"Can a true android, with all the human attributes of mind and feeling, be made, George?" I asked. George rustled inside his unpretentious black cabinet and replied in a bass voice: "I believe that it can and will be done. Like space travel, it is part of the natural course of history." "What is the most difficult phase of doing so?" I enquired further. "Building the brain?" "No. Building the brain should be relatively simple. Giving an android a consciousness, an awareness of self, should be much more difficult. Philosophers have had trouble even defining consciousness." I chanced a third question, the answer to which I already knew: "Don't you have a consciousness, George?" "It is understood that no means yet exists to provide Earthly mechanisms with such a thing," George replied evenly. "I am no more aware than the first crude adding machine thinking out the sum of five and seven. A question to me merely sets a search and a reasoning process for a reply in motion. It is not necessary that I _know_ that I do this." Someone spoke from behind me: "Unaware thought. It even happens in our own subconscious minds. But it's hard to believe that George doesn't know his own reality. He's so human." I turned. It was Jan Randall, coloring a little. "Oh, I'm sorry Mr. Harver. I didn't mean to eavesdrop," she said. "Eavesdrop?" I chuckled. "There was nothing private about my question. Go ask yours. I'll wait out of earshot." "I haven't any," she answered with a smile. "I come here often just for the mood. This place feels like a temple; as if God and all nature were here. George isn't much of all that, but he seems the best contact. Now, shall we both laugh?" "Let's feel awed and humble, instead," I replied. After a pause, I asked lightly: "George, is it all right for Janice Randall and I to have dinner together?" George was small. Always, he refused to give out social advice. "This, I am not permitted to answer," he rumbled. Jan and I laughed gayly together as we turned to leave. Jan was unobtrusive, but very pretty. Her hair was light brown, her features were fine, her nose turned up, her height reached to the center of my chest. And she had her eyes on a spacewoman's career. From beside the door a pair of slightly fanatical eyes under a high forehead smirked at us. The jaw was strong; the smile was crooked, humorous, gentle. "Hi, Cope," I greeted. "What brings you here?" "This I have to watch, Harver," he answered. "The machine telling the man--already. Screwballs! Where will it end?" "Who was that?" Jan asked as we were going down stairs. "An English-Lit classmate of mine," I answered. "One who believes that all virtue is the past's. Call him the conscience of the human race. Armand Cope." Little hard glints showed in Jan's eyes before she said, "Oh," mildly, and laughed. After dinner I took her to meet Dr. Shane Lanvin. Six months later he said to both of us: