e instances of android
nursemaids who were virtually members of the families owning them.

She was glad now that she had not told Quest of her mission to Ganymede.
He thought he was Dr. Mansard's son, but an android had no legal right
of inheritance from his owner. She would leave it to Dom Blessing to
decide what to do about Quest.

Thus she did not, as she had intended originally, speak to Quest about
seeing him again after she had completed her assignment. Even if Jakdane
was wrong and Quest was human--as now seemed unlikely--Quest had told
her he could not love her. Her best course was to try to forget him.

Nor did Quest try to arrange with her for a later meeting.

"It has been pleasant knowing you, Trella," he said when they left the
G-boat at White Sands. A faraway look came into his blue eyes, and he
added: "I'm sorry things couldn't have been different, somehow."

"Let's don't be sorry for what we can't help," she said gently, taking
his hand in farewell.

Trella took a fast plane from White Sands, and twenty-four hours later
walked up the front steps of the familiar brownstone house on the
outskirts of Washington.

Dom Blessing himself met her at the door, a stooped, graying man who
peered at her over his spectacles.

"You have the papers, eh?" he said, spying the brief case. "Good, good.
Come in and we'll see what we have, eh?"

She accompanied him through the bare, windowless anteroom which had
always seemed to her such a strange feature of this luxurious house,
and they entered the big living room. They sat before a fire in the
old-fashioned fireplace and Blessing opened the brief case with
trembling hands.

"There are things here," he said, his eyes sparkling as he glanced
through the notebooks. "Yes, there are things here. We shall make
something of these, Miss Trella, eh?"

"I'm glad they're something you can use, Mr. Blessing," she said.
"There's something else I found on my trip, that I think I should tell
you about."

She told him about Quest.

"He thinks he's the son of Dr. Mansard," she finished, "but apparently
he is, without knowing it, an android Dr. Mansard built on Jupiter."

"He came back to Earth with you, eh?" asked Blessing intently.

"Yes. I'm afraid it's your decision whether to let him go on living as a
man or to tell him he's an android and claim ownership as Dr. Mansard's
heir."

Trella planned to spend a few days resting in her employer's spacious
home, and then