Dorlis, as a world, is not impressive. It's importance to Galactic economy is nil, its position far off the great trade routes, its natives backward and unenlightened, its history obscure. And yet somewhere in the heaps of rubble that clutter an ancient world, there is obscure evidence of an influx of flame and destruction that destroyed the Dorlis of an earlier day -the greater capital of a greater Federation.

And somewhere in that rubble, men of a newer world poked and probed and tried to understand.

The Board Master shook his head and then pushed back his grizzling hair. He hadn't shaved in a week.

'The trouble is,' he said, 'that we have no point of reference. The language can be broken, I suppose, but nothing can be done with the notation.'

'I think a great deal has been done.'

'Stabs in the dark! Guessing games based on the translations of your albino friend. I won't base any hopes on that.'

Brand said, 'Nuts! You spent two years on the Nimian Anomaly, and so far only two months on this, which happens to be a hundred thousand times the job. It's something else that's getting you.' He smiled grimly. 'It doesn't take a psychologist to see that the government man is in your hair.'

The Board Master bit the end off a cigar and spat it four feet. He said slowly, 'There are three things about the mule-headed idiot that make me sore. First, I don't like government interference. Second, I don't like a stranger sniffing about when we're on top of the biggest thing in the history of psychology. Third, what in the Galaxy does he want? What is he after?'

'I don't know.'

'What should he be after? Have you thought of it at all?'

'No. Frankly, I don't care. I'd ignore him if I were you.'

'You would,' said the Board Master violently. 'You would! You think the government's entrance into this affair need only be ignored. I suppose you know that this Murry calls himself a psychologist?'

'I know that.'

'And I suppose you know he's been displaying a devouring interest in all that we've been doing.'

That, I should say, would be natural.'

'Oh! And you know further-' His voice dropped with startling suddenness. 'All right, Murry's at the door. Take it easy.'

Wynne Murry grinned a greeting, but the Board Master nodded unsmilingly.

'Well, sir,' said Murry bluffly, 'do you know I've been on my feet for forty-eight hours? You've got something here. Something big.'

'Thank you.'

'No, no. I'm serious. The robot world exists.'

'Did you think it didn't?'

The secretary shrugged amiably. 'One has a certain natural skepticism. What are your future plans?'

'Why do you ask?' The Board Master grunted his words as if they were being squeezed out singly.

To see if they jibe with my own.'

'And what are your own?"

'The secretary smiled. 'No, no. You take precedence. How long do you intend staying here?'

'As long as it takes to make a fair beginning on the documents involved.'

'That's no answer. What do you mean by a fair beginning?'

'I haven't the slightest idea. It might take years.'

'Oh, damnation.'

The Board Master raised his eyebrows and said nothing.

The secretary looked at his nails. 'I take it you know the location of this robot world.'

'Naturally. Theor Realo was there. His information up to now has proven very accurate.'

'That's right. The albino. Well, why not go there?'

'Go there! Impossible!'

'May I ask why?'

'Look,' said the Board Master with restrained impatience, 'you're not here by our invitation, and we're not asking you to dictate our course of actions, but just to show you that I'm not looking for a fight, I'll give you a little metaphorical treatment of our case. Suppose we were presented with a huge and complicated machine, composed of principles and materials of which we knew next to nothing. It is so vast we can't even make out the relationship of the parts, let alone the purpose of the whole. Now, would you advise me to begin attacking the delicate mysterious moving parts of the machine with a detonating ray before I know what it's all about?'

'I see your point, of course, but you're becoming a mystic. The metaphor is farfetched.'

'Not at all. These positronic robots were constructed along lines we know nothing of as yet and were intended to follow lines with which we are entirely unacquainted. About the only thing we know is that the robots were put aside in complete isolation, to work out their destiny by themselves. To ruin that isolation would be to ruin the experiment. If we go there in a body, introducing new, unforeseen factors, inducing unintended reactions, everything is ruined. The littlest disturbance -'

'Poppycock! Theor Realo has already gone there.'

The Board Master lost his temper suddenly. 'Don't you suppose I know that? Do you suppose it would ever have happened if that cursed albino hadn't been an ignorant fanatic without any knowledge of psychology at all? Galaxy knows what the idiot has done in the way of damage.'

There was a silence. The secretary clicked his teeth with a

thoughtful fingernail. 'I don't know… I don't know. But I've

got to find out. And I can't wait years.'

He left, and the Board Master turned seethingly to Brand, 'And how are we going to stop him from going to the robot world if'he wants to?'

'I don't see how he can go if we don't let him. He doesn't head the expedition.'

'Oh, doesn't he? That's what I was about to tell you just before he came in. Ten ships of the fleet have landed on Dorlis since we arrived.'

'What!'

'Just that.'

'But what for?'

'That, my boy, is what I don't understand, either.'

'Mind if I drop in?' said Wynne Murry, pleasantly, and Theor Realo looked up in sudden anxiety from the papers that lay in hopeless disarray on the desk before him.

'Come in. I'll clear off a seat for you.' The albino hustled the mess off one of the two chairs in a state of twittering nerves.

Murry sat down and swung one long leg over the other. 'Are you assigned a job here, too?' He nodded at the desk.

Theor shook his head and smiled feebly. Almost automatically, he brushed the papers together in a heap and turned them face down.

In the months since he had returned to Dorlis with a hundred psychologists of various degrees of renown, he had felt himself pushed farther and farther from the center of things. There was room for him no longer. Except to answer questions on the actual state of things upon the robot world, which he alone had visited, he played no part. And even there he detected, or seemed to detect, anger that he should have gone, and not a competent scientist.

It was a thing to be resented. Yet, somehow, it had always been like that.

'Pardon me?' He had let Murry's next remark slip.

The secretary repeated, 'I say it's surprising you're not put to work, then. You made the original discovery, didn't you?'

'Yes,' the albino brightened. 'But it went out of my hands. It got beyond me.'

'You were on the robot world, though.'

That was a mistake, they tell me. I might have ruined everything.'

Murry grimaced. 'What really gets them, I guess, is that you've got a lot of first-hand dope that they didn't. Don't let their fancy titles fool you into thinking you're a nobody. A layman with common sense is better than a blind specialist. You and I - I'm a layman, too, you know - have to stand up for our rights. Here, have a cigarette.'

'I don't sm- I'll take one, thank you.' The albino felt himself warming to the long-bodied man opposite. He turned the papers face upward again, and lit up, bravely but uncertainly.

'Twenty-five years.' Theor spoke carefully, skirting around urgent coughs.

'Would you answer a few questions about the world?'

'I suppose so. That's all they ever ask me about. But hadn't you better ask them? They've probably got it all worked out now.' He blew the smoke as far from himself as possible.

Hurry said, 'Frankly, they haven't even begun, and I want the information without benefit of confusing psychological translation. First of all. what kind of people - or things - are these robots? You haven't a photocast of one of them, have you?'

'Well, no. I didn't like to take 'casts of them. But they're not things. They're people!'

'No? Do they look like - people?'

'Yes - mostly. Outside, anyway. I brought some microscopic studies of the cellular structure that I got hold of. The Board Master has them. They're different inside, you know, greatly simplified. But you'd never know that. They're interesting -and nice.'

'Are they simpler than the other life of the planet?'

'Oh, no. It's a very primitive planet. And… and,' he was interrupted by a spasm of coughing and crushed the cigarette to death as unobtrusively as possible. 'They've got a protoplasmic base, you know. I don't think they have the slightest idea they're robots.'

'No. I don't suppose they would have. What about their science?'

'I don't know. I never got a chance to see. And everything was so different. I guess it would take an expert to understand.'

'Did they have machines?'

The albino looked surprised. 'Well, of course. A good many, of all sorts.'

'Large cities?'

'Yes!'

The secretary's eyes grew thoughtful. 'And you like them. Why?'

Theor Realo was brought up sharply. 'I don't know. They were just likable. We got along. They didn't bother me so. It's nothing I can put my finger on. Maybe it's because I have it so hard getting along back home, and they weren't as difficult as real people.'

'They were more friendly?'

'N-no. Can't say so. They never quite accepted me. I was a stranger, didn't know their language at first - all that. But' - he looked up with sudden brightness - 'I understood them better. I could tell what they were thinking better. I- But I don't know why.'

'Hm-m-m. Well - another cigarette? No? I've got to be walloping the pillow now. It's getting late. How about a twosome at golf tomorrow? I've worked up a little course. It'll do. Come on out. The exercise will put hair on your chest.'

He grinned and left.

He mumbled one sentence to himself: 'It looks like a death sentence' - and whistled thoughtfully as he passed along to his own quarters.

He repeated the phrase to himself when he faced the Board Master the next day, with the sash of office about his waist. He did not sit down.

'Again?' said the Board Master, wearily.

'Again!' assented the secretary. 'But real business this time. I may have to take over direction of your expedition.'

'What! Impossible, sir! I will listen to no such proposition.'

'I have my authority.' Wynne Murry presented the metalloid cylinder that snapped open at a flick of the thumb. 'I have full powers and full discretion as to their use. It is signed, as you will observe, by the chairman of the Congress of the Federation.'