ooded on why the three
blinking red lights made him move to the main control panel and adjust
lever C until the three lights flashed off. He brooded on why each
signal from the board brought forth from him these specific responses,
actions completely beyond the touch of his new and uncertain faculty.
When he did not brood, he watched the other two robots, performing
their automatic functions, seeing their responses, like his, were
triggered by the lights on the big board and by the varying patterns
of sound that issued periodically from overhead.

It was the sounds which were his undoing. The colored lights, with
their monotonous regularity, failed to rouse him. But the sounds were
something else, for even as he responded to them, doing things to the
control board in patterned reaction to particular combinations of
particular sounds, he was struck with the wonderful variety and the
maze of complexity in those sounds; a variety and complexity far
beyond that of the colored lights. Thus, being something of an
advanced analytic calculator and being, by virtue of his superior
feedback system, something considerably more than a simple machine
(though he perhaps fell short of those requisites of life so
rigorously held by moralists and biologists alike) he began to
investigate the meaning of the sounds.

* * * * *

Bert Sokolski signed the morning report and dropped it into the
transmitter. He swung around on his desk stool; he was a big man, and
the stool squealed in sharp protest to his shifting weight.

Joe Gaines, who was as short and skinny and dark-haired as his
colleague was tall and heavily muscled and blond, shuddered at the
sound. Sokolski grinned wickedly at his flinching.

"Check-up time, I suppose," muttered Gaines without looking up from
the magazine he held propped on his knees. He finished the paragraph,
snapped the magazine shut, and swung his legs down from the railing
that ran along in front of the data board. "Dirty work for
white-collar men like us."

Sokolski snorted. "You haven't worn a white shirt in the last six
years," he growled, rising and going to the supply closet. He swung
open the door and began pulling out equipment. "C'mon, you lazy runt,
hoist your own leadbox."

Gaines grinned and slouched over to the big man's side. "Think of how
much more expensive you are to the government than me," he chortled as
he bent over to strap on heavy, leaded shoes. "Big