2
A FRIEND IS ENCOUNTERED

Baley was losing his fight. Reason alone was not enough.

Baley told himself over and over: Men live in the open all their lives. The Spacers do so now. Our ancestors on Earth did it in the past. There is no real harm in wall-lessness. It is only my mind that tells me differently, and it is wrong.

But all that did not help. Something above and beyond reason cried out for walls and would have none of space.

As time passed, he thought he would not succeed. He would be cowering at the end, trembling and pitiful. The Spacer they would send for him (with filters in his nose to keep out germs, and gloves on his hands to prevent contact) would not even honestly despise him. The Spacer would feel only disgust.

Baley held on grimly.

When the ship stopped and the deceleration harness automatically uncoupled, while the hydraulic system retracted into the wall, Baley remained in his seat. He was afraid, and determined not to show it.

He looked away at the first quiet sound of the door of his room opening. There was the eye-corner flash of a tall, bronze-haired figure entering; a Spacer, one of those proud descendants of Earth who had disowned their heritage.

The Spacer spoke. “Partner Elijah!”

Baley’s head turned toward the speaker with a jerk. His eyes rounded and he rose almost without volition.

He stared at the face; at the broad, high cheekbones, the absolute calm of the facial lines, the symmetry of the body, most of all at that level look out of nerveless blue eyes.

“D-daneel.”

The Spacer said, “It is pleasant that you remember me, Partner Elijah.”

“Remember you!” Baley felt relief wash over him. This being was a bit of Earth, a friend, a comfort, a savior. He had an almost unbearable desire to rush to the Spacer and embrace him, to hug him wildly, and laugh and pound his back and do all the foolish things old friends did when meeting once again after a separation.

But he didn’t. He couldn’t. He could only step forward, and hold out his hand and say, “I’m not likely to forget you, Daneel.”

“That is pleasant,” said Daneel, nodding gravely. “As you are well aware, it is quite impossible for me, while in working order, to forget you. It is well that I see you again.”

Daneel took Baley’s hand and pressed it with firm coolness, his fingers closing to a comfortable but not painful pressure and then releasing it.

Baley hoped earnestly that the creature’s unreadable eyes could not penetrate Baley’s mind and see that wild moment, just past and not yet entirely subsided, when all of Baley had concentrated into a feeling of an intense friendship that was almost love.

After all, one could not love as a friend this Daneel Olivaw, who was not a man at all, but only a robot.

The robot that looked so like a man said, “I have asked that a robot-driven ground-transport vessel be connected to this ship by air-tube——”

Baley frowned. “An air-tube?”

“Yes. It is a common technique, frequently used in space, in order that personnel and matériel be transferred from one vessel to another without the necessity of special equipment against vacuum. It would seem then that you are not acquainted with the technique.”

“No,” said Baley, “but I get the picture.”

“It is, of course, rather complicated to arrange such a device between spaceship and ground vehicle, but I have requested that it be done. Fortunately, the mission on which you and I are engaged is one of high priority. Difficulties are smoothed out quickly.”

“Are you assigned to the murder case too?”

“Have you not been informed of that? I regret not having told you at once.” There was, of course, no sign of regret on the robot’s perfect face. “It was Dr. Han Fastolfe, whom you met on Earth during our previous partnership and whom I hope you remember, who first suggested you as an appropriate investigator in this case. He made it a condition that I be assigned to work with you once more.”

Baley managed a smile. Dr. Fastolfe was a native of Aurora and Aurora was the strongest of the Outer Worlds. Apparently the advice of an Auroran bore weight.

Baley said, “A team that works shouldn’t be broken up, eh?” (The first exhilaration of Daneel’s appearance was fading and the compression about Baley’s chest was returning.)

“I do not know if that precise thought was in his mind, Partner Elijah. From the nature of his orders to me, I should think that he was interested in having assigned to work with you one who would have experience with your world and would know of your consequent peculiarities.”

“Peculiarities!” Baley frowned and felt offended. It was not a term he liked in connection with himself.

“So that I could arrange the air-tube, for example. I am well aware of your aversion to open spaces as a result of your upbringing in the Cities of Earth.”

Perhaps it was the effect of being called “peculiar,” the feeling that he had to counterattack or lose caste to a machine, that drove Baley to change the subject sharply. Perhaps it was just that life-long training prevented him from leaving any logical contradiction undisturbed.

He said, “There was a robot in charge of my welfare on board this ship; a robot” (a touch of malice intruded itself here) “that looks like a robot. Do you know it?”

“I spoke to it before coming on board.”

“What’s its designation? How do I make contact with it?”

“It is RX-2475. It is customary on Solaria to use only serial numbers for robots.” Daneel’s calm eyes swept the control panel near the door. “This contact will signal it.”

Baley looked at the control panel himself and, since the contact to which Daneel pointed was labeled RX, its identification seemed quite unmysterious.

Baley put his finger over it and in less than a minute the robot, the one that looked like a robot, entered.

“Baley said, “You are RX-2475.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You told me earlier that someone would arrive to escort me off the ship. Did you mean him?” Baley pointed at Daneel.

The eyes of the two robots met. RX-2475 said, “His papers identify him as the one who was to meet you.”

“Were you told in advance anything about him other than his papers? Was he described to you?”

“No, sir. I was given his name, however.”

“Who gave you the information?”

“The captain of the ship, sir.”

“Who is a Solarian?”

“Yes, sir.”

Baley licked his lips. The next question would be decisive.

He said, “What were you told would be the name of the one you were expecting?”

RX-2475 said, “Daneel Olivaw, sir.”

“Good boy! You may leave now.”

There was the robotic bow and then the sharp about-face. RX-2475 left.

Baley turned to his partner and said thoughtfully, “You are not telling me all the truth, Daneel.”

“In what way, Partner Elijah?” asked Daneel.

“While I was talking to you earlier, I recalled an odd point. RX-2475, when it told me I would have an escort, said a man would come for me. I remember that quite well.”

Daneel listened quietly and said nothing.

Baley went on. “I thought the robot might have made a mistake. I thought also that perhaps a man had indeed been assigned to meet me and had later been replaced by you, RX-2475 not being informed of the change. But you heard me check that. Your papers were described to it and it was given your name. But it was not quite given your name at that, was it, Daneel?”

“Indeed, it was not given my entire name,” agreed Daneel.

“Your name is not Daneel Olivaw, but R. Daneel Olivaw, isn’t it? Or, in full, Robot Daneel Olivaw.”

“You are quite correct, Partner Elijah.”

“From which it all follows that RX-2475 was never informed that you are a robot. It was allowed to think of you as a man. With your manlike appearance, such a masquerade is possible.”

“I have no quarrel with your reasoning.”

“Then let’s proceed.” Baley was feeling the germs of a kind of savage delight. He was on the track of something. It couldn’t be anything much, but this was the kind of tracking he could do well. It was something he could do well enough to be called half across space to do. He said, “Now why should anyone want to deceive a miserable robot? It doesn’t matter to it whether you are man or robot. It follows orders in either case. A reasonable conclusion then is that the Solarian captain who informed the robot and the Solarian officials who informed the captain did not themselves know you were a robot. As I say, that is one reasonable conclusion, but perhaps not the only one. Is this one true?”

“I believe it is.”

“All right, then. Good guess. Now why? Dr. Han Fastolfe, in recommending you as my partner, allows the Solarians to think you are a human. Isn’t that a dangerous thing? The Solarians, if they find out, may be quite angry. Why was it done?”

The humanoid robot said, “It was explained to me thus, Partner Elijah. Your association with a human of the Outer Worlds would raise your status in the eyes of the Solarians. Your association with a robot would lower it. Since I was familiar with your ways and could work with you easily, it was thought reasonable to allow the Solarians to accept me as a man without actually deceiving them by a positive statement to that effect.”

Baley did not believe it. It seemed like the kind of careful consideration for an Earthman’s feelings that did not come naturally to a Spacer, not even to as enlightened a one as Fastolfe.

He considered an alternative and said, “Are the Solarians well known among the Outer Worlds for the production of robots?”

“I am glad,” said Daneel, “that you have been briefed concerning the inner economy of Solaria.”

“Not a word,” said Baley. “I can guess the spelling of the word Solaria and there my knowledge stops.”

“Then I do not see, Partner Elijah, what it was that impelled you to ask that question, but it is a most pertinent one. You have hit the mark. My mind-store of information includes the fact that, of the fifty Outer Worlds, Solaria is by far the best known for the variety and excellence of robot models it turns out. It exports specialized models to all the other Outer Worlds.”

Baley nodded in grim satisfaction. Naturally Daneel did not follow an intuitive mental leap that used human weakness as a starting point. Nor did Baley feel impelled to explain the reasoning. If Solaria turned out to be a world expert in robotics, Dr. Han Fastolfe and his associates might have purely personal and very human motives for demonstrating their own prize robot. It would have nothing at all to do with an Earthman’s safety or feelings.

They would be asserting their own superiority by allowing the expert Solarians to be fooled into accepting a robot of Auroran handiwork as a fellow-man.

Baley felt much better. Strange that all the thought, all the intellectual powers he could muster, could not succeed in lifting him out of panic; and yet a sop to his own vainglory succeeded at once.

The recognition of the vainglory of the Spacers helped too.

He thought: Jehoshaphat, we’re all human; even the Spacers.

Aloud he said, almost flippantly, “How long do we have to wait for the ground-car? I’m ready.”

The air-tube gave signs of not being well adapted to its present use. Man and humanoid stepped out of the spaceship erect, moving along flexible mesh that bent and swayed under their weight. (In space, Baley imagined hazily, men transferring weightlessly from ship to ship might easily skim along the length of the tube, impelled by an initial Jump.)

Toward the other end the tube narrowed clumsily, its meshing bunching as though some giant hand had constricted it. Daneel, carrying the flashlight, got down on all fours and so did Baley. They traveled the last twenty feet in that fashion, moving at last into what was obviously a ground-car.

Daneel closed the door through which they had entered, sliding it shut carefully. There was a heavy, clicking noise that might have been the detachment of the air-tube.

Baley looked about curiously. There was nothing too exotic about the ground-car. There were two seats in tandem, each of which could hold three. There were doors at each end of each seat. The glossy sections that might ordinarily have been windows were black and opaque, as a result, undoubtedly, of appropriate polarization. Baley was acquainted with that.

The interior of the car was lit by two round spots of yellow illumination in the ceiling and, in short, the only thing Baley felt to be strange was the transmitter set into the partition immediately before the front seat and, of course, the added fact that there were no visible controls.

Baley said, “I suppose the driver is on the other side of this partition.”

Daneel said, “Exactly so, Partner Elijah. And we can give our orders in this fashion.” He leaned forward slightly and flicked a toggle switch that set a spot of red light to flickering. He said quietly, “You may start now. We are ready.”

There was a muted whir that faded almost at once, a very slight, very transitory pressing against the back of the seat, and then nothing.

Baley said in surprise, “Are we moving?”

Daneel said, “We are. The car does not move on wheels but glides along a diamagnetic force-field. Except for acceleration and deceleration, you will feel nothing.”

“What about curves?”

“The car will bank automatically to compensate. Its level is maintained when traveling up- or downhill.”

“The controls must be complicated,” said Baley dryly.

“Quite automatic. The driver of the vehicle is a robot.”

“Umm.” Baley had about all he wanted on the ground-car. He said, “How long will this take?”

“About an hour. Air travel would have been speedier, but I was concerned to keep you enclosed and the aircraft models available on Solaria do not lend themselves to complete enclosure as does a ground-car such as that in which we are now riding.”

Baley felt annoyed at the other’s “concern.” He felt like a baby in the charge of its nurse. He felt almost as annoyed, oddly enough, at Daneel’s sentences. It seemed to him that such needlessly formal sentence structure might easily betray the robotic nature of the creature.

For a moment Baley stared curiously at R. Daneel Olivaw. The robot, looking straight ahead, was motionless and unself-conscious under the other’s gaze.

Daneel’s skin texture was perfect, the individual hair on head and body had been lovingly and intricately manufactured and placed. The muscle movement under the skin was most realistic. No pains, however extravagant, had been spared. Yet Baley knew, from personal knowledge, that limbs and chest could be split open along invisible seams so that repairs might be made. He knew there was metal and silicone under that realistic skin. He knew a positronic brain, most advanced but only positronic, nestled in the hollow of the skull. He knew that Daneel’s “thoughts” were only short-lived positronic currents flowing along paths rigidly designed and foreordained by the manufacturer.

But what were the signs that would give that away to the expert eye that had no foreknowledge? The trifling unnaturalness of Daneel’s manner of speech? The unemotional gravity that rested so steadily upon him? The very perfection of his humanity?

But he was wasting time. Baley said, “Let’s get on with it, Daneel. I suppose that before arriving here, you were briefed on matters Solarian?”

“I was, Partner Elijah.”

“Good. That’s more than they did for me. How large is the world?”

“Its diameter is 9500 miles. It is the outermost of three planets and the only inhabited one. In climate and atmosphere it resembles Earth; its percentage of fertile land is higher; its useful mineral content lower, but of course less exploited. The world is self-supporting and can, with the aid of its robot exports, maintain a high standard of living.”

Baley said, “What’s the population?”

“Twenty thousand people, Partner Elijah.”

Baley accepted that for a moment, then he said mildly, “You mean twenty million, don’t you?” His scant knowledge of the Outer Worlds was enough to tell him that, although the worlds were underpopulated by Earthly standards, the individual populations were in the millions.

“Twenty thousand people, Partner Elijah,” said the robot again.

“You mean the planet has just been settled?”

“Not at all. It has been independent for nearly two centuries, and it was settled for a century or more before that. The population is deliberately maintained at twenty thousand, that being considered optimum by the Solarians themselves.”

“How much of the planet do they occupy?”

“All the fertile portions.”

“Which is, in square miles?”

“Thirty million square miles, including marginal areas.”

“For twenty thousand people?”

“There are also some two hundred million working positronic robots, Partner Elijah.”

“Jehoshaphat! That’s—ten thousand robots per human.”

“It is by far the highest such ratio among the Outer Worlds, Partner Elijah. The next highest, on Aurora, is only fifty to one.”

“What can they use so many robots for? What do they want with all that food?”

“Food is a relatively minor item. The mines are more important, and power production more important still.”

Baley thought of all those robots and felt a trifle dizzy. Two hundred million robots! So many among so few humans. The robots must litter the landscape. An observer from without might think Solaria a world of robots altogether and fail to notice the thin human leaven.

He felt a sudden need to see. He remembered the conversation with Minnim and the sociologic prediction of Earth’s danger. It seemed far off, a bit unreal, but he remembered. His personal dangers and difficulties since leaving Earth dimmed the memory of Minnim’s voice stating enormities with cool and precise enunciation, but never blotted it out altogether.

Baley had lived too long with duty to allow even the overwhelming fact of open space to stop him in its performance. Data collected from a Spacer’s words, or from those of a Spacer robot for that matter, was the sort of thing that was already available to Earth’s sociologists. What was needed was direct observation and it was his job, however unpleasant, to collect it.

He inspected the upper portion of the ground-car. “Is this thing a convertible, Daneel?”

“I beg your pardon, Partner Elijah, but I do not follow your meaning.”

“Can the car’s top be pushed back? Can it be made open to the—the sky?” (He had almost said “dome” out of habit.)

“Yes, it can.”

“Then have that done, Daneel. I would like to take a look.”

The robot responded gravely, “I am sorry, but I cannot allow that.”

Baley felt astonished. He said, “Look, R. Daneel” (he stressed the R.). “Let’s rephrase that. I order you to lower the top.”

The creature was a robot, manlike or not. It had to follow orders.

But Daneel did not move. He said, “I must explain that it is my first concern to spare you harm. It has been clear to me on the basis both of my instructions and of my own personal experience that you would suffer harm at finding yourself in large, empty spaces. I cannot, therefore, allow you to expose yourself to that.”

Baley could feel his face darkening with an influx of blood and at the same time could feel the complete uselessness of anger. The creature was a robot, and Baley knew the First Law of Robotics well.

It went: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Everything else in a robot’s positronic brain—that of any robot on any world in the Galaxy—had to bow to that prime consideration. Of course a robot had to follow orders, but with one major, all-important qualification. Following orders was only the Second Law of Robotics.

It went: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

Baley forced himself to speak quietly and reasonably. “I think I can endure it for a short time, Daneel.”

“That is not my feeling, Partner Elijah.”

“Let me be the judge, Daneel.”

“If that is an order, Partner Elijah, I cannot follow it.”

Baley let himself lounge back against the softly upholstered seat. The robot would, of course, be quite beyond the reach of force. Daneel’s strength, if exerted fully, would be a hundred times that of flesh and blood. He would be perfectly capable of restraining Baley without ever hurting him.

Baley was armed. He could point a blaster at Daneel, but, except for perhaps a momentary sensation of mastery, that action would only succeed in greater frustration. A threat of destruction was useless against a robot. Self-preservation was only the Third Law.

It went: A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

It would not trouble Daneel to be destroyed if the alternative were breaking the First Law. And Baley did not wish to destroy Daneel. Definitely not.

Yet he did want to see out the car. It was becoming an obsession with him. He couldn’t allow this nurse-infant relationship to build up.

For a moment he thought of pointing the blaster at his own temple. Open the car top or I’ll kill myself. Oppose one application of the First Law by a greater and more immediate one.

Baley knew he couldn’t do it. Too undignified. He disliked the picture conjured up by the thought.

He said wearily, “Would you ask the driver how close in miles we are to destination?”

“Certainly, Partner Elijah.”

Daneel bent forward and pushed the toggle switch. But as he did so, Baley leaned forward too, crying out, “Driver! Lower the top of the car!”

And it was the human hand that moved quickly to the toggle switch and closed it again. The human hand held its place firmly thereafter.

Panting a bit, Baley stared at Daneel.

For a second Daneel was motionless, as though his positronic paths were momentarily out of stability in their effort to adjust to the new situation. But that passed quickly and then the robot’s hand was moving.

Baley had anticipated that. Daneel would remove the human hand from the switch (gently, not hurting it), reactivate the transmitter, and countermand the order.

Baley said, “You won’t get my hand away without hurting me. I warn you. You will probably have to break my fingers.”

That was not so. Baley knew that. But Daneel’s movements stopped. Harm against harm. The positronic brain had to weigh probabilities and translate them into opposing potentials. It meant just a bit more hesitation.

Baley said, “It’s too late.”

His race was won. The top was sliding back and pouring into the car, now open, was the harsh white light of Solaria’s sun.

Baley wanted to shut his eyes in initial terror, but fought the sensation. He faced the enormous wash of blue and green, incredible quantities of it. He could feel the undisciplined rush of air against his face, but could make out no details of anything. A moving something flashed past. It might have been a robot or an animal or an unliving something caught in a puff of air. He couldn’t tell. The car went past it too quickly.

Blue, green, air, noise, motion—and over it all, beating down, furiously, relentlessly, frighteningly, was the white light that came from a ball in the sky.

For one fleeting split moment he bent his head back and stared directly at Solaria’s sun. He stared at it, unprotected by the diffusing glass of the Cities’ uppermost-Level sunporches. He stared at the naked sun.

And at that very moment he felt Daneel’s hands clamping down upon his shoulders. His mind crowded with thought during that unreal, whirling moment. He had to see! He had to see all he could. And Daneel must be there with him to keep him from seeing.

But surely a robot would not dare use violence on a man. That thought was dominant. Daneel could not prevent him forcibly, and yet Baley felt the robot’s hands forcing him down.

Baley lifted his arms to force those fleshless hands away and lost all sensation.