‘To you, a robot is a robot. Made by humans and, if necessary, destroyed by humans. But you haven’t worked with them, so you don’t knowthem. They’re cleaner, better creatures than we are. In the beginning, of course, robots couldn’t talk. Afterwards, they became more human. But it took US Robots a long time. The first robots sent out to Mercury failed. If you want to know about the second expedition, young man, I advise you to visit Gregory Powell. He’s still living in New York – he’s a grandfather now. But in those days he and Michael Donovan were the engineers who were given our most difficult cases.’