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and—”
    “No,” Carmichael snapped. “That thing’s seven feet tall and weighs three hundred pounds. If you think
I’m
going to wrestle with it—”
    “We could let Clyde try,” Ethel suggested.
    Carmichael shook his head vehemently. “The carnage would be frightful.”
    Joey said, “Dad, it may be our only hope.”
    “You too?” Carmichael asked.
    He took a deep breath. He felt himself speared by two deadly feminine glances, and he knew there was no hope but to try it. Resignedly, he pushed himself to his feet and said, “Okay. Clyde, go call Bismarck. Joey, I’ll try to hang on to his arms while you open up his chest. Yank anything you can.”
    “Be careful,” Ethel warned. “If there’s an explosion—”
    “If there’s an explosion, we’re all free,” Carmichael said testily. He turned to see the broad figure of the roboservitor standing at the entrance to the living room.
    “May I be of service, sir?”
    “You may,” Carmichael said. “We’re having a little debate here and we want your evidence. It’s a matter of defannizing the poozlestan and—
Joey, open him up!
”
    Carmichael grabbed for the robot’s arms, trying to hold them without getting hurled across the room, while his son clawed frantically at the stud that opened the robot’s innards. Carmichael anticipated immediate destruction—but, to his surprise, he found himself slipping as he tried to grasp the thick arms.
    “Dad, it’s no use. I—he—”
    Carmichael found himself abruptly four feet off the ground. He heard Ethel and Myra scream and Clyde’s “
Do
be careful, sir.”
    Bismarck was carrying them across the room, gently, cradling him in one giant arm and Joey in the other. It set them down on the couch and stood back.
    “Such an attempt is highly dangerous,” Bismarck said reprovingly. “It puts me in danger of harming you physically. Please avoid any such acts in the future.”
    Carmichael stared broodingly at his son. “Did you have the same trouble I did?”
    Joey nodded. “I couldn’t get within an inch of his skin. It stands to reason, though. He’s built one of those damned force screens around himself, too!”
    Carmichael groaned. He did not look at his wife and his children. Physical attack on Bismarck was now out of the question. He began to feel as if he had been condemned to life imprisonment—and that his stay in durance vile would not be extremely prolonged.
    In the upstairs bathroom, six days after the beginning of the blockade, Sam Carmichael stared at his haggard fleshless face in the mirror before wearily climbing on the scale.
    He weighed 180 pounds.
    He had lost twelve pounds in less than two weeks. He was fast becoming a quivering wreck.
    A thought occurred to him as he stared at the wavering needle on the scale, and sudden elation spread over him. He dashed downstairs. Ethel was doggedly crocheting in the living room; Joey and Myra were playing cards grimly, desperately now, after six solid days of gin rummy and honeymoon bridge.
    “Where’s that robot?” Carmichael roared. “Come out here!”
    “In the kitchen,” Ethel said tonelessly.
    “Bismarck! Bismarck!” Carmichael roared. “Come out here!”
    The robot appeared. “How may I serve you, sir?”
    “Damn you, scan me with your superpower receptors and tell me how much I weigh!”
    After a pause, the robot said gravely, “One hundred seventy-nine pounds eleven ounces, Mr. Carmichael.”
    “Yes! Yes! And the original program I had taped into you was supposed to reduce me from 192 to 180,” Carmichael crowed triumphantly. “So I’m finished with you, as long as I don’t gain any more weight. And so are the rest of us, I’ll bet. Ethel! Myra! Joey! Upstairs and weigh yourselves!”
    But the robot regarded him with a doleful glare and said, “Sir, I find no record within me of any limitation on your reduction of weight.”
    “
What?
”
    “I have checked my tapes fully. I have a record of an order causing weight