I, Robot

‘Good! Now I want you to listen carefully. The blackness is emptiness – vast emptiness stretching out infinitely. The little, gleaming dots are huge masses of energy-filled matter. They are globes, some of them millions of miles in diameter – and for comparison, this station is only one mile across. They seem so tiny because they are incredibly far off.

‘The dots to which our energy beams are directed, are nearer and much smaller. They are cold and hard, and human beings like myself live upon their surfaces – many billions of them. It is from one of these worlds that Donovan and I come. Our beams feed these worlds energy drawn from one of those huge incandescent globes that happens to be near us. We call that globe the Sun and it is on the other side of the station where you can’t see it.’

Cutie remained motionless before the port, like a steel statue. His head did not turn as he spoke, ‘Which particular dot of light do you claim to come from?’

Powell searched, ‘There it is. The very bright one in the corner. We call it Earth.’ He grinned, ‘Good old Earth. There are three billions of us there, Cutie – and in about two weeks I’ll be back there with them.’

And then, surprisingly enough, Cutie hummed abstractedly. There was no tune to it, but it possessed a curious twanging quality as of plucked strings. It ceased as suddenly as it had begun, ‘But where do I come in, Powell? You haven’t explained my