He never saw the tubes, or even heard about them.
He's just a mathematical hack, and all he did was solve the problems we gave him."
"Thank you, sir," droned the urbane machine. "But we must speak with Mr. Ironsmith."
"He knows nothing about the project." Desperately, Forester tried to smooth the apprehension from his voice.
"Besides, we haven't much more time today.
I've already telephoned my wife that we're all coming over for cocktails and dinner, and she'll expect us right away.
Human beings eat, remember?"
He didn't want the mechanical to meet Ironsmith - certainly not alone.
There were too many secrets that bright young man might have guessed.
The little humanoid didn't care for cocktails, however, and it glibly quoted the articles of agreement.
Reluctantly, Forester called the computing section, and Ironsmith came pedaling down to meet the machine at the gate.
Forester spent an uneasy evening.
Anxiety had destroyed his appetite, and Dr. Pitcher had forbidden him alcohol.
He drank coffee to keep awake, and smoked a cigar until it tasted foul in his mouth, and listened absently to the military party's gloomy talk of professional unemployment.
It was midnight before the mechanical came back from the computing section, its dark serenity still revealing nothing of what it might have learned.
Nervously, Forester went down in the staff car to put the departing group aboard their aircraft, and then he hurried frantically back to Ironsmith's rooms.
The youthful clerk greeted him with shocked concern.
"What's the matter, Dr. Forester?"
He blinked confusedly, and Ironsmith asked,
"Why so grim and haggard?"
Ignoring the query, Forester peered sharply around the room.
The few pieces of furniture were shabby but comfortable.
A book printed in the strange characters of some ancient language of the first planet lay open on a little table, beside a tobacco humidor and a bottle of wine.
Ironsmith himself, in unpressed slacks and open-collared shirt, looked guileless and friendly as the room, and Forester could see no evidences of his dealings with that inquisitive machine.
"What's the trouble, sir?" he insisted anxiously.
"That damned mechanical," Forester muttered. "The thing was grilling me all day."
"Oh!" The clerk looked surprised.
"I found it very interesting."
"What did it want with you?"
"Nothing much.
It asked a question or two, and looked at the calculators."
"But it stayed so long." Forester searched his open face. "What did it want to know?"
"I was asking the questions." Ironsmith grinned with a boyish pleasure.
"You see, that relay grid on Wing IV knows all the math that men have ever learned - and it's quite a calculator!
I happened to mention a tough little problem I've been kicking around, and we went on from there."
"And?"
"That's all." Ironsmith's gray eyes held a limpid honesty.
"Really, Dr. Forester, I can't see any reason for you to be disturbed about the humanoids, or Mark White to hate them."
"Well, I do!"
"But they're only machines," Ironsmith persisted gently.
"They can't be evil - or, for that matter, good.
Because they aren't faced with any moral dilemmas.
They have no choice of right or wrong.
All they can do is what old Warren Mansfield built them to do - serve and obey mankind."
Forester wasn't sure of that, and he was less certain that Ironsmith himself had always chosen the right.
That armor of amiable innocence seemed impregnable, however, and Forester was already staggering with fatigue.
He gave up learning anything from the clerk, and went wearily home.
Walking back to his house and his wife, alone beneath the stars the humanoids had conquered, Forester felt a sudden savage envy of Ironsmith's carefree ease.
The harsh demands of the project became utterly intolerable.
For one dark moment, he wished that the inspecting humanoid had found his fearful secret and set him free.