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 mid-afternoon 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?"