‘I know that.’

‘And I suppose you know he’s been displaying a devouring interest in all that we’ve been doing.’

‘That, I should say, would be natural.’

‘Oh! And you know further – ‘ His voice dropped with startling suddenness. ‘All right, Murry’s at the door. Take it easy.’

Wynne Murry grinned a greeting, but the Board Master nodded unsmilingly.

‘Well, sir,’ said Murry bluffly, ‘do you know I’ve been on my feet for forty-eight hours? You’ve got something here. Something big.’

‘Thank you.’

‘No, no. I’m serious. The robot world exists.’ ‘Did you think it didn’t?’

The secretary shrugged amiably. ‘One has a certain natural skepticism. What are your future plans?’

‘Why do you ask?’ The Board Master grunted his words as if they were being squeezed out singly.

‘To see if they jibe with my own.’

‘And what are your own?’

The secretary smiled. ‘No, no. You take precedence. How long do you intend staying here?’

‘As long as it takes to make a fair beginning on the documents involved.’

‘That’s no answer. What do you mean by a fair beginning?’

‘I haven’t the slightest idea. It might take years.’

‘Oh, damnation.’

The Board Master raised his eyebrows and said nothing.

The secretary looked at his nails. ‘I take it you know the location of this robot world.’

‘Naturally. Theor Realo was there. His information up to now has proven very accurate.’

‘That’s right. The albino. Well, why not go there?’

‘Go there! Impossible!’

‘May I ask why?’

‘Look,’ said the Board Master with restrained impatience, ‘you’re not here by our invitation, and we’re not asking you to dictate our course of actions, but just to show you that I’m not looking for a fight, I’ll give you a little metaphorical treatment of our case. Suppose we were presented with a huge and complicated machine, composed of principles and materials of which we knew next to nothing. It is so vast we can’t even make out the relationship of the parts, let alone the purpose of the whole. Now, would you advise me to begin attacking the delicate mysterious moving parts of the machine with a detonating ray before I know what it’s all about?’

‘I see your point, of course, but you’re becoming a mystic. The metaphor is farfetched.’

‘Not at all. These positronic robots were constructed along lines we know nothing of as yet and were intended to follow lines with which we are entirely unacquainted. About the only thing we know is that the robots were put aside in complete isolation, to work out their destiny by themselves. To ruin that isolation would be to ruin the experiment. If we go there in a body, introducing new, unforeseen factors, inducing unintended reactions, everything is ruined. The littlest disturbance – ‘

‘Poppycock! Theor Realo has already gone there.’

The Board Master lost his temper suddenly. ‘Don’t you suppose I know that? Do you suppose it would ever have happened if that cursed albino hadn’t been an ignorant fanatic without any knowledge of psychology at all? Galaxy knows what the idiot has done in the way of damage.’

There was a silence. The secretary clicked his teeth with a thoughtful fingernail. ‘I don’t know. . .. Idon’t know. But I’ve got to find out. And I can’t wait years.’

He left, and the Board Master turned seethingly to Brand, ‘And how are we going to stop him from going to the robot world if he wants to?’

‘I don’t see how he can go if we don’t let him. He doesn’t head the expedition.’

‘Oh, doesn’t he? That’s what I was about to tell you just before he came in. Ten ships of the fleet have landed on Dorlis since we arrived.’

‘What!’

‘Just that.’

‘But what for?’

‘That, my boy, is what I don’t understand, either.’

‘Mind if I drop in?’ said Wynne Murry, pleasantly, and Theor Realo looked up in sudden anxiety from the papers that lay in hopeless disarray on the desk before him.

‘Come in. I’ll clear off a seat for you.’ The albino hustled the mess off one of the two chairs in a state of twittering nerves.

Murry sat down and swung one long leg over the other. ‘Are you assigned a job here, too?’ He nodded at the desk.

Theor shook his head and smiled feebly. Almost automatically, he brushed the papers together in a heap and turned them face down.

In the months since he had returned to Dorlis with a hundred psychologists of various degrees of renown, he had felt himself pushed farther and farther from the center of things. There was room for him no longer. Except to answer questions on the actual state of things upon the robot world, which he alone had visited, he played no part. And even there he detected, or seemed to detect, anger that he should have gone, and not a competent scientist.

It was a thing to be resented. Yet, somehow, it had always been like that.

‘Pardon me?’ He had let Murry’s next remark slip.

The secretary repeated, ‘I say it’s surprising you’re not put to work, then. You made the original discovery, didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ the albino brightened. ‘But it went out of my hands. It got beyond me.’

‘You were on the robot world, though.’

‘That was a mistake, they tell me. I might have ruined everything.’

Murry grimaced. ‘What really gets them, I guess, is that you’ve got a lot of first-hand dope that they didn’t. Don’t let their fancy titles fool you into thinking you’re a nobody. A layman with common sense is better than a blind specialist. You and I – I’m a layman, too, you know – have to stand up for our rights. Here, have a cigarette.’

‘I don’t sm – I’ll take one, thank you.’ The albino felt himself warming to the long-bodied man opposite. He turned the papers face upward again, and lit up, bravely but uncertainly.

‘1wenty-five years.’ Theor spoke carefully, skirting around urgent coughs.