Powerless to resist, though every crystal and atom of his reasoning self fought to thrust aside the command, M-75 obeyed. He moved along the prescribed pattern, clipping wires with metal fingers that sprouted blades, rewiring with a dexterity beyond anything human, soldering with a thumb that generated a white heat, removing bulbs and parts and fetching replacements from the vent where they popped up at precisely the right moment. He could not help doing the job perfectly: the design of the board to its littlest detail was imprinted indelibly on his memory tapes.
But that certain portion of him, a little fragment greater than before, remained detached and watchful. Vividly recorded was the passage of the two men into, through, and out of the room, and the things they had done while there. So even while he worked on the board he ran and re-ran that memory pattern through a segment of his analyzer. From the infinite store of data filed away in his great chest, his calculator sifted and selected, paired and compared, and long before the repair job on the big board was done, M-75 knew how to get out of the room. The world was getting a little small for him.
aines dialed a number on the plant phone and swayed back casually in his chair as he listened to the muted ringing on the other end. The buzz broke off in midburp and a dour voice said: "Dirty work and odd jobs division, Lister talking."
"Joe Gaines, Harry. Got a hot squad lying around doing nothing?"
"Might be I could scare up a couple of the boys."
"Well, do so. One of our servos—"
A metallic bang interrupted Gaines, a loud, incisive bang that echoed dankly through the quiet of the chamber.
"What the hell was that?" growled Lister.