s I make it. Perhaps
you'd care to taste it. Then you could understand that it is not
really bad at all. Perhaps you could persuade yourself to be more
lenient with me."

"Certainly not," said MS-33.

"Perhaps you are right," I said after a moment of reflection. I took a
syringe, drew up several drops of the stuff and squirted it into my
carapace, where it would do the most good. I felt much better.

"Yes," I continued, "certainly you are quite correct, now that I think
of it. You newer models would never bear it. You weren't built to
stand such things. Nor, for that matter, could you comprehend the
exquisite joys that are derived from Moon Glow. Not only would you
derive no pleasure from it, but it would corrode your parts, I
imagine, until you could scarcely crawl back to your master for
repairs." I helped myself to another liberal portion.

"That is the silliest thing I've ever heard," he said.

"What?"

"I said, it's silly. We are constructed to withstand a hundred times
greater stress, and twice as many chemical actions as you were.
Nothing could hurt us. Besides, it looks harmless enough. I doubt that
it is hardly anything at all."

"For me it is not," I admitted. "But you--"

"Give me the syringe, fool!"

"I dare not."

"Give it here!"

I allowed him to wrest it from my grasp. In any case I could not have
prevented him. He shoved me backwards against the rusty bulkhead with
a clang. He pushed the nozzle of the syringe down into the retort and
withdrew it filled with Moon Glow. He opened an inspection plate in
his ventral region and squirted himself generously.

It was quite a dose. He waited for a moment. "I feel nothing," he said
finally. "I do not believe it is anything more than common lubricating
oil." He was silent for another moment. "There _is_ an ease of
movement," he said.

"No paralysis?" I asked.

"Paral--? You stupid, rusty old robot!" He helped himself to another
syringeful of Moon Glow. The stuff brought twenty credits an ounce,
but I did not begrudge it him.

He flexed his superbly articulated joints in three directions, and I
could hear his power unit building up within him to a whining pitch.
He took a shuffling sidestep, and then another, gazing down at his
feet, with arms akimbo.

"The light gravity here is superb, superb, superb, superb, superb," he
said, skipping a bit.

"Isn't it?" I said.

"Almost negligible," he said.

"True."

"You have been very kind to me,"