Between interviews and during the long nights, George read all the books in the Tomlin library, the public library, the university library and the books sent to him from the state and Congressional libraries. He was an object of interest to watch while reading: he merely leafed through a book and absorbed all that was in it.
He received letters from old and young. Clubs were named for him. Novelty companies put out statue likenesses of him. He was, in two weeks, a national symbol as American as corn. He was liked by most, feared by a few, and his habits were daily news stories.
Interest in him had begun to wane in the middle of the third week when some thing put him in the headlines again—he killed a man.
It happened one sunny afternoon when Prof. Tomlin had returned from the university and he and George sat on the front porch for their afternoon chat. It was far from the informal chat of the first day, however. The talk was being recorded for radio release later in the day. A television camera had been set up, focused on the two and nearly a dozen newsmen lounged around, notebooks in hand.
"You have repeatedly mentioned, George, that some of your kind may leave Zanthar for Earth. Why should any like you—why did you, in fact leave your planet? Aren't you robots happy there?"
"Of course," George said, making certain the TV camera was trained on him before continuing. "It's just that we've outgrown the place. We've used up all our raw materials. By now everyone on Earth must be familiar with the fact that we intend to set up a station here as we have on many other planets, a station to manufacture more of _us+.
"Every inhabitant will work for the perpetuation of the Seventh Order, mining metals needed, fabricating parts, performing thousands of useful tasks in order to create humanoids like me. From what I have learned about Earth, you ought to produce more than a million of us a year."
"But you'll never get people to do that," the professor said. "Don't you understand that?"
"Once the people learn that we are the consummation of all creative thinking, that we are all that man could ever hope to be, that we are the apotheosis, they will be glad to create more of us."
"Apotheosis?" Prof. Tomlin repeated. "Sounds like megalomania to me."