Suddenly he saw the Institute’s huge lecture auditorium… his pal Smiga, caked with chalk, plodding his way through a blackboard full of math equations… and him-self, his head bent over an open desk drawer, reading on the sly the newspaper spread out flat on the bottom: “Only the Dead Survive”… Of course! There was only one who could have survived, who was not in need of any oxygen or food… The robot! Sixteen years, and all that time it was lying there, buried under the rubble!

Pirx rose to his feet. Terminus! The lone surviver had to be Terminus! And to think that he had him right here on board his ship… Now was his chance, his golden opportunity…

To what? Pump a mechanical moron, a machine programmed for sealing leaks, by now so old it was almost deaf and blind? What a laugh. It was the press’s fault, the press in its eternal effort to sensationalize the hell out of everything, whose glaring headlines had made him a “mysterious witness” of the tragedy, even had him being interviewed by the Commission behind closed doors. He thought of Terminus’s imbecilic patter. What a put-on!

He slammed the log shut, tossed it back into the drawer, and checked the time.

0800 hours. No time to lose. He started rounding up the shipping papers. Everything was set for lift-off: hatches closed, health and port inspection out of the way, flight clearance, customs declarations… He skimmed through the bill of lading and was surprised not to find any cargo manifest. Machines, okay—but what kind of machines? What about the tare weight? And why no loading chart specifying the ballast? Nothing except for the gross tonnage and a rough plan showing the freight distribution in the holds.