Hen hesitated. "All right." He went out onto the sun deck instead, snapped on the communicator.

"R-7," he called. "R-7."

"Here," came the robot's voice through the audio. "Is that you, father?"

"Father?" Hen ejaculated. He heard Sofi giggle. "Where did you get that idea?"

"Didn't you make us, father?"

"Yes," he admitted. Sofi was laughing out loud. "But you didn't think of that yourself."

"The girl told us, father," said the robot.

Hen ground his teeth. That, of course, was Sofi's idea of a joke. "Where have you been?" he asked.

"Prospecting."

"Prospecting for what?"

"Radium, father."

Sofi said, "Ask them if they found anything!" Her voice was eager.

Hen narrowed his black eyes, ignored her. He said to R-7 over the transmitter, "Go back to work at once."

"But you don't work, father."

Hen felt a surge of uncertainty. The robots were too delicately receptive to expect to keep them in ignorance. Their perceptions were infinitely more sensitive than man's. Even on this asteroid there were too many factors involved to regulate their environment. He had tried to implant science without revealing the greater implication of science. But language was too faulty a tool. There was the girl, too—headstrong, excitable, hyper-thyroid. It was amazing how faithfully the robots tended to reflect her emotional instability.

How much of the robots' erraticness originated in Sofi's inexact thinking?

He said, "Everything has to work."

"Why?"

"Man either produces the needs of his body or he dies," he explained with growing irritability. The conversation was progressing further and 

 Prev. P 11/20 next