Baley’s long face took on a stony grimness as he looked down the length of the long room from above. There was glass between the room and themselves. On the other side, he was sure, was perfectly controlled heat, perfectly controlled humidity, perfectly controlled asepsis. Those tanks, row on row, each contained its little creature floating in a watery fluid of precise composition, infused with a nutrient mixture of ideal proportions. Life and growth went on.

Little things, some smaller than half his fist, curled on themselves, with bulging skulls and tiny budding limbs and vanishing tails.

Klorissa, from her position twenty feet away, said, “How do you like it, Plainclothesman?”

Baley said, “How many do you have?”

“As of this morning, one hundred and fifty-two. We receive fifteen to twenty each month and we graduate as many to independence.”

“Is this the only such institution on the planet?”

“That’s right. It’s enough to keep the population steady, counting on a life expectancy of three hundred years and a population of twenty thousand. This building is quite new. Dr. Delmarre supervised its construction and made many changes in our procedures. Our fetal death rate now is virtually zero.”

Robots threaded their way among the tanks. At each tank they stopped and checked controls in a tireless, meticulous way, looking in at the tiny embryos within.

“Who operates on the mother?” asked Baley. “I mean, to get the little things.”

“Doctors,” answered Klorissa.

“Dr. Delmarre?”

“Of course not. Medical doctors. You don’t think Dr. Delmarre would ever stoop to—Well, never mind.”

“Why can’t robots be used?”

“Robots in surgery? First Law makes that very difficult, Plainclothesman. A robot might perform an appendectomy to save a human life, if he knew how, but I doubt that he’d be usable after that without major repairs. Cutting human flesh would be quite a traumatic experience for a positronic brain. Human doctors can manage to get hardened to it. Even to the personal presence required.”

Baley said, “I notice that robots tend the fetuses, though. Do you and Dr. Delmarre ever interfere?”

“We have to, sometimes, when things go wrong. If a fetus has developmental trouble, for instance. Robots can’t be trusted to judge the situation accurately when human life is involved.”

Baley nodded. “Too much risk of a misjudgment and a life lost, I suppose.”

“Not at all. Too much risk of overvaluing a life and saving one improperly.” The woman looked stem. “As fetal engineers, Baley, we see to it that healthy children are born; healthy ones. Even the best

gene analysis of parents can’t assure that all gene permutations and combinations will be favorable, to say nothing of the possibility of mutations. That’s our big concern, the unexpected mutation. We’ve got the rate of those down to less than one in a thousand, but that means that, on the average, once a decade, we have trouble.”

She motioned him along the balcony and he followed her.

She said, “I’ll show you the infants’ nurseries and the youngsters’ dormitories. They’re much more a problem than the fetuses are. With them, we can rely on robot labor only to a limited extent.”

“Why is that?”

“You would know, Baley, if you ever tried to teach a robot the importance of discipline. First Law makes them almost impervious to that fact. And don’t think youngsters don’t learn that about as soon as they can talk. I’ve seen a three-year-old holding a dozen robots motionless by yelling, ‘You’ll hurt me. I’m hurt.’ It takes an extremely advanced robot to understand that a child might be deliberately lying.”

“Could Delmarre handle the children?”

“Usually.”

“How did he do that? Did he get out among, them and shake sense into them?”

“Dr. Delmarre? Touch them? Skies above! Of course not! But he could talk to them. And he could give a robot specific orders. I’ve seen him viewing a child for fifteen minutes, and keeping a robot in spanking position all that time, getting it to spank-spank-spank. A few like that and the child would risk fooling with the boss no more. And the boss was skillful enough about it so that usually the robot didn’t need more than a routine readjustment afterward.”

“How about you? Do you get out among the children?”

“I’m afraid I have to sometimes. I’m not like the boss. Maybe someday I’ll be able to handle the long-distance stuff, but right now if I tried, I’d just ruin robots. There’s an art to handling robots really well, you know. When I think of it, though. Getting out among the children. Little animals!”

She looked back at him suddenly. “I suppose you wouldn’t mind seeing them.”

“It wouldn’t bother me.”

She shrugged and stared at him with amusement. “Earthman!”

She walked on again. “What’s all this about, anyway? You’ll have to end up with Gladia Delmarre as murderess. You’ll have to.”

“I’m not quite sure of that,” said Baley.

“How could you be anything else but sure? Who else could it possibly be?”

“There are possibilities, ma’am.”

“Who, for instance?”

“Well, you, for instance!”

And Klorissa’s reaction to that quite surprised Baley.

She laughed.

The laughter grew and fed on itself till she was gasping for breath and her plump face had reddened almost to purple. She leaned against the wall and gasped for breath.

“No, don’t come closer,” she begged. “I’m all right.”

Baley said gravely, “Is the possibility that humorous?”

She tried to answer and laughed again. Then, in a whisper, she said, “Oh, you are an Earthman? How could it ever be me?”

“You knew him well,” said Baley. “You knew his habits. You could have planned it.”

“And you think I would see him? That I would get close enough to bash him over the head with something? You just don’t know anything at all about it, Baley.”

Baley felt himself redden. “Why couldn’t you get close enough to him, ma’am. You’ve had practice—uh—mingling.”

“With the children.”

“One thing leads to another. You seem to be able to stand my presence.”

“At twenty feet,” she said contemptuously.

“I’ve just visited a man who nearly collapsed because he had to endure my presence for a while.”

Klorissa sobered and said, “A difference in degree.”

“I suggest that a difference in degree is all that is necessary. The habit of seeing children makes it possible to endure seeing Delmarre just long enough.”

“I would like to point out, Mr. Baley,” said Klorissa, no longer ap

pearing the least amused, “that it doesn’t matter a speck what I can endure. Dr. Delmarre was the finicky one. He was almost as bad as Leebig himself. Almost. Even if I could endure seeing him, he would never endure seeing me. Mrs. Delmarre is the only one he could possibly have allowed within seeing distance.”

Baley said, “Who’s this Leebig you mentioned?”

Klorissa shrugged. “One of these odd genius types, if you know what I mean. He’s done work with the boss on robots.”

Baley checked that off mentally and returned to the matter at hand. He said, “It could also be said you had a motive.”

“What motive?”

“His death put you in charge of this establishment, gave you position.”

“You call that a motive? Skies above, who could want this position? Who on Solaria? This is a motive for keeping him alive. It’s a motive for hovering over him and protecting him. You’ll have to do better than that, Earthman.”

Baley scratched his neck uncertainly with one finger. He saw the justice of that.

Kiorissa said, “Did you notice my ring, Mr. Baley?”

For a moment it seemed she was about to strip the glove from her right hand, but she refrained.

“I noticed it,” said Baley.