A great star ship was taking off at the far end of the field, sliding down the ice-smooth plastic skidway with the red-hot flare of booster jets frothing in its tubes. Its nose slammed into the upward curve of the take-off ramp and it was away, a rumbling streak of silver that shot into the blue. For a moment it flickered a golden red in the morning sunlight and then was swallowed in the azure mist of sky.
Sutton brought his gaze back to Earth again, sat soaking in the sight of it as a man soaks in the first strong sun of spring after months of winter.
Far to the north towered the twin spires of the Justice Bureau, Alien Branch. And to the east the pile of gleaming plastics and glass that was the University of North America. And other buildings that he had forgotten…buildings for which he found he had no name. But buildings that were miles apart, with parks and homesites in between. The homes were masked by trees and shrubbery — none sat in barren loneliness — and through the green of the curving hills, Sutton caught the glints of color that betrayed where people lived.
The car slid to a stop before the administration building and the android opened the door.
"This way, sir," he said.
Only a few chairs in the lobby were occupied and most of those by humans. Humans or androids, thought Sutton. You can't tell the difference until you see their foreheads.
The sign upon the forehead, the brand of manufacture. The telltale mark that said, "This man is not a human, although he looks like one."
These are the ones who will listen to me. These are the ones who will pay attention. These are the ones who will save me against any future enmity that Man may raise against me.
For they are worse than the disinherited. They are not the has-beens, they are the never-weres.
They were not born of woman but of the laboratory. Their mother is a bin of chemicals and their father the ingenuity and technology of the normal race.