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realize that he had undergone a change of status. The Ward Sister, it appeared, had heard him coughing in the ash-filled air at the mouth of the tunnel, had noted the many cuts and grazes on hands and legs he had acquired during the climb, and these, taken together with his somewhat abnormal recent activities, had caused the robot to react in accordance with its basic programming. He was no longer a Doctor in charge called "sir," but a patient called "Mr. Ross." And patients did what Ward Sister told them to do, not the other way around.
     
    He was confined to bed for seventeen days.
     

6
    Until each tiny cut was healed and the last square centimeter of scab dropped away, Ross's every order was ignored. When sheer impatience made him abusive, that also was ignored, as were most of his threats.
     
    The one threat which was not ignored occurred on the second day. Ross had been throwing a tantrum over not being allowed to exercise for a few hours every day. He had ended by observing, at the top of his voice, that such an inhuman confinement was likely to drive him around the bend, that it could very well force him into taking his life, perhaps, through sheer boredom. To this the robot had replied that physical examination showed he was in a severely weakened state, due to both recent revivication and his too-exhausting trip to the surface, and that prolonged rest was indicated. Also, since the danger of Ross's injuring himself had been mentioned as a possibility — the chief reasons cited being loneliness and boredom, two conditions not likely to improve — it was the Ward Sister's duty to guard him against this danger for the rest of his life.
     
    Just then Ross did not want to think of the future. He wanted to chat about unimportant things such as how he should have his hair cut and why some items of his clothing had deteriorated while others had not. But Ward Sisters were supposed to be too busy to chat with patients while on duty, and Ross was now a patient. Three or four times a day he received a few words of encouragement, and that was all.
     
    Ross did not like the pictures he saw when he closed his eyes, so he kept them open as much as possible, staring at the ceiling, moving them slowly around the room, or squinting at the three-inches-distant bed sheet in an effort to resolve its weave. But the ceiling was white and free from discoloration, the room's fittings were bright, angular and cast no shadows, and trying to make his eyes behave like a microscope only gave him a headache. There were no angles or shadows or tricks of light on which his mind could build the nice, harmless pictures which would keep him from dwelling on his present terrifying position, and so he would be forced to look at the robot.
     
    A smooth, upright ovoid with one fixed and one rotating eyepiece, and to Ross's mind a cybernetic miracle by virtue of its compactness alone. A servant, guardian and trained nurse, placed in this position of responsibility because of a shortage of human nurses, which had later become a shortage of human beings…
     
    At that point the pictures which he did not want to see would come, whether his eyes were closed or not.
     
    Pictures of Alice in crisp blue and white, serious, dedicated, untouchable. With her short hair, unplucked eyebrows and thin lips, her face had resembled that of a studious young boy. When he had discovered that she was neither unapproachable nor untouchable — toward himself, anyway — he had once told her that she looked like a boy. They had been swimming and Alice's dark brown hair was plastered tightly against her scalp, increasing the resemblance. A small, wet, feminine hand had made contact with his dripping back in a slap which stung, in memory, even now, and he had had to add a hasty qualifier to the effect that he meant from the neck up. Strangely enough, it had been later in that same day that he discovered that her lips were not thin, that they only seemed that way because