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 milli-second 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.