“My newspaper reaches the whole solar system,” I said to Dr. Calvin. “We have three billion readers, Dr. Calvin. They would like to hear your views on robots.”
Dr. Calvin didn’t smile at me. I don’t think she ever smiled. She was small and thin and her eyes were sharp, though not angry.
“How old are you?” she wanted to knows.
“Thirty-two,” I said.
“Then you don’t remember a world without a robot,” Dr. Calvin began. “There was a time when human beings faced the world alone and without a friend. Now we have robots to help us – stronger, more useful, more capable than we are. Human beings are no longer alone. Have you ever thought of it that way?
“I’m afraid I haven’t.”
“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 know them. 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. If you want to know about the second expedition, young man, I advise you to visit Gregory Powell. He still living in New York – he’s a grandfather now. But in those days, he and Michel Donovan were the engineers who were given our most difficult cases.”
“I can visit Mr. Powell later,” I agreed. “But please tell me what you remember now.”
She spread her thin hands on her desk and looked at them. “There are two or three of their cases that I know about,” she said.
“Start with Mercury,” I suggested.
“Well, I think that the Second Mercury Expedition was sent out in 2015. It consisted of two engineers – Gregory Powell and Michael Donavan – and a new robot, the SPD robot . . .”