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impossible fifty years before, the linkage between brains and ship were made more efficient and sensitive and almost foolproof. The cold-sleep systems were improved.”
    â€œI have divided feelings about it,” said Horton. “However, I guess it personally makes no difference to me. If you can’t live out your life in your own time, I suppose it becomes immaterial when you do live it out. What I do regret is that I am left alone. Helen and I had something going for us, and I liked the other two. I suppose, as well, there is some guilt because they died and I lived on. You say you saved my life because I was in cubicle number one. If I’d not been in it, one of the others would have lived and I would now be dead.”
    â€œYou must feel no guilt,” Nicodemus told him. “If there is anyone who should feel the guilt, I am the one, but I feel no guilt, for reason tells me I was capable and performed to the limit of current technology. But you—you had no part in it. You did nothing; you shared in no decision.”
    â€œYes, I know. But, even so, I can’t avoid thinking …”
    â€œEat your soup,” said Nicodemus. “The roast is growing cold.”
    Horton had a spoonful of the soup. “It is good,” he said.
    â€œOf course it is. I told you I can be an accomplished chef.”
    â€œCan be,” said Horton. “That’s a strange way of putting it. You either are a chef, or you aren’t. But you say you can be one. That was what you said about being an engineer. Not that you were one, but that you could be one. It seems to me, my friend, you can be too many things. A moment ago you implied that you were, as well, a good cold-sleep technician.”
    â€œBut the way I say it is precisely right,” protested Nicodemus. “That is the way it is. I am a chef right now and can be an engineer or a mathematician or astronomer or geologist …”
    â€œThere’s no need for you to be a geologist. I’m the geologist of this expedition. Helen was the biologist and chemist.”
    â€œSome day,” said Nicodemus, “there might be need of two geologists.”
    â€œThis is ridiculous,” said Horton. “No man or no robot could be as many things as you say you are or could be. It would take years of study, and in the process of learning each new specialty or discipline, you’d lose some of the previous training you had taken. Furthermore, you’re simply a service robot, not specialized at all. Let’s face it, your brain capacity is small, and your reaction system is comparatively insensitive. Ship said that you were chosen deliberately because of your simplicity—because there was very little that could go wrong with you.”
    â€œWhich is all true enough,” Nicodemus admitted. “I am what you say I am. A runner-of-errands and a fetcher-of-objects and good for little else. My brain capacity is small. But when you have two brains or three …”
    Horton threw down his spoon on the table. “You are mad!” he said. “No one has two brains.”
    â€œI have,” said Nicodemus calmly. “I have two brains right now—the old standard, stupid robot brain and a chef-brain and if I wanted, I could add another brain, although I do not know what kind of brain would supplement a chef-brain. A nutritionist-brain, perhaps, although the kit doesn’t have that kind of brain.”
    With an effort, Horton controlled himself. “Now let’s start over,” he said. “Let’s take it from the top and go slow and easy so that this stupid human brain of mine can follow what you’re saying.”
    â€œIt was those fifty years,” said Nicodemus.
    â€œWhat fifty years, goddammit?”
    â€œThose fifty years they took after you were frozen. A lot of good research and development can be done in fifty years if a lot of humans put their minds to it. You trained,