Erika will never marry me and I'll never get my contract release from
Watt. All you have to do is put that helmet on my head and change me
back to myself. Is that too much to ask?"

"Certainly, of a robot," ENIAC said stiffly. "No more shilly-shallying.
It's lucky you are wearing the Ivan-matrix, so I can impose my will on
you. Put your eyeprint on this. Instantly!"

Martin rushed behind the couch and hid. The robot advanced menacingly.
And at that moment, pushed to the last ditch, Martin suddenly remembered
something.

He faced the robot.

* * * * *

"Wait," he said. "You don't understand. I can't eyeprint that thing. It
won't work on me. Don't you realize that? It's supposed to take the
eyeprint--"

"--of the rod-and-cone pattern of the retina," the robot said. "So--"

"So how can it do that unless I can keep my eye open for twenty seconds?
My perceptive reaction-thresholds are Ivan's aren't they? I can't
control the reflex of blinking. I've got a coward's synapses. And they'd
force me to shut my eyes tight the second that gimmick got too close to
them."

"Hold them open," the robot suggested. "With your fingers."

"My fingers have reflexes too," Martin argued, moving toward a
sideboard. "There's only one answer. I've got to get drunk. If I'm half
stupefied with liquor, my reflexes will be so slow I won't be able to
shut my eyes. And don't try to use force, either. If I dropped dead with
fear, how could you get my eyeprint then?"

"Very easily," the robot said. "I'd pry open your lids--"

Martin hastily reached for a bottle on the sideboard, and a glass. But
his hand swerved aside and gripped, instead, a siphon of soda water.

"--only," ENIAC went on, "the forgery might be detected."

Martin fizzled the glass full of soda and took a long drink.

"I won't be long getting drunk," he said, his voice thickening. "In
fact, it's beginning to work already. See? I'm cooperating."

The robot hesitated.

"Well, hurry up about it," he said, and sat down.

Martin, about to take another drink, suddenly paused, staring at ENIAC.
Then, with a sharply indrawn breath, he lowered the glass.

"What's the matter now?" the robot asked. "Drink your--what is it?"

"It's whiskey," Martin told the inexperienced automaton, "but now I see
it all. You've put poison in it. So that's your plan, is it? Well, I
won't touch another drop, and now you'll never get my eyeprint. I'm no
fool."

"