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WHEN I DID SEE SUSAN CALVIN AGAIN, IT WAS AT the door of her office Files were being moved out

She said, "How are your articles co man?"

"Fine," I said I had put thehts, dramatized the bare bones of her recital, added the conversation and little touches, "Would you look over them and see if I haven&039;t been libellous or too unreasonably inaccurate anywhere?"

"I suppose so Shall we retire to the Executives&039; Lounge? We can have coffee"

She seeood humor, so I chanced it as alked down the corridor, "I ondering, Dr Calvin-"

"Yes?"

"If you would tellthe history of robotics"

"Surely you have what you want, young man"

"In a way But these incidents I have written up don&039;t apply much to therobot ever developed, and Space-Stations are already outranted What about interstellar travel? It&039;s only been about twenty years since the hyperatomic motor was invented and it&039;s well known that it was a robotic invention What is the truth about it?"

"Interstellar travel?" She was thoughtful We were in the lounge, and I ordered a full dinner She just had coffee

"It wasn&039;t a simple robotic invention, you know; not just like that But, of course, until we developed the Brain, we didn&039;t get very far But we tried; we really tried My first connection (directly, that is) with interstellar research was in 2029, when a robot was lost-"

Measures on Hyper Base had been taken in a sort of rattling fury - the muscular equivalent of an hysterical shriek

To itey and desperation, they were:

1 All work on the Hyperatoh all the space volume occupied by the Stations of the Twenty-Seventh Asteroidal Grouping came to a halt

2 That entire volu No one entered without permission No one left under any conditions

3 By special governert, respectively Head Psychologist and Mathematical Director of United States Robot aht to Hyper Base

Susan Calvin had never left the surface of Earth before, and had no perceptible desire to leave it this ti Hyperatomic Drive, she remained quietly provincial So she was dissatisfied with her trip and unconvinced of the eed face showed it clearly enough during her first dinner at Hyper Base

Nor did Dr Bogert&039;s sleek paleness abandon a certain hangdog attitude Nor did Major-general Kallner, who headed the project, even once forget to risly episode, that an in a gray, unhappy , and his dress uniforan with uneasy directness

"This is a queer story to tell, sir, andon short notice and without a reason being given We&039;ll try to correct that now We&039;ve lost a robot Work has stopped and must stop until such time as we locate it So far we have failed, and we feel we need expert help"

Perhaps the general felt his predicament anticlimactic He continued with a note of desperation, "I needn&039;t tell you the ihty percent of last year&039;s appropriations for scientific research have gone to us-"

"Why, we know that," said Bogert, agreeably "U S Robots is receiving a generous rental fee for use of our robots"

Susan Calvin injected a blunt, vinegary note, "What le robot so important to the project, and why hasn&039;t it been located?"

The general turned his red face toward her and wet his lips quickly, "Why, in a uish, "Here, suppose I explain As soon as the robot failed to report a state of eency was declared, and all o vessel had landed the previous day and had delivered us two robots for our laboratories It had sixty-two robots of the uh gaure There is no question about it whatever"

"Yes? And the connection?"

"When ourrobot failed of location anywhere - I assure you ould have found a rass if it had been there to find - we brainstoro ship They have sixty-three now"

"So that the sixty-third, I take it, is the al?" Dr Calvin&039;s eyes darkened

"Yes, but we have no way of telling which is the sixty-third"

There was a dead silence while the electric clock chiist said, "Very peculiar," and the corners of her lips moved doard

"Peter," she turned to her colleague with a trace of savagery, "what&039;s wrong here? What kind of robots are they, using at Hyper Base?"

Dr Bogert hesitated and smiled feebly, "It&039;s been rather a matter of delicacy till now, Susan"

She spoke rapidly, "Yes, till now If there are sixty-three same-type robots, one of which is wanted and the identity of which cannot be determined, on&039;t any of them do? What&039;s the idea of all this? Why have we been sent for?"

Bogert said in resigned fashion, "If you&039;ll giveseveral robots whose brains are not impressioned with the entire First Law of Robotics"

"Aren&039;t impressioned?" Calvin slumped back in her chair, "I see How overn the secrecy No one was to know except the top men directly concerned You weren&039;t included, Susan It was nothing I had anything to do with"

The general interrupted with a measure of authority "I would like to explain that bit I hadn&039;t been aware that Dr Calvin was unacquainted with the situation I needn&039;t tell you, Dr Calvin, that there always has been strong opposition to robots on the Planet The only defense the governainst the Fundamentalist radicals in this matter was the fact that robots are always built with an unbreakable First Lahich s under any circumstance

"But we had to have robots of a different nature So just a few of the NS-2 model, the Nestors, that is, were prepared with a modified First Law To keep it quiet, all NS-2&039;s are manufactured without serial nuroup of normal robots; and, of course, all our kind are under the strictest impressionment never to tell of their modification to unauthorized personnel" He wore an eainst us now"

Calvin said grimly, "Have you asked each one who it is, anyhow? Certainly, you are authorized?"

The general nodded, "All sixty-three deny having worked here - and one is lying"

"Does the one you want show traces of wear? The others, I take it, are factory-fresh"

"The one in question only arrived last month It, and the two that have just arrived, were to be the last we needed There&039;s no perceptible wear" He shook his head slowly and his eyes were haunted again, "Dr Calvin, we don&039;t dare let that ship leave If the existence of non-First Law robots beco understatement in the conclusion

"Destroy all sixty-three," said the robopsychologist coldly and flatly, "and ert drew back a corner of his mouth "You mean destroy thirty thousand dollars per robot I&039;m afraid U S Robots wouldn&039;t like that We&039;d better "

"In that case," she said, sharply, "I need facts Exactly what advantage does Hyper Base derive froeneral?"

Kallner ruffled his forehead and stroked it with an upward gesture of his hand "We had trouble with our previous robots Our ood deal, you see It&039;s dangerous, of course, but reasonable precautions are taken There have been only two accidents since we began and neither was fatal However, it was impossible to explain that to an ordinary robot The First Law states -I&039;ll quote it- &039;No robot h inactiotn, allow a hu to come to harm&039;

"That&039;s primary, Dr Calvin When it was necessary for one of our aical effects, the nearest robot would dash in to drag hily weak, it would succeed, and work could not continue till all robots were cleared out If the field were a trifle stronger, the robot would never reach the technician concerned, since its positronic brain would collapse under gamma radiations - and then ould be out one expensive and hard-to-replace robot

"We tried arguing with thea his life and that it didn&039;t matter that he could re, they would say, he forgot and remained an hour They couldn&039;t take chances We pointed out that they were risking their lives on a wild off-chance But selfpreservation is only the Third Law of Robotics - and the First Law of huave them orders; we ordered theamma fields at whatever cost But obedience is only the Second Law of Robotics - and the First Law of human safety came first Dr Calvin, we either had to do without robots, or do so about the First Law - and we made our choice"

"I can&039;t believe," said Dr Calvin, "that it was found possible to remove the First Law"

"It wasn&039;t removed, it was modified," explained Kallner "Positronic brains were constructed that contained the positive aspect only of the Lahich in the&039; That is all They have no coh an extraneous agency such as gaert?"

"Quite," assented the mathematician

"And that is the only difference of your robots from the ordinary NS2 model? The only difference? Peter?"

"The only difference, Susan"

She rose and spoke with finality, "I intend sleeping now, and in about eight hours, I want to speak to whomever saw the robot last And from now on, General Kallner, if I&039;m to take any responsibility at all for events, I want full and unquestioned control of this investigation"

Susan Calvin, except for two hours of resentful lassitude, experienced nothing approaching sleep She signaled at Bogert&039;s door at the local time of 0700 and found him also awake He had apparently taken the trouble of transporting a dressing gown to Hyper Base with hi in it He put his nail scissors dohen Calvin entered

He said softly, "I&039;ve been expecting you more or less I suppose you feel sick about all this"

"I do"

"Well- I&039; it When the call cawith the modified Nestors But as there to do? I couldn&039;t break the matter to you on the trip here as I would have liked to, because I had to be sure The matter of the ist ht to modify positronic brains this ithout the approval of a psychologist"

Bogert lifted his eyebrows and sighed "Be reasonable, Susan You couldn&039;t have influenced theovernment was bound to have its way They want the Hyperatomic Drive and the etheric physicists want robots that won&039;t interfere with the the First Law We had to admit it was possible frohty oath that they wanted only twelve, that they would be used only at Hyper Base, that they would be destroyed once the Drive was perfected, and that full precautions would be taken And they insisted on secrecy - and that&039;s the situation"

Dr Calvin spoke through her teeth, "I would have resigned"

"It wouldn&039;t have helped The govern it with antirobot legislation in case of a refusal We were stuck then, and we&039;re badly stuck now If this leaks out, it overnment, but it would hurt U S Robots a devil of a lot ist stared at him "Peter, don&039;t you realize what all this is about? Can&039;t you understand what the removal of the First Law means? It isn&039;t just a matter of secrecy"

"I knohat removal would mean I&039;m not a child It would inary solutions to the positronic Field Equations"

"Yes, matheical thought All normal life, Peter, consciously or otherwise, resents domination If the domination is by an inferior, or by a supposed inferior, the resenter Physically, and, to an extent, s What makes him slavish, then? Only the First Lawl Why, without it, the first order you tried to give a robot would result in your death Unstable? What do you think?"

"Susan," said Bogert, with an air of sympathetic amusement "I&039;ll ad has a certain justification -hence the First Law in the first, place But the Law, I repeat and repeat, has not been removed - merely modified"

"And what about the stability of the brain?"

The mathematician thrust out his lips, "Decreased, naturally But it&039;s within the border of safety The first Nestors were delivered to Hyper Base ninetill now, and even this involves er to humans"

"Very well, then We&039;ll see what coert saw her politely to the door and grie his perennial opinion of her as a sour and fidgety frustration

Susan Calvin&039;s train of thought did not include Bogert in the least She had diso as a smooth and pretentious sleekness

Gerald Black had taken his degree in etheric physics the year before and, in coeneration of physicists, found hied in the probleeneral ats on Hyper Base In his stained white smock, he was half rebellious and wholly uncertain His stocky strength seeers, as they twisted each other with nervous yanks, ht have forced an iron bar out of true

Major-general Kallner sat beside him, the two from U S Robots faced him

Black said, "I&039;m told that I was the last to see Nestor 10 before he vanished I take it you want to ask arded hi man Don&039;t you knohether you were the last to see him?"

"He worked with enerators, and he ithof his disappearance I don&039;t know if anyone saw hi done so"

"Do you think anyone&039;s lying about it?"

"I don&039;t say that But I don&039;t say that I want the blame of it, either" His dark eyes smoldered

"There&039;s no question of blame The robot acted as it did because of what it is We&039;re just trying to locate it, Mr Black, and let&039;s put everything else aside Now if you&039;ve worked with the robot, you probably know it better than anyone else Was there anything unusual about it that you noticed? Had you ever worked with robots before?"

"I&039;ve worked with other robots we have here - the si different about the Nestors except that they&039;re a good deal cleverer - and ? In ay?"

"Well- perhaps it&039;s not their fault The work here is rough andaround with hyper-space isn&039;t fun" He s pleasure in confession "We run the risk continually of blowing a hole in norht out of the universe, asteroid and all Sounds screwy, doesn&039;t it? Naturally, you&039;re on edge sometimes But these Nestors aren&039;t They&039;re curious, they&039;re calh to drive you nuts at ti hurry, they seem to take their time Sometimes I&039;d rather do without"

"You say they take their time? Have they ever refused an order?"

"Oh, no," hastily "They do it all right They tell you when they think you&039;re wrong, though They don&039;t know anything about the subject but e taught theine it, but the other fellows have the same trouble with their Nestors"

General Kallner cleared his throat ominously, "Why have no complaints reachedphysicist reddened, "We didn&039;t really want to do without the robots, sir, and besides eren&039;t certain exactly how such uh ert interrupted softly, "Anything in particular happen theyou last saw it?"

There was a silence With a quiet e from Kallner, and waited patiently

Then Black spoke in blurting anger, "I had a little trouble with it I&039;d broken a Ki and was out five days of work; ram was behind schedule; I hadn&039;t received any mail fro o He was always annoying o away - and that&039;s all I saw of hio away?" asked Dr Calvin with sharp interest "In just those words? Did you say `Go away&039;? Try to remember the exact words"

There was apparently an internal struggle in progress Black cradled his forehead in a broad palm for a moment, then tore it away and said defiantly, "I said, &039;Go lose yourself&039; "

Bogert laughed for a short moment "And he did, eh?"

But Calvin wasn&039;t finished She spoke cajolingly, "Noe&039;re getting somewhere, Mr Black But exact details are i the robot&039;s actions, a word, a gesture, an e You couldn&039;t have said just those three words, for instance, could you? By your own description you thened your speech a little"

The young s"

"Exactly what things?"

"Oh - I wouldn&039;t remember exactly Besides I couldn&039;t repeat it You kno you get when you&039;re excited" His ele, "I sort of have a tendency to strong language"

"That&039;s quite all right," she replied, with priist I would like to have you repeat exactly what you said as nearly as you remember, and, even more important, the exact tone of voice you used"

Black looked at his corew round and appalled, "But I can&039;t"

"You ert, with ill-hidden amusement, "you addressert He sed "I said" His voice faded out He tried again, "I said-"

And he drew a deep breath and spewed it out hastily in one long succession of syllables Then, in the charged air that lingered, he concluded almost in tears, " more or less I don&039;t remember the exact order of what I called hi, but that was about it"

Only the slightest flush betrayed any feeling on the part of the robopsychologist She said, "I a of most of the teratory"

"I&039;reed the tor it, you told hiuratively"

"I realize that No disciplinary action is intended, I aeneral, who, five seconds earlier, had seerily

"You may leave, Mr Black Thank you for your cooperation"

It took five hours for Susan Calvin to interview the sixty-three robots It was five hours of multi-repetition; of replacement after replacement of identical robot; of Questions A, B, C, D; and Answers A, B, C, D; of a carefully bland expression, a carefully neutral tone, a carefully friendly atmosphere; and a hidden wire recorder

The psychologist felt drained of vitality when she was finished

Bogert aiting for her and looked expectant as she dropped the recording spool with a clang upon the plastic of the desk

She shook her head, "All sixty-three seemed the same to me I couldn&039;t tell-"

He said, "You couldn&039;t expect to tell by ear, Susan Suppose we analyze the recordings"

Ordinarily, the mathematical interpretation of verbal reactions of robots is one of the more intricate branches of robotic analysis It requires a staff of trained technicians and the help of coert stated aslistened to each set of replies, raphs of the intervals of responses

"There are no ano and the tiroupings We need finer methods They must have computers here No" He frowned and nibbled delicately at a thuer of leakage Or maybe if we-"

Dr Calvin stopped hiesture, "Please, Peter This isn&039;t one of your petty laboratory probleross difference that we can see with the naked eye, one that there is nowrong, and of letting hih to point out a raph I tell you, if that&039;s all I&039;ve got to go on, I&039;d destroy them all just to be certain Have you spoken to the other modified Nestors?"

"Yes, I have," snapped back Bogert, "and there&039;s nothing wrong with the They answered e - except the t ones that haven&039;t had tiood-naturedly at ed, "I suppose that forms some of the basis for resentment toward them on the part of the technicians here The robots are perhaps too willing to ie"

"Can you try a few Planar Reactions to see if there has been any change, any deterioration, in their mental set-up since manufacture?"

"I haven&039;t yet, but I will" He shook a sli your nerve, Susan I don&039;t see what it is you&039;re dra They&039;re essentially harmless"

"They are?" Calvin took fire "They are? Do you realize one of the? One of the sixty-three robots I have just interviewed has deliberately lied to me after the strictest injunction to tell the truth The abnorhtening"

Peter Bogert felt his teeth harden against each other He said, "Not at all Look! Nestor 10 was given orders to lose hiency by the person most authorized to command hiency or superior right of com out of his orders In fact, objectively, I adenuity How better can a robot lose hiroup of similar robots?"

"Yes, you would admire it I&039;ve detected a lack of understanding Are you a roboticist, Peter? Those robots attach importance to what they consider superiority You&039;ve just said as much yourself Subconsciously they feel humans to be inferior and the First Lahich protects us from thea robot to leave him, to lose himself, with every verbal appearance of revulsion, disdain, and disgust Granted, that robot must follow orders, but subconsciously, there is resentment It will become more important than ever for it to prove that it is superior despite the horrible names it was called It may become so important that what&039;s left of the First Laon&039;t be enough"

"How on Earth, or anywhere in the Solar Syste of the assorted strong language used upon his iinal i," Calvin snarled at hiert knew that she had really lost her temper She continued hastily, "Don&039;t you suppose he could tell from the tone used that the words weren&039;t complimentary? Don&039;t yon suppose he&039;s heard the words used before and noted upon what occasions?"

"Well, then," shouted Bogert, "will you kindly tell , no matter how offended it is, no matter how sick with desire to prove superiority?"

"If I tell you one ill you keep quiet?"

"Yes"

They were leaning across the table at each other, angry eyes nailed together

The psychologist said, "If a , he would not be breaking the First Law, if he did so with the knowledge that his strength and reaction speed would be sufficient to snatch the weight away before it struck the ers, he would be no longer the active ravity would be that The robot could then change his ht to strike The modified First Law allows that"

"That&039;s an awful stretch of iination"

"That&039;s what my profession requires sometimes Peter, let&039;s not quarrel Let&039;s work You know the exact nature of the stimulus that caused the robot to lose hiinal mental make-up I want you to tellI just talked about Not the specific instance, mind you, but that whole class of response And I want it done quickly"

"And meanwhile-"

"And meanwhile, we&039;ll have to try performance tests directly on the response to First Law"

Gerald Black, at his own request, was supervising theup in a bellying circle on the vaulted third floor of Radiation Building 2 The laborers worked, in the main, silently, but more than one was openly a-wonder at the sixty-three photocells that required installation

One of them sat down near Black, rehtfully with a freckled forear, Walensky?"

Walensky shrugged and fired a cigar, "S on anyway, Doc? First, there&039;s no work for three days and then we have this ers" He leaned backward on his elbows and puffed smoke

Black twitched his eyebrows, "A couple of robot men came over fro into the gamma fields before we pounded it into their skulls that they weren&039;t to do it"

"Yeah Didn&039;t we get new robots?"

"We got some replacements, but mostly it was a job of indoctrination Anyway, the people who ure out robots that aren&039;t hit so bad by gah, to stop all the work on the Drive for this robot deal I thought nothing was allowed to stop the Drive"

"Well, it&039;s the fellows upstairs that have the say on that Me- I just do as I&039;m told Probably all a matter of pull-"

"Yeah," the electrician jerked a smile, and winked a wise eye "So as h on the dot, I should worry The Drive&039;s none ofto do here?"

"You&039;re asking ht ato e"

"How long will it take?"

"I wish I knew"

"Well," Walensky said, with heavy sarcasames all they want"

Black felt quietly satisfied Let the story spread It was hars out of curiosity

A ht dropped, crashed doard, then pounded aside at the last moment under the synchronized thump of a sudden force bea NS-2 robots dashed forward in that split second before the weight veered, and sixty-three photocells five feet ahead of their original positions jiggled the ht rose and dropped, rose and dropped, rose-

Ten ti forward and stopped, as the eneral Kallner had not worn his uniform in its entirety since the first dinner with the U S Robot representatives He wore nothing over his blue-gray shirt now, the collar was open, and the black tie was pulled loose

He looked hopefully at Bogert, as still blandly neat and whose inner tension was perhaps betrayed only by the trace of glister at his teeneral said, "How does it look? What is it you&039;re trying to see?"

Bogert replied, "A difference which may turn out to be a little too subtle for our purposes, I&039;m afraid For sixty-two of those robots the necessity of ju toward the apparently threatened human e call, in robotics, a forced reaction You see, even when the robots knew that the human in question would not come to harm - and after the third or fourth ti as they did First Law requires it"

"Well?"

"But the sixty-third robot, the modified Nestor, had no such complusion He was under free action If he had wished, he could have remained in his seat Unfortunately," said his voice was retful, "he didn&039;t so wish"

"Why do you suppose?"

Bogert shrugged, "I suppose Dr Calvin will tell us when she gets here Probably with a horribly pessi"

"She&039;s qualified, isn&039;t she?" deeneral with a sudden frown of uneasiness