“Give it here!”

I allowed him to wrest it from my grasp. In any case I could not have prevented him. He shoved me backwards against the rusty bulkhead with a clang. He pushed the nozzle of the syringe down into the retort and withdrew it filled with Moon Glow. He opened an inspection plate in his ventral region and squirted himself generously.

It was quite a dose. He waited for a moment. “I feel nothing,” he said finally. “I do not believe it is anything more than common lubricating oil.” He was silent for another moment. “There is an ease of movement,” he said.

“No paralysis?” I asked.

“Paral—? You stupid, rusty old robot!” He helped himself to another syringeful of Moon Glow. The stuff brought twenty credits an ounce, but I did not begrudge it him.

He flexed his superbly articulated joints in three directions, and I could hear his power unit building up within him to a whining pitch. He took a shuffling sidestep, and then another, gazing down at his feet, with arms akimbo.

“The light gravity here is superb, superb, superb, superb, superb,” he said, skipping a bit.

“Isn’t it?” I said.

“Almost negligible,” he said.

“True.”

“You have been very kind to me,” MS-33 said. “Extremely, extraordinarily, incomparably, incalculably kind.” He used up all the adjectives in his memory pack. “I wonder if you would mind awfully much if—”

“Not at all,” I said. “Help yourself. By the way, friend, would you mind telling me what your real mission of your party is here on Phobos. The Senator forgot to say.”

“Secret,” he said. “Horribly top secret. As a dutiful subject—I mean servant—of Earth, I could not, of course, divulge it to anyone. If I could—” his neon eyes glistened, “if I could, you would, of course, be the first to know. The very first.” He threw one nickel-plated arm about my shoulder.

“I see,” I said, “and just what is it that you are not allowed to tell me?”

“Why, that we are making a preliminary survey here on Phobos, of course, to determine whether or not it is worthwhile to send salvage for scrap. Earth is short of metals, and it depends upon what the old ma—the master says in his 

 Prev. P 12/16 next