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.”