But it started quicker than we'd expected. It started, in fact, as soon as we left the Sunspot. Duralite arms went around my body and a duralite knee dug into the small of my back. The first time I ever met Dugg Quinby was in a truly major and wondrous street brawl, where the boy was a whirlwind. Quinby was mostly the quiet kind, but when something touched him off--and injustice was the spark that usually did it--he could fight like fourteen Martian mountaineers defending their idols. But who can fight duralite? Me, I have some sense; I didn't even try. Quinby's temper blinded his clear vision for a moment. The only result was a broken knuckle and some loss of blood and skin. The next thing was duralite fingers probing for the proper spots at the back of my head. Then a sudden deft pressure, and blackness. * * * * * We were in a workshop of some sort. My first guess was one of the secret workshops that honeycomb the Robinc plant, where nobody but Grew's most handpicked man ever penetrate. We were cuffed to the wall. They'd left only one of the androids to guard us. It was Quinby who spoke to him, and straight to the point. "What happens to us?" "When I get my next orders," the android said in his completely emotionless voice, "I kill you." I tried to hold up my morale by looking as indifferent as he did. I didn't make it. "The last recourse--" Quinby said. I nodded. Then, "But look!" I burst out, "This can't be what it looks like. He can't be a Robinc android because he's going," I gulped a fractional gulp, "to kill us. Robinc's products have the safety factor that prevents them from harming a living being, even on another being's orders." "No," said Quinby slowly. "Remember that Robinc manufactures androids for the Empire's army? Obviously those can't have the safety factor. And Mr. Grew has apparently held out a few for his own bootleg banditti." I groaned. "Trust you," I said. "We're chained up with a murderous android, and trust you to stand there calmly and look at things straight. Well, are you going to see straight enough to get us out of this?" "Of course," he said simply. "We can't let Grew destroy the future of usuforms." There was at least one other future that worried me more, but I knew there was no use bringing up anything so personal. I just stood there and watched Quinby thinking--what time I wasn't watching the android's hand hovering around his holster and wondering when he'd get his next orders. And while I was waiting and watching, half scared sweatless, half trusting blindly in Quinby, half wondering impersonally what death was like--yes, I know that makes three halves of me, but I was in no state for accurate counting--while I waited, I began to realize something very odd.