d the man. "Red Three won--and by too big a
score. Have it geared down a few feet per second."

"Yes, Robert."

"And have the lawn screened again for pebbles!"

As Blue One retired he relaxed, and turned his mind to ideas for
filling the evening. He hoped Henry would televise: Robert had news
for him.

After a short nap and dinner, he took the elevator to his three-story
tower and turned on the television robot. Seating himself in a
comfortable armchair, he directed the machine from one channel to
another. For some time, there was no answer to his perfunctory call
signals, but one of his few acquaintances finally came on.

"Jack here," said a quiet voice that Robert had long suspected of
being disguised by a filter microphone.

"I haven't heard you for some weeks," he remarked, eying the swirling
colors on the screen.

He disliked Jack for never showing his face, but curiosity as to what
lay behind the mechanical image projected by the other's transmitter
preserved the acquaintance.

"I was ... busy," said the bodiless voice, with a discreet hint of a
chuckle that Robert found chilling.

He wondered what Jack had been up to. He remembered once being favored
with a televised view of Jack's favorite sport--a battle between
companies of robots designed for the purpose, horribly reminiscent of
human conflicts Robert had seen on historical films.

* * * * *

He soon made an excuse to break off and set the robot to scanning
Henry's channel. He had something to tell the older man, who lived
only about a hundred miles away and was as close to being his friend
as was possible in this age of scattered, self-sufficient dwellings.

"I don't mind talking to _him_," Robert reflected. "At least he
doesn't overdo this business of individual privacy."

He thought briefly of the disdainful face--seemingly on a distant
station--which had merely examined him for several minutes one night
without ever condescending to speak. Recalling his rage at this
treatment, Robert wondered how the ancients had managed to get along
together when there were so many of them. They must have had some
strict code of behavior, he supposed, or they never would have bred
so enormous a population.

"I must find out about that someday," he decided. "How did you act,
for instance, if you wanted to play tennis but someone else just
refused and went to eat dinner? Maybe that was why the ancients had so
many murders."