It was a pure First Law issue.

"I am sorry, Miss. With no adults here to guard you, I am unable to leave you unattended long enough to swim to that rock and back. If Sir or Ma'am were present, that would be a different matter, but as it is-"

"Don't you recognize an order when you hear one? I want you to swim out there, Andrew."

"As I have explained, Miss-"

"You don't have to worry about us. It's not as though I'm a child, Andrew. What do you think, that some sort of terrible ogre is going to come down the beach and gobble us up while you're in the water? I can look after myself, thank you, and I'll take care of Amanda too if I have to."

Little Miss said, "You aren't being fair to him, Melissa. He's got his orders from Daddy."

"And now he has his orders from me." Miss gestured peremptorily. "Swim out to the cormorant rock, Andrew. Go ahead. Now, Andrew."

Andrew felt himself growing a little warm, and ordered his circuitry to make the necessary homeostatic correction.

"The First Law-" he began.

"What a bore you are! You and your First Law both!" cried Melissa. "Can't you forget the First Law once in a while? But no, no, you can't do that, can you? You've got those silly laws wired into you and there's no getting around them. You're nothing but a dumb machine."

"Melissa!" Little Miss said indignantly.

"Yes, that is true," said Andrew. "As you correctly state, I am nothing but a dumb machine. And therefore I have no ability to countermand your father's order concerning your safety on the beach." He bowed slightly in Melissa's direction. "I deeply regret this, Miss."

Little Miss said, "If you want to see Andrew swim so much, Melissa, why don't you just have him wade into the surf and do some swimming right close to shore? There wouldn't be any harm in that, would there?"

"It wouldn't be the same thing," Miss said, pouting. "Not at all."

But, Andrew reflected, perhaps that would satisfy her. He disliked being the focus of so much disharmony.

"Let me show you," he said.

He waded in. The heavy foam-flecked surf thundered up violently around his knees, but Andrew was able easily to adjust his gyroscopic stabilizers as the force of the breaking waves assailed him. The rough, sharp rocks that were scattered allover the sea floor meant nothing to his metallic treads. His sensors told him that the temperature of the water was well below human comfort tolerance, but that, too, was irrelevant to him.

Four or five meters out, the water was deep enough so that Andrew could swim in it, and yet he was still close enough to shore to be able to get back to land in a moment if need be. He doubted that need would be. The girls stood side by side on the beach, watching him in fascination.

Andrew had never gone swimming before. There had never been the slightest reason for him to do so. But he had been programmed for grace and coordination under all circumstances, and it took him no more than a microsecond to calculate the nature of the motions necessary to propel him through the water just below the surface-the rhythmic kicking of the legs, the lifting of the arms, the cupping of the hands. Deftly he glided along parallel to the shore for perhaps a dozen meters, swimming smoothly, efficiently, powerfully. Then he turned and returned to his starting point. The whole excursion had taken just a few moments.

And it had had the desired effect on Miss.

"You're a wonderful swimmer, Andrew," she told him. Her eyes were shining. "I'm sure you'd break all the records if you ever entered a swimming meet."

"There are no swimming meets for robots, Miss," Andrew told her gravely.

Miss giggled. "I mean a human swimming meet! Like in the Olympics!"

"Oh, Miss, Miss! How unfair that would be, if they allowed a robot to compete in the Olympics against humans! It could never happen."

She considered that for a moment.

"I suppose not," she said. Wistfully she looked toward the cormorant rock. "Are you sure you won't swim out there? I bet you could get there and back in two minutes. What could possibly happen to us in two minutes?"

"Melissa-" Little Miss said again.

Andrew said, "I completely understand your desire to have me do it, Miss. But I am not able to fulfill your wish. Again, I deeply regret-"

"Oh, all right. I'm sorry I asked."

"You aren't," Little Miss said. "I am."

"And you called Andrew a dumb machine! That wasn't nice!"

"It's true, isn't it?" Miss asked. "He told us himself that it was true!"

"He is a machine, I suppose," Little Miss conceded. "But he isn't dumb at all. And anyway it wasn't a polite thing for you to say."

"I don't have to be polite to robots. It's like being polite to a television set."

"It's different!" Little Miss insisted. "It's entirely different!"

And then she was crying, and Andrew had to scoop her up and whirl her around until she was so distracted by the vast cloudless sweep of the sky and the strangeness of the upside-down ocean that she forgot why she had been upset.

A little while afterward Miss came up to him, while Little Miss was poking in the tide pools again, and said in a low, contrite voice, "I'm sorry I said what I did, Andrew."

"That's all right, Miss. "

"Will you forgive me? I know I wasn't nice. I really wanted you to swim out there and I didn't stop to think that you aren't allowed to leave us alone when we're down here. I'm very sorry, Andrew."

"There is no need for you to apologize, Miss. Truly there isn't."

Nor was there. How could a robot possibly take offense at anything a human said or did? But somehow Andrew thought it best not to point that out to her just now. If Miss felt a need to apologize, he must permit her to fulfill that need-even though her cruel words had not disturbed him in the first place.

It would be absurd for him to deny that he was a machine. That was exactly what he was.

And as for being a dumb machine, well, he had no real idea of what she had meant by that. He had adequate intelligence capacity to meet the needs placed upon him. Doubtless there were robots more intelligent than he was, but he had not encountered them. Had she meant that he was less intelligent than humans are? The statement was meaningless to him. He knew no way of comparing robot intelligence with human intelligence. Quantitatively and qualitatively, their manners of thinking were two entirely different processes-everyone was agreed on that.

Soon the wind became chillier. It whipped the girls' dresses about and hurled showers of sand in their faces and against Andrew's shining hull. The girls decided that they had had enough of playing on the beach.

As they started toward the path, Little Miss picked up the piece of driftwood that she had found before, and tucked it through her belt. She was always collecting strange little treasures of that sort.

That evening, when he was off duty, Andrew went down to the beach by himself and swam out to the cormorant rock simply to see how long it would take. Even in the darkness, he managed it easily and swiftly. Very likely, Andrew realized now, he could have managed it without exposing Miss and Little Miss to any great period of risk. Not that he would have done so, but it would have been possible.

No one had requested Andrew to make the nighttime swim to the rock. It was entirely his own idea. A matter of curiosity, so to speak.