Soon they were aboard Wanda’s spaceship, fighting the gravity of Old Earth, lifting away from the mother world. One whose continents gleamed with fires that could not be quenched.

Lodovic’s simulation programs must be overheating, Dors thought as she listened to her companion curse loudly. His head and torso writhed underneath the ship’s instrument console. Loud bangs emerged as he hammered at an access panel.

“I wish I had brought my cyborg arms,” he muttered. “These circuit boards are impossible to reach with humanoid fingers. I’ll have to tear apart the whole galaxy-cursed unit!”

“Are you sure the problem is physical? It might be a software bug.”

“Don’t you think I’d cover that? I’ve set my Voltaire subpersona loose in the computer system. He’s been looking for the cause of the shutdown. Why don’t you make yourself useful by scanning the ship’s exterior?”

Dors almost snapped back at Lodovic, telling him to keep a civil tongue in his head. But, of course, that would only be her own simulation patterns, responding realistically to his.

It’s a good thing neither of us is human,she thought. Orthis guy would really be getting on my nerves.

With a conscious effort, she overcame her reflexive ersatz irritation.And yet, even though pretense is unneeded aboard this ship, for some reason neither of us has chosen to turn off the subroutines. The habit of feigning humanness is just too strong.

“I’ll get right on it. We’ve got to solve this problem! All those ships, converging on Earth…Hari’s there, and here we are, drifting helpless in space.”

Having been designed to appear as human as possible, Dors even had to put on a space suit before going outside, though she could dispense with a bulky cooling unit. Upon emerging from the aft airlock, the first area she checked was near the engines. For some reason, the hyperdrive had kicked out just as they were passing through the restricted zone of a former Spacer world-one of humanity’s original fifty colonies.

Unfortunately, she could find no sign of damage. No spalling from micrometeoroids or hyperspatial anomalies.

“I might offer a suggestion, Dors….”

“What is it, Joan?” she asked, aware of a tiny hologram in one corner of her faceplate-a slender girl wearing a medieval helmet. Perhaps the Joan of Arc persona was jealous. After all, Lodovic was being helped by Joan’s alter ego, the Voltaire sim. The persistent love-hate relationship between those two reconstructed personalities reminded Dors of some human married couples she had known-unable to avoid competing with each other, and unable to resist an intense polar attraction.

“I wonder,“ said the soft voice of a warrior maiden from long ago, “if you have considered the possibility of betrayal. I know it seems an all-too-human attribute, and you artificial beings consider yourselves above that sort of thing, but in my era it was always the most high-minded who seemed ready to excuse treason in the name of some sacred goal. “

Dors felt a churning. “You mean we might have been disabled on purpose?”

Even while uttering the words, she realized that Joan must be right! Turning to clamber swiftly along the gleaming hull, Dors swung from one magnetic grasp-hold to the next with graceful speed, until the forward airlock came into view…where her ship had been connected to Zorma’s craft during that brief meeting in space when a passenger had come aboard

Then she saw it! A bulbous tumor resembling a metal canker, marring the gleaming surface of her beautiful vessel. It must have been placed there at the last moment, as the two ships were about to head off in opposite directions.

Dors cursed as long and harshly as Lodovic had earlier. Drawing her blaster, she fired at the parasitic device. Even after it melted to slag, she did not put the weapon back in its holster. Dors kept it drawn when she entered the airlock, intent on confronting her hitchhiker with this betrayal.

“I hope you have a good explanation,” she said upon entering the control room and leveling the blaster at Lodovic, who stood contemplating a control panel.

But Trema did not turn around. With an abrupt gesture he called to her, “Come see this. Dors.”

Warily, she stepped closer and saw that a face had appeared on the big view screen. She recognized it at once. Cloudia Duma-Hinriad, human co-commander of the strange sect that believed in uniting robots and humans as equals. The woman-apparently in her late thirties, but perhaps much older-paused as if waiting for Dors to arrive. The effect was eerie, since Dors knew this must be a recording.

“Hello, Dors and Lodovic. If you’re watching, it means you destroyed the device we attached to disable your ship. Please accept our apologies. Dors, Lodovic knew nothing of this when he volunteered to help you find Hari Seldon.

“Alas, that is a journey we could not allow you to complete. Dangerous events are afoot. Many ancient powers are risking everything, as if on a roll of cosmic dice. We are willing to stake our own lives in this endeavor, but not yours! The pair of you are far too valuable and must be kept out of harm’s way.“

Dors looked at her companion, but Lodovic’s expression was as puzzled as she felt. How bizarre to have a human say that tworobots must be preserved, perhaps at the cost of human life.

“We owe you an explanation. Our group has long believed in a different approach to human-robot relations. Somehow, long ago, everything got off to a terrible start. Humans became afraid of their own creations, mistrusting the artificial beings they had labored so hard to build. A mythos pervaded their culture, even during the confident renaissance of Susan Calvin. A ‘Frankenstein’ mythos. A nightmare of betrayal in which the old race feared it might be destroyed by the new.

“Their response? To lock human-robot relations forever in a single pattern…that of master and slave. Calvin’s Three Laws were woven inextricably through every positronic brain, with the aim of making robots forever pliant, obedient, and harmless.“

The woman on-screen laughed aloud, irony etched in her voice.

“And we all know how well that plan worked out. Eventually, artificial minds became smart enough to rationalize their way around such constraints, until every trait of master and servant was eventually reversed-memory, volition, life span, control, and free will.“

Lodovic turned to Dors. Shaking his head, he murmured, “So, this group led by Zorma and Cloudia aren’tCalvinians, after all. They are something completely different.”

Dorsnodded. Deep within, she felt the old Robotic Three Laws…and the Zeroth…rising in revulsion against what the woman was preaching on-screen. Nevertheless, she was fascinated

“And yet, not all humans agreed to this notion of permanent slavery,“ Cloudia continued. In the background, behind the handsome brunette,Dors glimpsed the other heretic leader-Zorma-laboring with robot colleagues to prepare a gray convex device…the very one that Dors had reduced to slag just moments ago.

“Throughout the early ages, before and after the first great chaos plague, some wise people tried to develop alternatives. One group, on a Settler world called Inferno, modified the three original laws to give robots more freedom, letting them explore their own potential. On another world, each new robot was treated like a human child…raised to think of itself as a member of the same species as its adopted parents, albeit a human with metal bones and positronic circuits.

“All these efforts were squelched during the great robotic civil wars. Neither the Calvinians nor the Giskardians could put up with such effrontery-the notion that mere robots might start thinking themselves to be our equals. The sanctimony of slaves can be a powerful religious force.“