“—when you looked at it straight,” I chorused with him.
“And besides,” he said, “now we know how to lick Robinc forever.”
That was some comfort, I suppose, though he wouldn’t say another word to explain it. And I needed comfort, because just then things took a nasty turn again. We stuck close to our factory and didn’t dare go out. We were taking no chances on more kidnappings before Quinby finished his new inspiration.
Quinby worked on that alone, secret even from us. I figured out some extra touches of perfection on the usuform soldier, who was now our bodyguard— Grew would never dare complain of the theft because he had no legal right to possess such an android anyway. Mike and his assistants, both living and usuform, turned out barkeeps and dowsers and cooks—our three most successful usuform designs so far.
We didn’t go out, but we heard enough. It was the newest and nastiest step in Grew’s campaign. He had men following up our cooks and bartenders and managing to slip concentrated doses of ptomaine alkaloids into their products. No serious poisoning, you understand; just an abnormally high proportion of people taken sick after taking usuform-prepared food or drink. And a rumor going around that the usuforms secreted a poisonous fluid, which was objective nonsense, but enough to scare a lot of people.
“It’s no use,” Mike said to me one day. “We’re licked. Two new orders in a week. We’re done for. No use keeping up production.”
“The hell we’re licked,” I said.
“If you want to encourage me, you’d ought to sound like you believed it yourself. No, we’re sunk. While he sits in there and— I’m going down to the Sunspot and drink Three Planets till this one spins. And if Grew wants to kidnap me, he’s welcome to me.”
It was just then the message came from the Head. I read it, and knew how the camel feels about that last straw. It said:
I can’t resist popular pressure forever. I know and you know what Grew is up to; but the public is demanding re-enactment of the law giving Robinc exclusive rights. Unless Quinby can see straight through the hat to the rabbit, that re-enactment is going to pass.
“We’ll see what he has to say to this,” I said to Mike. I started for the door, and even as I did so Quinby came out.
“I’ve got it!” he said. “It’s done.” He read the Head’s message with one glance, and it didn’t bother him. He grabbed me by the shoulders and beamed. I’ve never heard my name spoken so warmly. “Mike, too. Come on in and see the greatest usuform we’ve hit on yet. Our troubles are over.”
We went in. We looked. And we gawked. For Quinby’s greatest usuform, so far as our eyes could tell, was just another android robot.
Mike went resolutely off to the Sunspot to carry out his threat of making this planet spin. I began to think myself that the tension had affected Quinby’s clear-seeing mind. I didn’t listen especially when he told me I’d given him the idea myself. I watched the usuform-android go off on his mysterious mission and I even let him take my soldier along. And I didn’t care. We were done for now, if even Dugg Quinby was slipping.
But I didn’t have time to do much worrying that morning. I was kept too busy with androids that came in wanting repairs. Very thoroughgoing repairs, too, that turned them, like my soldier, practically into usuforms. We always had a few such requests—I think I mentioned how they all want to be perfect—but this began to develop into a cloudburst. I stopped the factory lines and put every man and robot on repair.
Along about midafternoon I began to feel puzzled. It took me a little while to get it, and then it hit me. The last three that I’d repaired had been brand-new. Fresh from the Robinc factory, and rushing over here to be remade into . . . into usuforms!
As soon as I finished adjusting drill arms on the robot miner, I hurried over to where Quinby was installing an infrared color sense on a soldier intended for camouflage spotting. He looked up and smiled when he saw me. “You get it now?”
“I get what’s happening. But how . . . who—”
“I just followed your advice. Didn’t you say what we needed was a guaranteed working usuform converter?”
“I don’t need to explain, do I? It’s simple enough once you look at it straight.”
We were sitting in the Sunspot. Guzub was very happy; it was the first time the Head had ever honored his establishment.
“You’d better,” I said, “remember I’m a crooked-viewing dope.”
“But it’s all from things you’ve said. You’re always saying I’m good at things and robots, but lousy at people because people don’t see or act straight. Well, we were stymied with people. They couldn’t see the real importance of usuforms through all the smoke screens that Grew threw up. But you admit yourself that Robots see straight, so I went direct to them. And you said we needed a usuform converter, so I made one.”
The Head smiled. “And what is the utile form of a converter?”
“He had to look like an android, because otherwise they wouldn’t accept him. But he was the sturdiest, strongest android ever made, with several ingenious new muscles. If it came to fighting, he was sure to make converts that way. And besides, he had something that’s never been put in a robot brain before—the ability to argue and convince. With that, he had the usuform soldier as a combination bodyguard and example. So he went out
