f kitchenette and returned
with a knife. He put his hand on the head of the ninth android and drew
it backward so that the neck muscles were taut. He raised the knife.

Then he paused and looked down with a faint expression of interest in
his otherwise empty eyes. "Are you afraid to die?"

"I don't--know. What is it to--die?"

"You become nonfunctioning."

"I think I would rather not become nonfunctioning."

The tenth android cut the ninth android's throat. Carefully and cleanly,
he severed the big artery that carried the blood-fluid back down to the
upper heart.

The blood-fluid spouted out and drained down over the chest of the ninth
android. He shuddered. His eyes closed. When the tenth android released
his grip, the head fell forward.

And from somewhere in the synthetically created mind of the tenth
android there came a question: Was it undesirable to become
nonfunctioning? The human was afraid to die. He sensed this but not the
reason for it, if there was one. The human was afraid to die.

He wondered only momentarily, vaguely recorded it as a mistake to wonder
about such things, and then crossed the room and put the red-stained
knife into the sink.

After that, he let himself quietly out of the apartment and walked off
down the street.

He had much to do. He had to leave town and finish the project alone.

Then, quite suddenly, he stopped, stepped into a nearby doorway and
stood motionless. There was no change in his expression except that
possibly his eyes became a shade emptier.

After a while he left the doorway and moved on. But it was with new
purpose and with new plans.

The new orders, relayed across a light-year of space, were not
intercepted by any terrestrial receiving device, however sensitive. But
they were received and recorded perfectly in the mind of the tenth
android.

* * * * *

Frank Corson and Les King sat in a coffee shop and regarded each other
with a certain wariness. "It's like this, at least from where I sit,"
King said. "About ten years ago a small-town judge named Sam Baker--"

"You told me that," Corson cut in impatiently. "Baker was supposed to
have been drowned, but they never found the body. Now, you think William
Matson is Sam Baker?"

King pondered the question morosely. "I've got every right to think so.
But Baker would have aged some in ten years. The man I saw--"

"The man you saw didn't have a broken leg. I must have seen th