hours," the captain said, "we hit another port."
     "I know," said Richard Daniel. "Sleepy Hollow  on Arcadia." "All right,
then," said the captain, "since you know so much, get down into the hold and
get the cargo ready to unload. We  been spending too  much time in all these
lousy ports loading and unloading. You been dogging it."
     "Yes, sir," said Richard Daniel, turning back and heading for the hold.
     He wondered faintly  if he were still robot - or was he something else?
Could a  machine  evolve,  he wondered,  as Man  himself  evolved?  And if a
machine evolved, whatever would  it  be? Not  Man,  of course,  for it never
could be that, but could it be machine?
     He hauled  out the  cargo consigned to Sleepy Hollow and  there was not
too much of it. So little of it, perhaps, that none of the  regular carriers
would even consider its delivery, but dumped it off at the nearest terminal,
leaving it for a roving tramp,  like the Rambler, to carry eventually to its
destination.
     When they reached  Arcadia,  he waited  until  the thunder died and the
ship was still. Then  he shoved  the lever that opened up the  port and slid
out the ramp.
     The port came  open ponderously and he saw blue skies  and the green of
trees and the far-off swirl of chimney smoke mounting in the sky.
     He walked  slowly forward until  he stood  upon  the ramp and there lay
Sleepy Hollow, a tiny, huddled village planted at the river's edge, with the
forest  as  a background.  The  forest  ran  on every side to  a horizon  of
climbing  folded hills. Fields  lay near the  village, yellow  with maturing
crops, and he could see a dog sleeping in the sun outside a cabin door.
     A man was climbing up the ramp toward him and there were others running
from the village.
     "You have cargo for us?" asked the man.
     "A small consignment," Richard Daniel told him. "You have something  to
put on?'
     The  man had a weatherbeaten  look and he'd missed several haircuts and
he had not shaved for days. His clothes were rough and sweat-stained and his
hands were strong and awkward with hard work.
     "A small  shipment," said the man. "You'll have to wait until  we bring
it up. We had no warning you were coming. Our radio is broken."
     "You go and get it," said Richard Daniel. "I'll start unloading."
     He had the cargo half unloaded when the captain came storming down into
the hold. What was going on, he yelled. How long  would they have  to  wait?
"God knows we're losing money as it is even stopping at this place."
     "That  may be true," Richard Daniel agreed, "but you knew that when you
took the cargo on. There'll be other cargoes and goodwill is something -"
     "Goodwill be damned!" the captain roared. "How do I know I'll ever  see
this place again?"
     Richard Daniel continued unloading cargo.
     "You," the captain shouted, "go down to that village and tell them I'll
wait no longer than an hour..."
     "But this cargo, sir?"
     "I'll get the crew at it. Now, jump!"
     So Richard Daniel left the cargo and went down into the village.
     He went  across  the  meadow that  lay between  the spaceport  and  the
village, following the rutted wagon  tracks, and it was a pleasant walk.  He
realized  with  surprise  that  this was the first time  he'd been  on solid
ground since  he'd left the robot  planet. He wondered briefly what the name
of that  planet might have  been, for  he  had  never  known.  Nor what  its
importance  was, why  the robots might be there or what they might be doing.
And he wondered, too, with a twinge of guilt, if they'd found Hubert yet.
     And where might Earth be now? he asked himself. In  what direction  did
it lie  and how far away?  Although it didn't really matter, for he was done
with Earth.
     He  had fled  from Earth and gained something  in  his fleeing.  He had
escaped all the traps of Earth and all the snares of  Man. What he  held was
his, to do with as he pleased, for he was no  man's robot, despite what  the
captain thought.
     He walked across the meadow and saw that this planet was very much like
Earth. It had the same soft feel  about it,  the same simplicity. It had far
distances and there was a sense of freedom.
     He came into  the  village  and heard  the muted gurgle  of  the  river
running and the distant shouts  of children at their play and in one of  the
cabins a sick child was crying with lost helplessness.
     He passed the  cabin where the  dog was  sleeping and it came awake and
stalked  growling  to  the  gate.  When he  passed  it  followed him,  still
growling, at a distance that was safe and sensible.
     An autumnal calm lay  upon the  village, a sense of  gold and lavender,
and tranquillity hung in the silences between the crying of the baby and the
shouting of the children.
     There were women at the  windows looking out at  him and  others at the
doors and the  dog  still  followed, but his growls  had stilled and now  he
trotted with prick-eared curiosity.
     Richard Daniel stopped in the street and looked around him and  the dog
sat down and watched him and it was almost as if time itself had stilled and
the  little  village  lay  divorced  from  all  the  universe,  an  arrested
microsecond,  an encapsulated acreage that  stood sharp in all its truth and
purpose.
     Standing there, he sensed  the village and  the people in it, almost as
if he had summoned up a diagram of it, although if there were  a diagram, he
was not aware of it.
     It seemed almost as if the village were the Earth, a transplanted Earth
with the old primeval problems and hopes of Earth - a family of peoples that
faced existence with a readiness and confidence and inner strength.
     From  down the street he heard the creak of  wagons and saw them coming
around the bend, three wagons piled high and heading for the ship.
     He stood and  waited for  them and as  he waited the dog edged a little
closer and sat regarding him with a not-quite-friendliness.
     The wagons came up to him and stopped.
     "Pharmaceutical materials, mostly," said the man who sat atop the first
load, "It is the only thing we have that is worth the shipping."
     "You seem to have a lot of it," Richard Daniel told  him. The man shook
his  head.  "It's not so much. It's almost three years  since a ship's  been
here.  We'll have to wait another  three, or  more  perhaps, before  we  see
another."
     He spat down on the ground.
     "Sometimes it seems," he said, "that we're  at the tail-end of nowhere.
There are times we wonder if there is a soul that remembers we are here."
     From the  direction  of  the  ship,  Richard  Daniel  heard  the faint,
strained violence of the captain's roaring.
     "You'd  better get  on up there and  unload,"  he told  the  man.  "The
captain is just sore enough he might not wait for you."
     The man chuckled thinly. "I guess that's up to him," he said.
     He flapped the reins and clucked good-naturedly at the horses.
     "Hop up here with  me," he said to Richard Daniel. "Or would you rather
walk?"
     "I'm not going with you," Richard Daniel said. "I am staying  here. You
can tell the captain."
     For there  was a baby sick and  crying. There was a radio to fix. There
was a culture to be planned and  guided. There was a lot of work to do. This
place, of all the places he had seen, had actual need of him.
     The man chuckled once again. "The captain will not like it."
     "Then tell him," said Richard Daniel, "to  come down and talk to me.  I
am my own robot. I owe the captain nothing. I have more than paid any debt I
owe him."
     The wagon wheels began to turn and the man flapped the reins again.
     "Make yourself at home," he said. "We're glad to have you stay."
     "Thank you, sir," said Richard Daniel. "I'm pleased you want me."
     He stood aside and watched the wagons lumber past, their wheels lifting
and dropping thin  films of  powdered  earth that floated in  the air as  an
acrid dust.
     Make yourself at home, the man had said before he'd driven off. And the
words had a full round ring to them and a feel of warmth. It had been a long
time, Richard Daniel thought, since he'd had a home.
     A chance for resting  and for knowing  - that was what he needed. And a
chance  to  serve, for  now he knew that was the purpose  in  him. That was,
perhaps, the real reason he was staying - because these people needed him...
and he needed, queer as  it might seem, this very  need of  theirs. Here  on
this Earth-like planet, through the  generations,  a new  Earth would arise.
And perhaps, given only time, he could transfer to the  people of the planet
all the powers and understanding he would find inside himself.
     And stood astounded at  the thought, for  he'd not believed that he had
it in him, this willing, almost eager, sacrifice. No messiah now, no robotic
liberator, but a simple teacher of the human race.
     Perhaps  that had been the reason for  it all from the first beginning.
Perhaps all that had happened had been no more than the working out of human
destiny. If the human race could not attain directly the paranormal power he
held, this instinct of the mind, then they would gain  it indirectly through
the agency of  one  of their creations. Perhaps this, after all, unknown  to
Man himself, had been the prime purpose of the robots.
     He turned and walked slowly down the length of village street, his back
turned to  the ship  and the roaring of the captain, walked contentedly into
this  new world he'd found,  into this  world  that he would  make - not for
himself, nor for robotic glory, but for a better Mankind and a happier.
     Less than an hour before he'd congratulated himself on escaping all the
traps of Earth, all the snares of Man. Not knowing that the greatest trap of
all, the final and the fatal trap, lay on this present planet.
     But  that  was wrong, he told himself.  The trap  had not been on  this
world at all, nor any other world. It had been inside himself.
     He  walked serenely down  the wagon-rutted  track  in the soft,  golden
afternoon of a matchless autumn day, with the dog trotting at his heels.
     Somewhere, just down the street, the sick baby lay crying in its crib.