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The asteroid hurtled in from Capricorn, nosed around a G-type sun, swerved off toward the fifth planet. Such a trajectory is somewhat atypical for asteroids.

It slapped into the planet’s gravity net, swooped around the globe three times in three separate orbits, then stabbed into atmosphere, a glorious shooting star.

At a hundred feet altitude it paused, then snapped to the surface—but only to the surface. No fireworks, no crater—nothing more drastic than crushed grass. Its surface was scarred and pitted, blackened by the friction-heat of its fall; but it was intact.

Deep within its bowels echoed the words that would change the plan­et’s destiny.

“Damn your bolt-brained bearings!”

The voice broke off; its owner frowned, listening.

The cabin was totally silent, without its usual threshold hum.

The young man swore, tearing the shock webbing from his body. He lurched out of the acceleration chair, balanced dizzily on the balls of his feet, groping till his hand touched the plastic wall.

Steadying himself with one hand, he stumbled to a panel on the other side of the circular cabin. He fumbled the catches loose, cursing in the fine old style of galactic deckhands, opened the panel, pressed a button. Turning, he all but fell back to the chair.

The soft hum awoke in the cabin again. A slurred voice asked, with varying speed and pitch, “Izzz awwl (Hic!) sadizfagtoreee …. M’lorrrr’ Rodney?”

“All the smooth, glossy robots in the galaxy,” muttered Milord, “and I get stuck with an epileptic!”

“Ivv ut bleeezz m’lorr’, thuh c’paider c’n be—”12

“Replaced,” finished Rodney, “and your circuits torn out and rede­signed. No, thank you, I like your personality the way it is—except when you pull off a landing that jars my clavicles loose!”

“Ivv m’lorrd will vorgive, ad thuh cruzhial momend ovvv blanetfall, I rezeived zome very zingular radio waves thad—”

“You got distracted, is that what you’re trying to say?”

“M’lorrrd, id was imerative to analyze—”

“So part of you was studying the radio waves, and part of you was land­ing the ship, which was just a wee bit too much of a strain, and the weak capacitor gave …. Fess! How many times do I have to tell you to keep your mind on the job!”

“M’lorrd egzbressed a wizh to be like thuh—”

“Like the heroes of the Exploration Sagas, yes. But that doesn’t mean I want their discomforts.”

Fess’s electronic system had almost recovered from the post-seizure exhaustion. “But, m’lorrd, the choncebt of heeroizm imblies—”

“Oh, forget it,” Rodney groaned. Fess dutifully blanked a portion of his memory banks.

Fess was very dutiful. He was also an antique, one of the few remain­ing FCC (Faithful Cybernetic Companion) robots, early models now two thousand years out of date. The FCC robots had been programmed for extreme loyalty and, as a consequence, had perished in droves while de­fending their masters during the bloody Interregnum between the col­lapse of the ancient Galactic Union and the rise of the Proletarian Eclec­tic State of Terra.

Fess (a name derived from trying to pronounce “FCC” as a single word) had survived, thanks to his epilepsy. He had a weak capacitor that, when overstrained, released all its stored energy in a massive surge lasting several milli-seconds. When the preliminary symptoms of this electronic seizure—mainly a fuzziness in Fess’s calculations—appeared, a master circuit breaker popped, and the faulty capacitor discharged in isolation from the rest of Fess’s circuits; but the robot was out of commission until the circuit breaker was reset.

Since the seizures occurred during moments of great stress—such as trying to land a spaceship-cum-asteroid while analyzing an aberrant radio wave, or trying to protect a master from three simultaneous murderers— Fess had survived the Interregnum; for, when the Proletarians had at­tacked his masters, he had fought manfully for about twenty-five seconds, then collapsed. He had thus become a rarity—the courageous servant who had survived. He was one of five FCC robots still functioning.