o furnish her with
specimens, for their own purposes and only incidentally hers. Once the
first man died, they had her and wouldn't let her back out, though she
wanted to."

"Specimen," repeated Jadiver. "Yeah, I was a specimen to her." His head
was heavy. "Why didn't you tell me this in the beginning?"

"Would you have listened when I first contacted you?" asked the robot.
"Later, perhaps. But once you put on the shield, I couldn't get in touch
with you until you were with Doumya Filone."

* * * * *

Would Jadiver have listened? Not until it became a matter of raw
survival. Even now he hated to leave Earth and what it meant for the
unknown dangers and tedium of a planet circling an alien sun. It was
more than that, of course. Just as he'd had a design for a perfect
robot, he had in mind a perfect woman. He could recognize either when he
saw it.

"Doumya Filone was the assistant?"

"She was." The robot was his now, Jadiver knew. Others had built it, but
it belonged to him by virtue of a nervous system. It had as good a mind
as his, but it wouldn't dispute his claim. "Like yourself," continued
the robot, "in the Solar System she would never have been more than
second rate, and she wanted to be first. Hardly anyone recognizes it,
but the Solar System is not what it once was. It's like a nice
neighborhood that decays so slowly that the people in it don't notice
what it's become. There are some who can rise even in a slum, but
they're the rare exceptions.

"Others need greater opportunity than slums offer. They have to leave if
they expect to develop freely. But the hold of a whole culture is strong
and it's hard to persuade them that they have to go." The robot paused.
"Take a last look at a blighted area."

Outside planets glimmered in the distance.

Jadiver was tired and his eyes were closing. Now he could sleep safely,
but not in peace.

"Don't regret it," advised the robot. "Where you're going, you'll have
real designs to work on. No more pretty robot faces."

"Where is it--Alpha Centauri?" Jadiver asked disinterestedly.

"That ship left yesterday. They got their quota and left within the
hour, before any of the passengers could change their minds. We're going
farther, to Sirius."

* * * * *

Sirius. A mighty sun, with planets to match. It was a place to be big.
Big and lonely.

"I can't force you to do anything," said the robot. It sound