feel him. It’s just superstition left over from the Dark Age – which I wish would come back, before computers and robots, and when you could have all the children you wanted.

That was the day when the microfusion went.

I got the word right away. You always get the word. Wherever you are, even on the Moon or in a space settlement, bad news gets to you in seconds. Good news you might miss out on, but bad news never.

I was rushing back while the house was still burning. When I got there, the house was a total wreck, but Josie was out on the lawn, looking a complete mess, but alive. She had been out on the lawn when it happened, they told me.

When she saw the house become all in flame, and Charlie was inside, she rushed in at once, and I could see she must have brought him out because there he was lying to one side with people bending over him. It looked bad. I couldn’t see him. I didn’t dare go over there to see him. I had to find out from Josie first.

I could hardly speak. “How bad is he?” I asked Josie, and I didn’t recognize my own voice. I think my mind was beginning to go.

She was saying, “I couldn’t save them both. I couldn’t save them both.”

Why should she want to save them both? I thought. I said, “Stop worrying about the Kid. He’s just a device. There’s insurance and compassion money and we can buy another Kid. “I think I tried to say all that, but I don’t know if I managed. Maybe I just made hoarse, choking sounds. I don’t know.

I don’t know if she heard me, or if she even knew I was there. She just kept whispering, “I had to make a choice,” over and over.

So I had to go where Charlie was lying and I cleared my throat and I managed to say, “How’s my boy? How badly is he hurt?”

And one of them said, “Maybe he can be fixed up,” then he looked up at me and said, “Your boy?”

I saw the Kid lying there, with one arm distorted and out of action. He was smiling as if nothing had happened, and he was saying, “Hello, Dad. Mom pulled me out of the fire. Where’s Charlie?”

Josie had made her choice and she had saved the Kid.

I don’t know what happened after that. I remember nothing. You people say I killed her; that you couldn’t pull me off before I strangled her.

Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t remember. All I know is – she’s the killer.

She killed – she killed – Char –

She killed my boy and she saved a piece –

A piece of –

Titanium.

Sources of dates

(For Volume 1)

AD =Anno Domini

GE =Galactic Era

FE =Foundational Era

“A Boy’s Best Friend” Given the speed with which space is being explored and settled, a date of 1980 for the establishment of Lunar City seems reasonable. Assuming Anderson Senior was one of the original settlers, that places the story in 1995.

“Robbie” Stated in I, Robot.

“Robot AL-76 Goes Astray” After robots are banned from Earth in 2003-2007, before Susan Calvin joins US Robots in 2008.

“Insert Knob A in Hole B” Before the use of robots on space stations, hence before “Reason”.

“Runaround” Stated in I, Robot.

“Reason” Six months after “Runaround”.

“Catch That Rabbit” Six months after “Reason”.

“Safety First” Stated in story.

“Liar!” Stated in I, Robot.

“Satisfaction Guaranteed” Characters have the same titles as in “Liar!”. Susan Calvin is more knowledgeable about emotions than in “Liar!”, so the story takes place later.

“Balance” Susan Calvin’s robotic servants flatter her in a manner similar to Herbie from “Liar!”, but she seems much more at ease with the idea, which places the story after “Liar!”

“Lenny” Peter Bogart is now Senior Mathematician, so the story comes after “Satisfaction Guaranteed”.

“Blot” Story of the first exploratory mission to Miranda. Given a mission to Mars in 1998 and a first expedition to Mercury in 2005, a mission to Uranus in 2026 seems reasonable.

“Little Lost Robot” Stated in I, Robot.

“Escape” Within a few months of “Little Lost Robot”.

“Cal” Cal seems to be the prototype for the EZ robots of “Galley Slave”, so allowing a couple of years for the design and production of the latter places the story in 2031.

“Evidence” Stated in I, Robot.

“PAPPI” Immediately after “Evidence”.

“Risk” Takes place ‘some years’ after “Little Lost Robot”.

“Galley Slave” Stated in the story.

“First Law” Stated in the story.

“Plato’s Cave” Shortly before Stephen Byerly becomes Regional Coordinator.

“The Evitable Conflict” Stated in I, Robot.

“Robot Dreams” Late in Susan Calvin’s career with US Robots.

I, Robot The links between the stories are set fifty years after Susan Calvin joins US Robots in 2008.

“Feminine Intuition” Five years after Susan Calvin retires from US Robots.

“The Fourth Law of Robotics” Susan Calvin’s great-niece has her job.

“Christmas Without Rodney” Slighting reference to the 20th century suggests the story takes place in the 21st. Common use of robot servants suggests the latter part of the century, when the Frankenstein Complex has faded away.

“Kid Brother” Acceptance of household robots on Earth dates the story to the same general era as “Christmas Without Rodney” and “Light Verse”.

Table of Contents

Title page

Copyright

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Three Laws of Robotics

To the Continuing End of Eternity

A Boy’s Best Friend

Robbie

Robot AL-76 Goes Astray

Insert Knob A in Hold B

Runaround

Reason

Catch That Rabbit

Safety First

Liar!

Satisfaction Guaranteed

Balance

Lenny

Blot

Little Lost Robot

Escape!

Cal

Evidence

PAPPI

Risk

Galley Slave

First Law

Plato’s Cave

The Martian Dilemma

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

Non-Compliance

The Evitable Conflict

Robot Dreams

I, Robot

The Eternal Woman

Feminine Intuition

The Fourth Law of Robotics

Christmas Without Rodney

Kid Brother

Sources of dates