LITMIR.BIZ

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was not inconceivable that she should have unknowingly fallen in love with an android. Humans could love androids, with real affection, even knowing that they were artificial. There were instances of android nursemaids who were virtually members of the families owning them.

      She was glad now that she had not told Quest of her mission to Ganymede. He thought he was Dr. Mansard's son, but an android had no legal right of inheritance from his owner. She would leave it to Dom Blessing to decide what to do about Quest.

      Thus she did not, as she had intended originally, speak to Quest about seeing him again after she had completed her assignment. Even if Jakdane was wrong and Quest was human--as now seemed unlikely--Quest had told her he could not love her. Her best course was to try to forget him.

      Nor did Quest try to arrange with her for a later meeting.

      "It has been pleasant knowing you, Trella," he said when they left the G-boat at White Sands. A faraway look came into his blue eyes, and he added: "I'm sorry things couldn't have been different, somehow."

      "Let's don't be sorry for what we can't help," she said gently, taking his hand in farewell.

      Trella took a fast plane from White Sands, and twenty-four hours later walked up the front steps of the familiar brownstone house on the outskirts of Washington.

      Dom Blessing himself met her at the door, a stooped, graying man who peered at her over his spectacles.

      "You have the papers, eh?" he said, spying the brief case. "Good, good. Come in and we'll see what we have, eh?"

      She accompanied him through the bare, windowless anteroom which had always seemed to her such a strange feature of this luxurious house, and they entered the big living room. They sat before a fire in the old-fashioned fireplace and Blessing opened the brief case with trembling hands.

      "There are things here," he said, his eyes sparkling as he glanced through the notebooks. "Yes, there are things here. We shall make something of these, Miss Trella, eh?"

      "I'm glad they're something you can use, Mr. Blessing," she said. "There's something else I found on my trip, that I think I should tell you about."

      She told him about Quest.

      "He thinks he's the son of Dr. Mansard," she finished, "but apparently he is, without knowing it, an android Dr. Mansard built on Jupiter."

      "He came back to Earth with you, eh?" asked Blessing intently.

      "Yes. I'm afraid it's your decision whether to let him go on living as a man or to tell him he's an android and claim ownership as Dr. Mansard's heir."

      Trella planned to spend a few days resting in her employer's spacious home, and then to take a short vacation before resuming her duties as his confidential secretary. The next morning when she came down from her room, a change had been made.

      Two armed men were with Dom Blessing at breakfast and accompanied him wherever he went. She discovered that two more men with guns were stationed in the bare anteroom and a guard was stationed at every entrance to the house.

      "Why all the protection?" she asked Blessing.

      "A wealthy man must be careful," said Blessing cheerfully. "When we don't understand all the implications of new circumstances, we must be prepared for anything, eh?"

      There was only one new circumstance Trella could think of. Without actually intending to, she exclaimed:

      "You aren't afraid of Quest? Why, an android can't hurt a human!"

      Blessing peered at her over his spectacles.

      "And what if he isn't an android, eh? And if he is--what if old Mansard didn't build in the prohibition against harming humans that's required by law? What about that, eh?"

      Trella was silent, shocked. There was something here she hadn't known about, hadn't even suspected. For some reason, Dom Blessing feared Dr. Eriklund Mansard ... or his heir ... or his mechanical servant.

      * * * * *

      She was sure that Blessing was wrong, that Quest, whether man or android, intended no harm to him. Surely, Quest would have said something of such bitterness during their long time together on Ganymede and aspace, since he did not know of Trella's connection with Blessing. But, since this was to be the atmosphere of Blessing's house, she was glad that he decided to assign her to take the Mansard papers to the New York laboratory.

      Quest came the day before she was scheduled to leave.

      Trella was in the living room with Blessing, discussing the instructions she was to give to the laboratory officials in New York. The two bodyguards were with them. The other guards were at their posts.

      Trella heard the doorbell ring. The heavy oaken front door was kept locked now, and the guards in the anteroom examined callers through a tiny window.

      Suddenly alarm bells rang all over the house. There was a terrific crash outside the room as the front door splintered. There were shouts and the sound of a shot.

      "The steel doors!" cried Blessing, turning white. "Let's get out of here."

      He and his bodyguards ran through the back of the house out of the garage.

      Blessing, ahead of the rest, leaped into one of the cars and started the engine.

      The door from the house shattered and Quest burst through. The two guards turned and fired together.

      He could be hurt by bullets. He was staggered momentarily.

      Then, in a blur of motion, he sprang forward and swept the guards aside with one hand with such force that they skidded across the floor and lay in an unconscious heap against the rear of the garage. Trella had opened the door of the car, but it was wrenched from her hand as Blessing stepped on the accelerator and it leaped into the driveway with spinning wheels.

      Quest was after it, like a chunky deer, running faster than Trella had ever seen a man run before.

      Blessing slowed for the turn at the end of the driveway and glanced back over his shoulder. Seeing Quest almost upon him, he slammed down the accelerator and twisted the wheel hard.

      The car whipped into the street, careened, and rolled over and over, bringing up against a tree on the other side in a twisted tangle of wreckage.

      With a horrified gasp, Trella ran down the driveway toward the smoking heap of metal. Quest was already beside it, probing it. As she reached his side, he lifted the torn body of Dom Blessing. Blessing was dead.

      "I'm lucky," said Quest soberly. "I would have murdered him."

      "But why, Quest? I knew he was afraid of you, but he didn't tell me why."

      "It was conditioned into me," answered Quest "I didn't know it until just now, when it ended, but my father conditioned me psychologically from my birth to the task of hunting down Dom Blessing and killing him. It was an unconscious drive in me that wouldn't release me until the task was finished.

      "You see, Blessing was my father's assistant on Ganymede. Right after my father completed development of the surgiscope, he and my mother blasted off for Io. Blessing wanted the valuable rights to the surgiscope, and he sabotaged the ship's drive so it would fall into Jupiter.

      "But my father was able to control it in the heavy atmosphere of Jupiter, and landed it successfully. I was born there, and he conditioned me to come to Earth and track down Blessing. I know now that it was part of the conditioning that I was unable to fight any other man until my task was finished: it might have gotten me in trouble and diverted me from that purpose."

      More gently than Trella would have believed possible for his Jupiter-strong muscles, Quest took her in

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