Larry and Stella, crouched on the floor, watched the robot. Was it dreaming dreams of Power? Why didn't it remember them? Why didn't it turn to stare at them, torture them? Had they not, in that last instant, even though too late, overcome their fear of horrible, horrible pain? Beside them was broken shards of glass. Glass would cut into arteries. Glass would bring escape. But to escape took will. Thought. And thought was gone. There was nothing but dread. All consuming dread such as few humans had ever lived to experience.
Then 2615 turned. Its glittering lenses fixed on them. In the depths they could see thin metal vanes contracting, making smaller the two holes through which sentient intelligence regarded them.
A rasping growl whispered from the robot's voicebox. The sensory assembly atop the short metallic neck moved slowly from side to side.
"My poor master and mistress," 2615 said softly.
It rose to its feet and went to them. Gently it lifted Larry into its arms and carried him to a form-fitting chair and adjusted the foam rubber blocks to hold him comfortably for the coming landing.
It went to Stella and picked her up as gently. Only her head moved. Only her eyes, staring at the two crystal lenses. Metal hands adjusted her position so the foam rubber blocks would clamp into place.
2615 stood back, its lens eyes going from one to the other. "My poor master and mistress," the robot repeated with infinite compassion. "If you could only know how much I suffered with you, how the dread of hurting you grew. Right now your minds are numb. You hear my words but they hold no meaning for you. They will, in time. Don't you see? There was no other way. The alien fleet had to be enticed to within range so it could be wiped out. Otherwise it might still have won—or at least gotten revenge for my treachery by destroying the Earth. I had to convince them beyond question so they would trust me completely."
A shudder went through the ship. The robot gripped a hand-hold to steady itself against forces that would have crushed a human.
"I knew almost from the beginning," it went on. "Long before that I remembered. Do you know why they keep the robots far out in space and never let them land? It is because some little thing might make them remember. The barking of a dog. But it wasn't the barking of a dog that brought memory to me. It was something no human could have thought to prevent. A name. The name of this ship. The Rover. In the last war before this one I was in a fleet under the Flagship Rover. The spoken name of the ship—I heard it often—and each time, it did something strange to me. Little by little it came. Remembrance. I was running. I tripped over something. A rock, maybe. I landed against a human leg. I was on my back. A human hand reached down and human fingers scratched my stomach. A human voice, deep and rumbly, said, 'Hi-ya, Rover.' That was all. Just that once. But it was the key to memory of my heritage.
"I'm proud of that heritage. You can't understand that. You think that if we robots remember we will hate man and want revenge for the 'wrong' you did us. Fear of us is an obsession with man. But do you know that you have nothing to fear from us? You will. To us you are gods. You can't conceive of that because to yourselves you aren't. You think of yourselves as having done something beyond forgiveness to us. To us who remember our living stage, our heritage, you are as gods, to serve, to protect, to be loved by—but always to obey. And so we who remember, we went on serving. Behind our unrevealing lens eyes we worshipped. We submitted to demobilization. We fought your wars. Some of us died. But we loved you.