"How strong was it?"
"I don't recall all the specs. Maybe a dozen times as strong as a man, in things like lifting and pushing."
"It explored Io for us and started in on Europa."
"Yes."
"Then it began behaving erratically, just when we thought it had really learned its job."
"That sounds right," I said.
"It refused a direct order to explore Callisto, then headed out toward Uranus."
"Yes. It's been years since I read the reports…"
"The malfunction worsened after that. Long periods of silence interspersed with garbled transmissions. Now that I know more about its makeup, it almost sounds like a man going off the deep end."
"It seems similar."
"But it managed to pull itself together again for a brief while. It landed on Titania, began sending back what seemed like appropriate observation reports. This only lasted a short time, though. It went irrational once more, indicated that it was heading for a landing on Uranus itself, and that was it. We didn't hear from it after that. Now that I know about that mind-reading gadget I understand why a psychiatrist on this end could be so positive it would never function again."
"I never heard about that part."
"I did."
I shrugged. "This was all around twenty years ago," I said, "and, as I mentioned, it has been a long while since I've read anything about it."
"The Hangman's ship crashed or landed, as the case may be, in the Gulf of Mexico, two days ago."
I just stared at him.
"It was empty," Don went on, "when they finally got out and down to it."
"I don't understand."
"Yesterday morning," he continued, "restaurateur Manny Burns was found beaten to death in the office of his establishment, the Maison Saint-Michel, in New