"That's not all. They wouldn't let you go into this blind."

"No," she admitted nervously. "They mentioned something else that struck me at the time, but it was too golden an opportunity to pass up. They said that should the experiment prove—ah—impractical, they would have the infection isolated on a small asteroid well out in the belt."

"Exactly. Look, I helped develop these robots. I've been on the problem seven years, but it was started long before I joined the experimental staff of Robots Incorporated." He paused.

"In fact," he went on dryly, "they were predicted even before science had advanced to a point where it could set up the intricate nervous system necessary. A conscious machine, Sofi, is the result of fusing two sciences which have always been considered more or less antagonistic."

"You mean psychology and physics?" Sofi had begun to pace nervously up and down the room.

He nodded.

"It was a logical deduction from mechanistic psychology, which itself is an outgrowth of the old school of Behaviorism. Mental life is response to stimulus. Consciousness is like the spark between two electrodes in a circuit of feeling arising from viscera, muscles, blood vessels, glands—"

"Get to the point!" commanded Sofi.

Hen set his jaw. He was sounding like a lecturer, he realized. But it annoyed him for the girl to point it out.

"I'm getting there as fast as I can. We were faced with devising an intricate mechanical nervous system. Thus, should a joint grow warm from lack of lubrication, an impulse of distress could be telegraphed to the central clearing center, identified, shunted to the lubricatory system which would oil the joints. A spark of consciousness would be created. It would manifest itself as acute distress in the defective joint.

"We incorporated a simple metabolism by which the robots converted raw stuff into fuel and lubrication. The rest of the mechanism was much the same as that of any animal confronted by the necessity of self preservation. Organs for locomotion and work. Organs for perception."

Sofi frowned. "So?"

"Most things in nature serve multiple purposes. Arms and legs are no exception. They provide offensive as well as defensive weapons. We've succeeded in 

 Prev. P 5/20 next