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square with any knowledge that we have.”
    “I think that what Mr. Lansing told us…” said Mary. “Lansing, what is your Christian name? We can’t go on calling you Lansing.”
    “My name is Edward.”
    “Thank you. I think that Edward’s suggestion may be a tad romantic, even visionary. But if we are to seek the knowledge of where we are and the reason for our being here, it would seem that we may be forced to strike out in some new directions in our thinking. I happen to be an engineer, and I live in a highly technical society. Any sort of thinking that projects itself beyond the known or the solidly theoretical grates upon my nerves. There is nothing in any methodology that I can summon up that would provide any explanation. There may be others of you who are better based to suggest an explanation. How about our robot friend?”
    “I also have a technical background,” said Jurgens, “but I am not aware of any methodology—”
    “Why do you ask him?” shouted the Parson. “You call him a robot and that is a word that slips easily off the tongue, but when you come right down to it, he is no more than a machine, a mechanical contrivance.”
    “You go too far,” said the Brigadier. “I happen to live in a world where mechanical contrivances have fought a war for years and have fought it intelligently and well, with an imagination that sometimes surpasses a human’s.”
    “How horrible,” said the poetess.
    “You mean, I suppose,” said the Brigadier, “that war is horrible.”
    “Well, isn’t it?” she asked.
    “War is a natural human function,” said the Brigadier. “There is an aggressive, competitive urge in the race that responds to conflict. If this were not so, there would not have been so many wars.”
    “But the human suffering. The agony. The blasted hopes.”
    “In my day it has become a game,” said the Brigadier. “As it was with many early human tribes. The Indians of the Western Continent looked upon it as a game. A young tribesman did not become a man until he’d counted his first coup. All that is manly and noble stems from war. There might have been times in the past when excessive zeal resulted in some of the consequences that you mention. Today little blood is spilled. We play it as one plays a game of chess.”
    “Using robots,” said Jurgens.
    “We don’t call them robots.”
    “Perhaps not. Mechanicals. Mechanicals that have personal identity and the ability to think.”
    “That’s correct. Well built, magnificently trained. They help us plan as well as fight. My staff is very heavily weighed with mechanicals. In many ways their grasp of a military situation is at times superior to mine.”
    “And the field of battle is littered with mechanicals?”
    “Yes, of course. We salvage those we can.”
    “And fix them up and send them out again?”
    “Why, certainly,” said the Brigadier. “In war you conserve your resources very jealously.”
    “General,” said Jurgens, “I do not think I would like to live in the kind of world you have.”
    “What is your kind of world? If you wouldn’t want to live in my kind of world, tell me the kind of world you do live in.”
    “A peaceful world. A kindly world. We have compassion for our humans.”
    “It sounds sickening,” said the Brigadier. “You have compassion for your humans. Your humans?”
    “In our world there are few humans left. We take care of them.”
    “Much as it goes against my gram,” said the Parson, “I’m coming to the conclusion that Edward Lansing may be right. Listening, it becomes apparent that we all do come from different worlds. A cynical world that regards war as a simple game—”
    “It is not a simple game,” said the Brigadier. “At times it is complex.”
    “A cynical world,” said the Parson, “that regards war as a complex game. A world of poetess and poet, of music and academies. A world in which robots take kindly care of humans. And in your world, my lady, a