Her eyelids fluttered. She gazed up at him blankly, then stark terror gleamed from her eyes. "The robots!"

"No more of that!" He shook her roughly. "They're machines. They don't have consciousness; only the semblance of consciousness!"

Sofi sat up, asking, "What—?" in a bewildered voice.

"They don't think! They aren't conscious! They're like a mirror; they reflect what we expect them to do."

"Don't try to tell me that!" cried the girl springing to her feet. "Hell, haven't I seen them thinking? Where are they?"

"They've gone back to work."

"What?" said Sofi. She looked puzzled, passed her hand over her face.

"Don't you see?" Hen broke out jubilantly. "They're sensitive, inordinately sensitive, so sensitive that they even respond to our thoughts. From beginning to end they've done exactly what we—you expected them to do."

"Me?"

He came to a halt, said, "The fact is, you're a rebel, Sofi. If you weren't, do you think you'd be trying to develop independently a mine on an uninhabitable asteroid? Don't you see? You expected the robots to revolt because you couldn't imagine a rational creature willing to submit to a twenty-four hour work day from which he stood to gain nothing!"

"And I'm responsible for—everything?"

He nodded vigorously. "The robots respond to both of our thought patterns, of course, but primarily to yours. You're hyper-thyroid. The thyroid raises the energy level of the brain. They have done principally what you've expected them to do."

Sofi was recovering amazingly from her fright. She said, "If that isn't just like a man. Blame it on the woman. Even Adam—"

"Nonsense," Hen interrupted. "The robots haven't acted independently once. Not even to finish dismantling that robot in the lab. They went prospecting when you thought how silly it was for them to work for you when they could find a mine of their own.

"They wandered back aimlessly after they lost contact. But by that time I had inadvertently planted the thought in your mind that they were in revolt 

 Prev. P 19/20 next