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aircraft models available on Solaria do not lend themselves to complete enclosure as does a ground-car such as that in which we are now riding.”
    Baley felt annoyed at the other’s “concern.” He felt like a baby in the charge of its nurse. He felt almost as annoyed, oddly enough, at Daneel’s sentences. It seemed to him that such needlessly formal sentence structure might easily betray the robotic nature of the creature.
    For a moment Baley stared curiously at R. Daneel Olivaw. The robot, looking straight ahead, was motionless and unself-conscious under the other’s gaze.
    Daneel’s skin texture was perfect, the individual hair on head and body had been lovingly and intricately manufactured and placed. The muscle movement under the skin was most realistic. No pains, however extravagant, had been spared. Yet Baley knew, from personal knowledge, that limbs and chest could be split open along invisible seams so that repairs might be made. He knew there was metal and silicone under that realistic skin. He knew a positronic brain, most advanced but only positronic, nestled in the hollow of the skull. He knew that Daneel’s “thoughts” were only short-lived positronic currents flowing along paths rigidly designed and foreordained by the manufacturer.
    But what were the signs that would give that away to the expert eye that had no foreknowledge? The trifling unnaturalness of Daneel’s manner of speech? The unemotional gravity that rested so steadily upon him? The very perfection of his humanity?
    But he was wasting time. Baley said, “Let’s get on with it, Daneel. I suppose that before arriving here, you were briefed on matters Solarian?”
    “I was, Partner Elijah.”
    “Good. That’s more than they did for me. How large is the world?”
    “Its diameter is 9500 miles. It is the outermost of three planets and the only inhabited one. In climate and atmosphere it resembles Earth; its percentage of fertile land is higher; its useful mineral content lower, but of course less exploited. The world is self-supporting and can, with the aid of its robot exports, maintain a high standard of living.”
    Baley said, “What’s the population?”
    “Twenty thousand people, Partner Elijah.”
    Baley accepted that for a moment, then he said mildly, “You mean twenty million, don’t you?” His scant knowledge of the Outer Worlds was enough to tell him that, although the worlds were underpopulated by Earthly standards, the individual populations
were
in the millions.
    “Twenty thousand people, Partner Elijah,” said the robot again.
    “You mean the planet has just been settled?”
    “Not at all. It has been independent for nearly two centuries, and it was settled for a century or more before that. The population is deliberately maintained at twenty thousand, that being considered optimum by the Solarians themselves.”
    “How much of the planet do they occupy?”
    “All the fertile portions.”
    “Which is, in square miles?”
    “Thirty million square miles, including marginal areas.”
    “For twenty thousand people?”
    “There are also some two hundred million working positronic robots, Partner Elijah.”
    “Jehoshaphat! That’s—ten thousand robots per human.”
    “It is by far the highest such ratio among the Outer Worlds, Partner Elijah. The next highest, on Aurora, is only fifty to one.”
    “What can they use so many robots for? What do they want with all that food?”
    “Food is a relatively minor item. The mines are more important, and power production more important still.”
    Baley thought of all those robots and felt a trifle dizzy. Two hundred million robots! So many among so few humans. The robots must litter the landscape. An observer from without might think Solaria a world of robots altogether and fail to notice the thin human leaven.
    He felt a sudden need to see. He remembered the conversation with Minnim and the sociologic prediction of Earth’s danger. It seemed far off, a bit unreal,