Along about mid-afternoon I began to feel puzzled. It took me a little while to get it, and then it hit me. The last three that I'd repaired had been brand-new. Fresh from the Robinc factory, and rushing over here to be remade into ... into usuforms! As soon as I finished adjusting drill arms on the robot miner, I hurried over to where Quinby was installing an infrared color sense on a soldier intended for camouflage-spotting. He looked up and smiled when he saw me. "You get it now?" "I get what's happening. But how ... who--" "I just followed your advice. Didn't you say what we needed was a guaranteed working usuform converter?" * * * * * "I don't need to explain, do I? It's simple enough once you look at it straight." We were sitting in the Sunspot. Guzub was very happy; it was the first time the Head had ever honored his establishment. "You'd better," I said, "remember I'm a crooked-viewing dope." "But it's all from things you've said. You're always saying I'm good at things and robots, but lousy at people because people don't see or act straight. Well, we were stymied with people. They couldn't see the real importance of usuforms through all the smoke screens that Grew threw up. But you admit yourself that robots see straight, so I went direct to them. And you said we needed a usuform converter, so I made one." The Head smiled. "And what is the utile form of a converter?" "He had to look like an android, because otherwise they wouldn't accept him. But he was the sturdiest, strongest android ever made, with several ingenious, new muscles. If it came to fighting, he was sure to make converts that way. And besides, he had something that's never been put in a robot brain before--the ability to argue and convince. With that, he had the usuform soldier as a combination bodyguard and example. So he went out among the androids, even to the guards at Robinc and from then on inside; and since he was a usuform converter, well--he converted." The Head let the famous grin play across his black face. "Fine work, Quinby. And if Grew hadn't had the sense to see at last that he was licked, you could have gone on with your usuform converters until there wasn't an android left on Earth. Robinc would have toppled like a wooden building with termites." "And Grew?" I asked. "What's become of him?" "I think, in a way, he's resigned to his loss. He told me that since his greatest passion was gone, he was going to make the most of his second greatest. He's gone off to his place in the mountains with that usuform cook you gave him, and he swears he's going to eat himself to death." "Me," said Mike, with appropriate business, "I'd like a damper death." "And from now on, my statisticians assure me, we're in no danger of ever using up our metal stockpile. The savings on usuforms will save us. Do you realize, Quinby, that you're just about the most important man in the Empire today?"