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experiment yield such a thorough and complete test. We know exactly what correcdons must
be made in the TN model, and the credit belongs entirely to Mrs. Belmont. If you want me to
be very honest, I think your wife deserves your promotion more than you do.' Larry flinched
visibly at that. 'As long as it's in the family,' he murmured unconvincingly and left. Susan
Calvin looked after him, 'I think that hurtI hope Have you read Tony's report, Peter?'
'Thoroughly,' said Bogert. 'And won't the TN-3 model need changes?' 120 'Oh, you think so,
too?' questioned Calvin sharply. 'What's your reasoning?' Bogert frowned. 'I don't need any.
It's obvious on the face of it that we can't have a robot loose which makes love to his
mistress, if you don't mind the pun.' 'Love! Peter, you sicken me. You really don't under
stand? That machine had to obey the First Law. He couldn't allow harm to come to a human
being, and harm was coming to Claire Belmont through her own sense of inadequacy. So
he made love to her, since what woman would fail to appreciate the compliment of being
able to stir passion in a machinein a cold, soulless machine. And he opened the curtains
that night deliberately, that the others might see and envywithout any risk possible to Claire's
marriage. I think it was clever of Tony ' 'Do you? What's the difference whether it was
pretense or not, Susan? It still has its horrifying effect. Read the report again. She avoided
him. She screamed when he held her. She didn't sleep that last nightin hysterics. We can't
have that.' 'Peter, you're blind. You're as blind as I was. The TN model will be rebuilt entirely,
but not for your reason. Quite otherwise; quite otherwise. Strange that I overlooked it in the
first place,' her eyes were opaquely thoughtful, 'but perhaps it reflects a shortcoming in
myself. You see, Peter, machines can't fall in love, buteven when it's hopeless and
horrifyingwomen can!' 'Risk' appeared in the May 1955 issue of Astounding Science
Fiction. Of my later robot stories, it was the most closely bound to I, Robot, for it was a
sequel to 'Little Lost Robot,' one of the stories in that book. It involves a different robot and a
different problem, but the same setting, the same human characters and the same research
project. RISK hyper base had lived for this day. Spaced about the gallery of the viewing
room, in order and precedence strictly dictated by protocol, was a group of officials,
scientists, technicians, and others who could only be lumped under the general classification
of 'personnel.' In accordance with their separate temperaments they waited hopefully,
uneasily, breathlessly, eagerly, or fearfully for this culmination of their efforts. The hollowed
ulterior of the asteroid known as Hyper Base had become for this day the center of a sphere
of iron security that extended out for ten thousand miles. No ship might enter that sphere and
live. No message might leave without scrutiny. A hundred miles away, more or less, a small
asteroid moved neatly in the orbit into which it had been urged a year before, an orbit that
ringed Hyper Base in as perfect a circle as could be managed. The asteroidlet's identity
number was H937, but no one on Hyper Base called it anything but It. ('Have you been out
on it today?' 'The general's on it, blowing his top,' and eventually the impersonal pronoun
achieved the dignity of capitalization.) On It, unoccupied now as zero second approached,
was the Parsec, the only ship of its kind ever built in the history of man. It lay, unmanned,
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ready for its takeoff into the inconceivable. Gerald Black, who, as one of the bright young
men in etherics engineering, rated a front-row view, cracked his large knuckles, then wiped
his sweating palms on his 123 stained white smock and said sourly, 'Why don't you bother
the general, or Her Ladyship there?' Nigel Ronson, of Interplanetary Press, looked briefly
across the gallery toward the glitter of Major General Richard Kallner and the unremarkable
woman at his side, scarcely visible in the glare of his dress uniform. He said, 'I would, except
that I'm interested in news.' Ronson was short and plump. He painstakingly wore his hair in a
quarter-inch bristle, his shirt collar open and his trouser leg ankle-short, in faithful imitation of
the newsmen who were stock characters on TV shows. He was a capable reporter
nevertheless. Black was stocky, and his dark hairline left little room for forehead, but his
mind was as keen as his strong fingers were blunt. He said, 'They've got all the news.' 'Nuts,'
said Ronson. 'Kallner's got no body under that gold braid. Strip him and you'll find only a
conveyor belt dribbling orders downward and shooting responsibility upward.' Black found [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]