The sights and sounds and smells of home grew close and wrapped themselves about him and he wondered wildly if he might not have the power, a power accorded him by the universe of hyperspace, to will himself to that familiar street again.
He shuddered at the thought of it, afraid of another power, afraid that it might happen. Afraid of himself, perhaps, of the snarled and tangled being he was — no longer the faithful, shining servant, but a sort of mad thing that rode outside a spaceship, that was ready to kill another being, that could face up to the appalling sweep of hyperspace, yet cowered before the impact of a memory.
What he needed was a walk, he thought. Look over the town and maybe go out into the country. Besides, he remembered, trying to become practical, he'd need to get that plastication job he had been warned to get.
He went out into the corridor and strode briskly down it and was crossing the lobby when someone spoke to him.
"Hubert," said the voice, "just where have you been? I've been waiting hours for you."
Richard Daniel spun around and a robot sat behind the desk. There was another robot leaning in a corner and there was a naked robot brain lying on the desk.
"You are Hubert, aren't you", asked the one behind the desk.
Richard Daniel opened up his mouth to speak, but the words refused to come.
"I thought so," said the robot. "You may not recognize me, but my name is Andy. The regular man was busy, so the judge sent me. He thought it was only fair we make the switch as quickly as possible. He said you'd served a longer term than you really should. Figures you'd be glad to know they'd convicted someone else."
Richard Daniel stared in horror at the naked brain lying on the desk.
The robot gestured at the metal body propped into the corner.
"Better than when we took you out of it," he said with a throaty chuckle. "Fixed it up and polished it and got out all the dents. Even modernized it some. Brought it strictly up to date. You'll have a better body than you had when they stuck you into that monstrosity."
"I don't know what to say," said Richard Daniel, stammering. "You see, I'm not…"
"Oh, that's all right," said the other happily. "No need for gratitude. Your sentence worked out longer than the judge expected. This just makes up for it."
"I thank you, then," said Richard Daniel. "I thank you very much."
And was astounded at himself, astonished at the ease with which he said it, confounded at his sly duplicity.
But if they forced it on him, why should he refuse? There was nothing that he needed more than a modern body!
It was still working out, he told himself. He was still riding luck. For this was the last thing that he needed to cover up his tracks.
"All newly plasticated and everything," said Andy. "Hans did an extra special job."
'Well, then," said Richard Daniel, "let's get on with it."
The other robot grinned. "I don't blame you for being anxious to get out of there. It must be pretty terrible to live in a pile of junk like that."
He came around from behind the desk and advanced on Richard Danie1.
"Over in the corner," he said, "and kind of prop yourself. I don't want you tipping over when I disconnect you. One good fall and that body'd come apart."
"All right," said Richard Daniel. He went into the corner and leaned back against it and planted his feet solid so that he was propped.
He had a rather awful moment when Andy disconnected the optic nerve and he lost his eyes and there was considerable queasiness in having his skull lifted off his shoulders and he was in sheer funk as the final disconnections were being swiftly made.
Then he was a blob of greyness without a body or a head or eyes or anything at all. He was no more than a bundle of thoughts all wrapped around themselves like a pail of worms and this pail of worms was suspended in pure nothingness.
Fear came to him, a taunting, terrible fear. What if this were just a sort of ghastly gag? What if they'd found out who he really was and what he'd done to Hubert? What if they took his brain and tucked it away somewhere for a year or two — or for a hundred years? It might be, he told himself, nothing more than their simple way of justice.
He hung onto himself and tried to fight the fear away, but the fear ebbed back and forth like a restless tide.
Time stretched out and out — far too long a time, far more time than one would need to switch a brain from one body to another. Although, he told himself, that might not be true at all. For in his present state he had no way in which to measure time. He had no external reference points by which to determine time.
Then suddenly he had eyes.
And he knew everything was all right.
One by one his senses were restored to him and he was back inside a body and he felt awkward in the body, for he was unaccustomed to it.
The first thing that he saw was his old and battered body propped into its corner and he felt a sharp regret at the sight of it and it seemed to him that he had played a dirty trick upon it. It deserved, he told himself, a better fate than this — a better fate than being left behind to serve as a shabby jailhouse on this outlandish planet. It had served him well for six hundred years and he should not be deserting it. But he was deserting it. He was, he told himself in contempt, becoming very expert at deserting his old friends. First the house back home and now his faithful body.
Then he remembered something else — all that money in the body!
"What's the matter, Hubert?" Andy asked.
He couldn't leave it there, Richard Daniel told himself, for he needed it. And besides, if he left it there, someone would surely find it later and it would be a give-away. He couldn't leave it there and it might not be safe to forthrightly claim it. If he did, this other robot, this Andy, would think he'd been stealing on the job or running some side racket. He might try to bribe the other, but one could never tell how a move like that might go. Andy might be full of righteousness and then there'd be hell to pay. And, besides, he didn't want to part with any of the money.
All at once he had it — he knew just what to do. And even as he thought it, he made Andy into a diagram.
That connection there, thought Richard Daniel, reaching out his arm to catch the falling diagram that turned into a robot. He eased it to the floor and sprang across the room to the side of his old body. In seconds he had the chest safe open and the money safely out of it and locked inside his present body.
Then he made the robot on the floor become a diagram again and got the connection back the way that it should be.
Andy rose shakily off the floor. He looked at Richard Daniel in some consternation.
"What happened to me?" he asked in a frightened voice. Richard Daniel sadly shook his head. "I don't know. You just keeled over. I started for the door to yell for help, then I heard you stirring and you were all right."
Andy was plainly puzzled. "Nothing like this ever happened to me before," he said.
"If I were you," counseled Richard Daniel, "I'd have myself checked over. You must have a faulty relay or a loose connection."
"I guess I will," the other one agreed. "It's downright dangerous."
He walked slowly to the desk and picked up the other brain, started with it toward the battered body leaning in the corner.
Then he stopped and said: "Look, I forgot. I was supposed to tell you. You better get up to the warehouse. Another ship is on its way. It will be coming in any minute now."
"Another one so soon?"
"You know how it goes," Andy said, disgusted. "They don't even try to keep a schedule here. We won't see one for months and then there'll be two or three at once."
"Well, thanks," said Richard Daniel, going out the door. He went swinging down the street with a newborn confidence. And he had a feeling that there was nothing that could lick him, nothing that could stop him.