We didn't go out, but we heard enough. It was the newest and nastiest step in Grew's campaign. He had men following up our cooks and bartenders and managing to slip concentrated doses of ptomaine alkaloids into their products. No serious poisoning, you understand; just an abnormally high proportion of people taken sick after taking usuform-prepared food or drink. And a rumor going around that the usuforms secreted a poisonous fluid, which was objective nonsense, but enough to scare a lot of people. "It's no use." Mike said to me one day. "We're licked. Two new orders in a week. We're done for. No use keeping up production." "The hell we're licked," I said. "If you want to encourage me, you'd ought to sound like you believed it yourself. No, we're sunk. While _he_ sits in there and--I'm going down to the Sunspot and drink Three Planets till this one spins. And if Grew wants to kidnap me, he's welcome to me." It was just then the message came from the Head. I read it, and knew how the camel feels about that last straw. It said: I can't resist popular pressure forever. I know and you know what Grew is up to; but the public is demanding re-enactment of the law giving Robinc exclusive rights. Unless Quinby can see straight through the hat to the rabbit, that re-enactment is going to pass. "We'll see what he has to say to this," I said to Mike. I started for the door, and even as I did so Quinby came out. "I've got it!" he said. "It's done." He read the Head's message with one glance, and it didn't bother him. He grabbed me by the shoulders and beamed. I've never heard my name spoken so warmly. "Mike, too. Come on in and see the greatest usuform we've hit on yet. Our troubles are over." We went in. We looked. And we gawked. For Quinby's greatest usuform, so far as our eyes could tell, was just another android robot. * * * * * Mike went resolutely off to the Sunspot to carry out his threat of making this planet spin. I began to think myself that the tension had affected Quinby's clear-seeing mind. I didn't listen especially when he told me I'd given him the idea myself. I watched the usuform-android go off on his mysterious mission and I even let him take my soldier along. And I didn't care. We were done for now, if even Dugg Quinby was slipping. But I didn't have time to do much worrying that morning. I was kept too busy with androids that came in wanting repairs. Very thoroughgoing repairs, too, that turned them, like my soldier, practically into usuforms. We always had a few such requests--I think I mentioned how they all want to be perfect--but this began to develop into a cloudburst. I stopped the factory lines and put every man and robot on repair.