“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 hinges 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.