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all-important initial. The rating was C-5.
    “Come on up,” said Baley, woodenly.
    Baley looked straight ahead, once seated, angry with himself, very conscious of the robot sitting next to him. He had been caught twice. First he had not recognized R. Daneel as a robot; secondly, he had not guessed the logic that demanded R. Daneel be given C-5 rating.
    The trouble was, of course, that he was not the plain-clothes man of popular myth. He was not incapable of surprise, imperturbable of appearance, infinite of adaptability, and lightning of mental grasp. He hadnever supposed he was, but he had never regretted the lack before.
    What made him regret it was that, to all appearances, R. Daneel Olivaw
was
that very myth, embodied.
    He had to be. He was a robot.
    Baley began to find excuses for himself. He was accustomed to the robots like R. Sammy at the office. He had expected a creature with a skin of a hard and glossy plastic, nearly dead white in color. He had expected an expression fixed at an unreal level of inane good humor. He had expected jerky, faintly uncertain motions.
    R. Daneel was none of it.
    Baley risked a quick side glance at the robot. R. Daneel turned simultaneously to meet his eye and nod gravely. His lips had moved naturally when he had spoken and did not simply remain parted as those of Earth robots did. There had been glimpses of an articulating tongue.
    Baley thought: Why does he have to sit there so calmly? This must be something completely new to him. Noise, lights, crowds!
    Baley got up, brushed past R. Daneel, and said, “Follow me!”
    Off the expressway, down the decelerating strips.
    Baley thought: Good Lord, what do I tell Jessie, anyway?
    The coming of the robot had rattled that thought out of his head, but it was coming back with sickening urgency now that they were heading down the localway that led into the very jaws of the Lower Bronx Section.
    He said, “This is all one building, you know, Daneel; everything you see, the whole City. Twenty million people live in it. The expressways go continuously,night and day, at sixty miles an hour. There are two hundred and fifty miles of it altogether and hundreds of miles of localways.”
    Any minute now, Baley thought, I’ll be figuring out how many tons of yeast product New York eats per day and how many cubic feet of water we drink and how many megawatts of power the atomic piles deliver per hour.
    Daneel said, “I was informed of this and other similar data in my briefing.”
    Baley thought: Well, that covers the food, drink, and power situation, too, I suppose. Why try to impress a robot?
    They were at East 182nd Street and in not more than two hundred yards they would be at the elevator banks that fed those steel and concrete layers of apartments that included his own.
    He was on the point of saying, “This way,” when he was stopped by a knot of people gathering outside the brilliantly lighted force door of one of the many retail departments that lined the ground levels solidly in this Section.
    He asked of the nearest person in an automatic tone of authority, “What’s going on?”
    The man he addressed, who was standing on tiptoe, said, “Damned if I know, I just got here.”
    Someone else said, excitedly, “They got those lousy R’s in there. I think maybe they’ll throw them out here. Boy, I’d like to take them apart.”
    Baley looked nervously at Daneel, but, if the latter caught the significance of the words or even heard them, he did not show it by any outward sign.
    Baley plunged into the crowd. “Let me through. Let me through. Police!”
    They made way. Baley caught words behind him.
    “… take them apart. Nut by nut. Split themdown the seams slowlike …” And someone else laughed.
    Baley turned a little cold. The City was the acme of efficiency, but it made demands of its inhabitants. It asked them to live in a tight routine and order their lives under a strict and scientific control. Occasionally, built-up