Three hours later Donovan returned. 'Nothing goes wrong when you watch them,' he said tiredly.
Powell pushed his chair back and put his feet on the desk.
'Listen, Mike. I've got an idea,' he began. 'Dave never goes wrong when a human is near him. When he is wrong, the arrival of the human solves the problem.'
'I told you that I feel uneasy about that.'
'Be quiet. How is a robot different when human are absent? The answer is obvious. The robot needs to use more personal initiative.'
Donovan sat up straight. 'There isn't just one part of the body which controls personal initiative.
look,I'm a specialist in robot circuits,as you know,and I can tell you all the circuits are involved. We need to find out what particular condition sends him wrong, and then start looking at the circuits.'
Powell said cautiously, 'Suppose we interview a subsidiary?' Neither Powell nor Donovan had spoken to a subsidiary robot, because they were controlled almost wholl by Dave. They were almost as close to Dave as his fingers. In fact, Powell and Donovan often called them Dave's fingers'.