Wayne found himself back in the darkness of the sphere in Room F-12. He was still cold and very hungry, but he knew he would have to concentrate to deal with any robots Hunter had assigned to catch him. Stiffly, he opened the door and climbed out into the wonderfully warm room.

One robot was in the room, already walking toward him.

“Stop and identify yourself,” Wayne ordered, in as firm a tone as he could muster.

“R. Ishihara,” said the robot, stopping.

“Oh, yes. Horatio introduced us before. I instructed you to help me follow MC Governor, didn’t I?”

“Yes.”

Wayne was immediately encouraged. Ishihara’s responses meant that he had no overriding, general instruction under the Second Law to ignore Wayne’s words to him. “Do not contact anyone else from this point on. Now inform me of any and all instructions that pertain to me.”

“Hunter told me to detain and hold you on the basis of the First Law danger to the present if you were to return to the past and change it in a significant way.”

Suddenly Wayne remembered that no matter how long Hunter was in the past, he could choose to return at the present moment. Wayne rushed to the console that controlled the sphere and threw the main power switch, shutting down the entire system. Then he let out a long breath of relief.

“Now, then. Ishihara, what other instructions have you received regarding me?”

“What I have told you summarizes the instructions I received about you.”

“Hunter’s a robot. His instructions don’t carry the weight of the Second Law.”

“No.”

“You know that mine do. You will allow my instructions to supersede his?”

“No.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“Human members of Hunter’s team instructed me to obey him. Their orders have the Second Law behind them. Also, a concern for the First Law gives these instructions their true authority with me.”

“You said the basis for this instruction is a First Law problem about changing history?”

“Yes.”

Wayne paused to think a moment. He saw a chance to talk Ishihara out of following Hunter’s orders. “Why haven’t you taken me into custody already?”

“You are in my custody. You have not tried to leave this room, either by the door or by using the sphere again. If you return to the sphere and throw the power switch again, I shall forcibly detain you. If you attempt to pass me to reach the door, I shall do the same.”

“Did you obey me when I told you not to contact anyone else? Or did you transmit a request to Security for help?”

“I obeyed you.”

“Why?”

“That particular instruction does not contradict any of my other orders.”

“So at the moment you consider me sufficiently under your control.”

“Yes.”

Wayne grinned. “I love literal robot logic. So, that’s why you’re willing to stand there and converse with me.”

“Yes.”

“So the alleged danger of my changing the past is your primary concern.”

“It gives the weight of the First Law to the orders I received from Hunter’s team.”

“Maybe you know that I was in the Late Cretaceous period. I didn’t cause any big problems back then, did I? Or when I was in Jamaica back in the 1600s?”

“I would not know. Only those who travel in time can make that judgment, after they return. If any changes in the flow of history were made, all those of us who remained within that flow without a break were altered with it. I would have no way of knowing if the direction of history was any different before you left.”

“Well…I see.” Wayne rubbed his hands to warm them faster. “Yes, of course. But our memories match up pretty well. So far, you’ve known what I’ve been talking about. And I understand what you’ve said, too. Right, Ishihara?”

“Correct.”

“So doesn’t that imply that we are still pretty much in an unchanged timestream?”

“It raises the odds, yes. Of course, you might find substantial changes if you began to follow the news or as your life goes on.”

“Any changes-if they exist at all-seem pretty subtle to me;” said Wayne. “Certainly I don’t have any desire to change history. After all, Ishihara, I want to come back home, too, and find everything the way I knew it to be. You do understand that, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Ishihara, I don’t present any greater danger to the course of history than Hunter. In fact, Hunter is back there right now endangering the present.”

Ishihara said nothing.

“Do you agree with this conclusion?”

“I am undecided.”

“You’re undecided.” Wayne sighed. “Hunter is a robot, Ishihara; that does not mean he is perfect. And he has humans on his team who are even more imperfect in their reasoning. If they can go into the past and back without destroying the course of history as we know it, then I can, too.”

Ishihara remained silent.

“You accept this point?”

“I understand that you have no desire to make changes in history.”

“And so you understand that I have no more motivation to do that than Hunter. That means that if any of us makes changes, the reason will be a mistake-a misjudgment, an accident, that sort of thing. Right?”

“Yes, that is correct.”

“Logically, then, you also accept that Hunter’s party, because it is a larger group, offers more chance of such accidents. Their group threatens to make changes more than I do alone. You agree with that, too?”

“Yes, that is an inescapably logical conclusion.”

“So Hunter’s instructions to you about grabbing me have no greater weight from the First Law than if I ordered you to stop him for the same reason.”

Ishihara said nothing.

Wayne decided to drop that line of argument for a moment and come back to it later. For now, he was just glad that he seemed to have the robot at a stalemate in the debate. Maybe that meant Hunter’s instructions were neutralized. “Ishihara, I instruct you to tell me where Hunter has taken MC 1 and MC 2.”

“I do not know for certain. My own observation of the component robots has been limited to this room.”

“Well…” Wayne thought a moment. He knew Ishihara was now deliberately resisting him by interpreting his instructions in as literal a manner as possible. “Look, you may have overheard some conversation or something. Tell me your best estimation of where they are.”

“Mojave Center Governor’s office.”

That struck Wayne as a reasonable guess. Since Mojave Center Governor was no longer using it, Hunter could have had the office secured without disrupting normal city routine. However, Wayne did not want to risk trying to get there past a Security detail of robots.

If he ventured out of the building, he would be moving through a city full of robots. All of them could be contacted by their communications links in an instant if word went out to apprehend him. Further, he could not possibly debate effectively with each one of them, the way he had managed to do with Ishihara so far. However, if he could just keep Ishihara in enough doubt about the authority of Hunter’s instructions to control him, he could go back into the past again after MC 3, where Hunter’s team did not have an overwhelming advantage over him.

“Ishihara, you have agreed with me that Hunter’s party is more likely to change the past than I am. On that basis, the First Law no longer supports Hunter’s instructions for you to keep me in your custody. Right?”

“The potential human harm caused by a significant change in history is real.”

“You’re dodging the question,” said Wayne. “I repeat: since Hunter’s party is a greater danger than I am, Hunter’s order for you to grab me but let his group go into the past is irrational and unnecessary. Do you agree?”

“Yes, such an imbalance is not reasonable.”

“Ishihara, being arrested by you or by city Security is going to harm me. Right now, I’m extremely hungry and tired and I’m just starting to get warm. I want to take a nap here and I want you to get me some things. Then I’m going back into the past. I instruct you to tell me if you will cooperate with me and not reveal to anyone else in any way that I am here.”

“The First Law clearly requires that I help you get food and rest,” said Ishihara. He spoke in a monotone that revealed his doubt, but he apparently could not avoid following Wayne’s reasoning for the moment.

“Without giving me away?”

“Yes.”

“Then I want the following. Bring me some hot food and fruit juice to consume now and also a backpack. In the backpack, I want some general supplies. I’ll need a large knife, some twine, some rope, a butane lighter, and a mug to drink from.” Wayne was not sure exactly what he would need, but these were practical items for a man out in the woods. “Also, a small radio, hypnotic sleep courses in Latin and ancient German, and some very warm clothes-similar to whatever Hunter’s human friends wore.”

“I shall bring you a small radio disguised as a piece of jewelry, such as Hunter used,” said Ishihara. “He held the opinion that the concept of radio was so far beyond the people of ancient times that finding one was not a great danger. However, I dare not bring a lighter.”

“What? Why not?”

“The people around you certainly understand fire and the desirability of starting one quickly and easily. Any object which causes humans of the past to think along new lines can be the springboard for altering the course of history.”

“I could be harmed without one, Ishihara. I could freeze to death back there.”

“You are safe here. No one is requiring that you return there. Further, warmth is available in some manner back in that time. The presence of other humans proves that.”

“All right, all right. But there must be some kind of compromise, so I don’t have to rub two sticks together out in the woods. I don’t plan to be around other people and the danger from the cold is real. Old-fashioned matches?”

“I have a suggestion. I shall bring you a small lighter empty of fluid and a separate container of fluid. You will keep them separate and only put in enough fluid for each time you must use the lighter. That way, if you lose them, no one in that time will figure out their combined use by accident. Will you agree to this?”

“All right. Like I said, I don’t want to mess up our history, either.”

“These must be paid for.”

Wayne paused. He could not authorize payment through his own account without revealing his presence. On the other hand, he could not return to those wild German mountains without these items.