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.