He drew back mistrustfully. Then he looked around the room, found another gun, unloaded it, and handed it to me. "Go ahead," he said. It was a lousy job. I was in a state and in a hurry and the sweat running down my forehead and dripping off my eyebrows didn't help any. The workshop wasn't too well equipped, either, and I hate working from my head. I like a nice diagram to look at. But I made it somehow, very crudely, replacing one hand by the chamber and barrel and attaching the trigger so that it would be worked by the same nerve currents as actuated the finger movements to fire a separate gun. The android loaded himself awkwardly. I stood aside, and Quinby tossed up the disk. You never saw a prettier piece of instantaneous trap-shooting. The android stretched his face into that very rare thing, a robot grin, and expressed himself in pungently jubilant military language. "You like it?" Quinby asked. All that I can quote of the robot's reply is "Yes," but he made it plenty emphatic. "Then--" But I stepped in. "Just a minute. I've got an idea to improve it." Quinby was probably trusting to our guard's gratitude; I wanted a surer hold on him. "Let me take this off just a second--" I removed the chamber and barrel; I still had his hand. "Now," I said, "we want out." He brought up the gun in his other hand, but I said, "Ah, ah! Naughty! You aren't supposed to kill us till you get orders, and if you do they'll find you here with one hand. Fine state for a soldier. You can't repair yourself; you need two hands for it. But if we get out, you can come with us and be made over as much as you want into the first and finest efficient happy usuform soldier." It took a little argument, but with the memory of that one perfect shot in his mind it didn't take much. As Quinby said afterward, "Robinc built pride into its robots to give them self-confidence. But that pride also gave them vanity and dissatisfaction with anything less than perfection. That's what we could use. It was all perfectly simple--" "--when you looked at it straight," I chorused with him. "And besides," he said, "now we know how to lick Robinc forever." * * * * * That was some comfort. I suppose, though he wouldn't say another word to explain it. And I needed comfort, because just then things took a nasty turn again. We stuck close to our factory and didn't dare go out. We were taking no chances on more kidnapings before Quinby finished his new inspiration. Quinby worked on that alone, secret even from us. I figured out some extra touches of perfection on the usuform soldier, who was now our bodyguard--Grew would never dare complain of the theft because he'd had no legal right to possess such an android, anyway. Mike and his assistants, both living and usuform, turned out barkeeps and dowsers and cooks--our three most successful usuform designs so far.