"I can't eat," he said abruptly.
Huyghens made no comment. He finished his own meal, scowling. He rose and put the plates into the top of the cleaner.
"Let me see those reports, eh?" he asked dourly. "I'd like to see what sort of a set-up they had, those robots."
Bordman hesitated and then opened his traveling bag. There was a microviewer and reels of films. One entire reel was labeled "Specifications for Construction, Colonial Survey," which would contain detailed plans and all requirements of material and workmanship for everything from desks, office, administrative personnel, for use of, to landing-grids, heavy-gravity planets, lift-capacity 100,000 earth-tons. But Huyghens found another. He inserted it and spun the control swiftly here and there, pausing only briefly at index-frames until he came to the section he wanted. He began to study the information with growing impatience.
"Robots, robots, robots!" he snapped. "Why don't they leave them where they belong—in cities to do the dirty work, and on airless planets where nothing unexpected ever happens! Robots don't belong in new colonies. Your colonists depended on them for defense! Dammit, let a man work with robots long enough and he thinks all nature is as limited as they are! This is a plan to set up a controlled environment—on Loren Two! Controlled environment—" He swore. "Complacent, idiotic, desk-bound half-wits!"
"Robots are all right," said Bordman. "We couldn't run civilization without them."
"But you can't tame a wilderness with 'em," snapped Huyghens. "You had a dozen men landed, with fifty assembled robots to start with. There were parts for fifteen hundred more, and I'll bet anything I've got the ship-contacts landed more still!"
"They did," admitted Bordman.
"I despise 'em," growled Huyghens. "I feel about 'em the way the old Greeks felt about slaves. They're for menial work—the sort of work a man will perform for himself, but that he won't do for another man for pay. Degrading work!"
"Quite aristocratic!" said Bordman with a touch of irony. "I take it that robots clean out the bear-quarters downstairs."