“Well, we’re not the only ones with calculating machines. Ours may be positronic, but that doesn’t mean they’re better. Robertson is calling a big meeting about it tomorrow. He’s been waiting for you to come back.”

Robertson of U.S. Robot & Mechanical Men Corporation, son of the founder, pointed his lean nose at his general manager and his Adam’s apple jumped as he said, “You start now. Let’s get this straight.”

The general manager did so with alacrity, “Here’s the deal now, chief. Consolidated Robots approached us a month ago with a funny sort of proposition. They brought about five tons of figures, equations, all that sort of stuff. It was a problem, see, and they wanted an answer from The Brain. The terms were as follows—”

He ticked them off on thick fingers: “A hundred thousand for us if there is no solution and we can tell them the missing factors. Two hundred thousand if there is a solution, plus costs of construction of the machine involved, plus quarter interest in all profits derived therefrom. The problem concerns the development of an interstellar engine—”

Robertson frowned and his lean figure stiffened, “Despite the fact that they have a thinking machine of their own. Right?”

“Exactly what makes the whole proposition a foul ball, chief. Levver, take it from there.”

Abe Levver looked up from the far end of the conference table and smoothed his stubbled chin with a faint rasping sound. He smiled:

“It’s this way, sir. Consolidated had a thinking machine. It’s broken.”

“What?” Robertson half rose.

“That’s right. Broken! It’s kaput. Nobody knows why, but I got hold of some pretty interesting guesses—like, for instance, that they asked it to give them an interstellar engine with the same set of information they came to us with, and that it cracked their machine wide open. It’s scrap—just scrap now.”

“You get it, chief?” The general manager was wildly jubilant. “You get it? There isn’t any industrial research group of any size that isn’t trying to develop a space-warp engine, and Consolidated and U.S. Robots have the lead on the field with our super robot-brains. Now that they’ve managed to foul theirs up, we have a clear field. That’s the nub, the… uh… motivation. It will take them six years at least to build another and they’re sunk, unless they can break ours, too, with the same problem.”

The president of U.S. Robots bulged his eyes, “Why, the dirty rats—”

“Hold on, chief. There’s more to this.” He pointed a finger with a wide sweep, “Lanning, take it!”

Dr. Alfred Lanning viewed the proceedings with faint scorn—his usual reaction to the doings of the vastly better-paid business and sales divisions. His unbelievable gray eyebrows hunched low and his voice was dry:

“From a scientific standpoint the situation, while not entirely clear, is subject to intelligent analysis. The question of interstellar travel under present conditions of physical theory is… uh… vague. The matter is wide open—and the information given by Consolidated to its thinking machine, assuming these we have to be the same, was similarly wide open. Our mathematical department has given it a thorough analysis, and it seems Consolidated has included everything. Its material for submission contains all known developments of Franciacci’s space-warp theory, and, apparently, all pertinent astrophysical and electronic data. It’s quite a mouthful.”