And then he came down with a hard thud, "But how do we get back, Mike?"
Donovan smiled shakily, "Oh, that's all right. The ship brought us here. The ship will take us back. Me for more beans."
"But Mike... hold on, Mike. If it takes us back the way it brought us here-"
Donovan stopped halfway up and sat back heavily into the chair.
Powell went on, "We'll have to... die again, Mike"
"Well," sighed Donovan, "if we have to, we have to. At least it isn't permanent, not very permanent."
Susan Calvin was speaking slowly now. For six hours she had been slowly prodding The Brain - for six fruitless hours. She was weary of repetitions, weary of circumlocutions, weary of everything.
"Now, Brain, there's just one more thing. You must make a special effort to answer simply. Have you been entirely clear about the interstellar jump? I mean does it take them very far?"
"As far as they want to go, Miss Susan. Golly, it isn't any trick through the warp."
"And on the other side, what will they see?"
"Stars and stuff. What do you suppose?"
The next question slipped out, "They'll be alive, then?"
"Sure!"
"And the interstellar jump won't hurt them?"
She froze as The Brain maintained silence. That was it! She had touched the sore spot.
"Brain," she supplicated faintly, "Brain, do you hear me?"
The answer was weak, quivering. The Brain said, "Do I have to answer? About the jump, I mean?"
"Not if you don't want to. But it would be interesting - I mean if you wanted to." Susan Calvin tried to be bright about it.
"Aw-w-w. You spoil everything."
And the psychologist jumped up suddenly, with a look of flaming insight on her face.
"Oh, my," she gasped. "Oh, my."
And she felt the tension of hours and days released in a burst. It was later that she told Lanning, "I tell you it's all right. No, you must leave me alone, now. The ship will be back safely, with the men, and I want to rest. I will rest. Now go away."
The ship returned to Earth as silently, as unjarringly as it had left. It dropped precisely into place and the main lock gaped open. The two men who walked out felt their way carefully and scratched their rough and scrubbily-stubbled chins.
And then, slowly and purposefully, the one with red hair knelt down and planted upon the concrete of the runway a firm, loud kiss.
They waved aside the crowd that was gathering and made gestures of denial at the eager couple that had piled out of the down-swooping ambulance with a stretcher between them.
Gregory Powell said, "Where's the nearest shower?"
They were led away.
They were gathered, all of them, about a table. It was a full staff meeting of the brains of U. S. Robot amp; Mechanical Men Corp.
Slowly and climactically, Powell and Donovan finished a graphic and resounding story.
Susan Calvin broke the silence that followed. In the few days that had elapsed she had recovered her icy, somewhat acid, calm - but still a trace of embarrassment broke through.
"Strictly speaking," she said, "this was my fault - all of it. When we first presented this problem to The Brain, as I hope some of you remember, I went to great lengths to impress upon it the importance of rejecting any item of information capable of creating a dilemma. In doing so I said something like 'Don't get excited about the death of humans. We don't mind it at all. Just give the sheet back and forget it.'"
"Hm-m-m," said Lanning. "What follows?"
"The obvious. When that item entered its calculations which yielded the equation controlling the length of minimum interval for the interstellar jump - it meant death for humans. That's where Consolidated's machine broke down completely. But I had depressed the importance of death to The Brain - not entirely, for the First Law can never be broken - but just sufficiently so that The Brain could take a second look at the equation. Sufficiently to give it time to realize that after the interval was passed through, the men would return to life - just as the matter and energy of the ship itself would return to being. This so-called 'death,' in other words, was a strictly temporary phenomenon. You see?"
She looked about her. They were all listening.
She went on, "So he accepted the item, but not without a certain jar. Even with death temporary and its importance depressed, it was enough to unbalance him very gently."
She brought it out calmly, "He developed a sense of humor - it's an escape, you see, a method of partial escape from reality. He became a practical joker."
Powell and Donovan were on their feet.
"What?" cried Powell?
Donovan was considerably more colorful about it.
"It's so," said Calvin. "He took care of you, and kept you safe, but you couldn't handle any controls, because they weren't for you - just for the humorous Brain. We could reach you by radio, but you couldn't answer. You had plenty of food, but all of it beans and milk. Then you died, so to speak, and were reborn, but the period of your death was made... well... interesting. I wish I knew how he did it. It was The Brain's prize joke, but he meant no harm."
"No harm!" gasped Donovan. "Oh, if that cute little tyke only had a neck."
Lanning raised a quieting hand, "All right, it's been a mess, but it's all over. What now?"
"Well," said Bogert, quietly, "obviously it's up to us to improve the space-warp engine. There must be some way of getting around that interval of jump. If there is, we're the only organization left with a grand-scale super-robot, so we're bound to find it if anyone can. And then - U. S. Robots has interstellar travel, and humanity has the opportunity for galactic empire."