Practically, he checked the cable that held him to the ship and it was intact. His attachments kit was still tied to its rung. Everything was exactly as it had been before.
He tried to recall the glories he had seen, tried to grasp again the fringe of knowledge which he had been so close to, but both the glory and the knowledge, if there had ever been a knowledge, had faded into nothingness.
He felt like weeping, but he could not weep, and he was too old to lie down upon the ship and kick his heels in tantrum.
So he sat there, looking at the sun that they were approaching and finally there was a planet that he knew must be their destination, and he found room to wonder what planet it might be and how far from Earth it was.
He heated up a little as the ship skipped through atmosphere as an aid to braking speed and he had some rather awful moments as it spiraled into thick and soupy gases that certainly were a far cry from the atmosphere of Earth. He hung most desperately to the rungs as the craft came rushing down onto a landing field, with the hot gases of the rockets curling up about him. But he made it safely and swiftly clambered down and darted off into the smog-like atmosphere before anyone could see him.
Safely off, he turned and looked back at the ship and despite its outlines being hidden by the drifting clouds of swirling gases, he could see it clearly, not as an actual structure, but as a diagram. He looked at it wonderingly and there was something wrong with the diagram, something vaguely wrong, some part of it that was out of whack and not the way it should be.
He heard the clanking of cargo haulers coming out upon the field and he wasted no more time, diagram or not.
He drifted back, deeper in the mists, and began to circle, keeping a good distance from the ship. Finally he came to the spaceport's edge and the beginning of the town.
He found a street and walked down it leisurely and there was a wrongness in the town.
He met a few hurrying robots who were in too much of a rush to pass the time of day. But he met no humans.
And that, he knew quite suddenly, was the wrongness of the place. It was not a human town.
There were no distinctly human buildings — no stores or residences, no churches and no restaurants. There were gaunt shelter barracks and sheds for the storing of equipment and machines, great sprawling warehouses and vast industrial plants. But that was all there was. It was a bare and dismal place compared to the streets that he had known on Earth.
It was a robot town, he knew. And a robot planet. A world that was barred to humans, a place where humans could not live, but so rich in some natural resource that it cried for exploitation. And the answer to that exploitation was to let the robots do it.
Luck, he told himself. His good luck still was holding. He had literally been dumped into a place where he could live without human interference. Here, on this planet, he would be with his own.
If that was what he wanted. And he wondered if it was. He wondered just exactly what it was he wanted, for he'd had no time to think of what he wanted. He had been too intent on fleeing Earth to think too much about it. He had known all along what he was running from, but had not considered what he might be running to.
He walked a little further and the town came to an end. The Street became a path and went wandering on into the wind-blown fogginess.
So he turned around and went back up the street.
There had been one barracks, he remembered, that had a TRANSIENTS sign hung out, and be made his way to it.
Inside, an ancient robot sat behind the desk. His body was old-fashioned and somehow familiar. And it was familiar, Richard Daniel knew, because it was as old and battered and as out-of-date as his.
He looked at the body, just a bit aghast, and saw that while it resembled his, there were little differences. The same ancient model, certainly, but a different series. Possibly a little newer, by twenty years or so, than his.
'Good evening, stranger,' said the ancient robot. 'You came in on the ship?'
Richard Daniel nodded.
'You'll be staying till the next one?'
'I may be settling down,' said Richard Daniel. 'I may want to stay here.'
The ancient robot took a key from off a hook and laid it on the desk.
'You representing someone?'
'No,' said Richard Daniel.
'I thought maybe that you were. We get a lot of representatives. Humans can't come here, or don't want to come, so they send robots out here to represent them.'
'You have a lot of visitors?'
'Some. Mostly the representatives I was telling you about. But there are some that are on the lam. I'd take it, mister, you are on the lam.'
Richard Daniel didn't answer.
'It's all right,' the ancient one assured him. 'We don't mind at all, just so you behave yourself. Some of our most prominent citizens, they came here on the lam.'
'That is fine,' said Richard Daniel. 'And how about yourself? You must be on the lam as well.'
'You mean this body. Well, that's a little different. This here is punishment.'
'Punishment?'
'Well, you see, I was the foreman of the cargo warehouse and I got to goofing off. So they hauled me up and had a trial and they found me guilty. Then they stuck me into this old body and I have to stay in it, at this lousy job, until they get another criminal that needs punishment. They can't punish no more than one criminal at a time because this is the only old body that they have. Funny thing about this body. One of the boys went back to Earth on a business trip and found this old heap of metal in a junkyard and brought it home with him — for a joke, I guess. Like a human might buy a skeleton for a joke, you know.'
He took a long, sly look at Richard Daniel. 'It looks to me, stranger, as if your body…'
But Richard Daniel didn't let him finish.
'I take it,' Richard Daniel said, 'you haven't many criminals.'
'No,' said the ancient robot sadly, 'we're generally a pretty solid lot.'
Richard Daniel reached out to pick up the key, but the ancient robot put out his hand and covered it.
'Since you are on the lam,' he said, 'it'll be payment in advance.'
'I'll pay you for a week,' said Richard Daniel, handing him some money.
The robot gave him back his change.
'One thing I forgot to tell you. You'll have to get plasticated.'
'Plasticated?'
'That's right. Get plastic squirted over you. To protect you from the atmosphere. It plays hell with metal. There's a place next door will do it.'
'Thanks. I'll get it done immediately.'
'It wears off,' warned the ancient one. 'You have to get a new job every week or so.'
Richard Daniel took the key and went down the corridor until he found his numbered cubicle. He unlocked the door and stepped inside. The room was small, but clean. It had a desk and chair and that was all it had.
He stowed his attachments bag in one corner and sat down in the chair and tried to feel at home. But he couldn't feel at home, and that was a funny thing — he'd just rented himself a home.
He sat there, thinking back, and tried to whip up some sense of triumph at having done so well in covering his tracks. He couldn't.
Maybe this wasn't the place for him, he thought. Maybe he'd be happier on some other planet. Perhaps he should go back to the ship and get on it once again and have a look at the next planet coming up.
If he hurried, he might make it. But he'd have to hurry, for the ship wouldn't stay longer than it took to unload the consignment for this place and take on new cargo.
He got up from the chair, still only half decided.
And suddenly he remembered how, standing in the swirling mistiness, he had seen the ship as a diagram
