No Life of Their Own: And Other Stories (The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak Book 5) by Clifford D. Simak

of it, stood a robot with his arms folded across his chest. He looked as if he were just waiting for me to make a break. He said nothing and I said nothing. I simply shut the door.
    The radio caught my attention and I wondered if it would work. Anderson had said it hadn’t been tuned in for months. Radio reception usually is almost impossible here, but with the new broadcast units put in at New Chicago in the last few months it should be halfway decent, I thought.
    I turned it on and the set lighted up and hummed. Swiftly I spun the dial to the New Chicago wave length and the voice of Jimmy Doyle, newscaster, blared out, somewhat disrupted by static, but still intelligible.
    Jimmy was just starting his broadcast and what he had to say held me rooted to the spot —
    “—still searching for Sherman Marshall, wanted for the murder of Eli Lawrence. A warrant was issued for Marshall’s arrest ten hours ago when a canvas bag belonging to the murdered man was found in an alley near the North Wall. Marshall’s fingerprints, the police say, were found upon it. A bartender at the Sun Spot, a night club—”
    There was a lot more to it, and I listened, but it didn’t mean much. The things that mattered were my fingerprints upon the canvas bag in which old Eli had carried his salts and the story the bartender at the Sun Spot had told the police.
    Back at New Chicago the cops were in full cry. Intent to hang the murder on someone. Anxious to make a showing because election was near.
    And with those fingerprints and the bartender’s story it wouldn’t be so hard to hang it on me.
    Numbly I reached out and snapped off the radio. Covering trials, both in New Chicago and back on Earth, I often had tried to put myself in the defendant’s place, had tried to imagine what he was thinking, how he felt.
    And now I knew!
    I was safe, I knew, for a while, for no one would think of looking for me here. Perhaps even if they did come looking they wouldn’t find me, for Anderson would want to keep me hidden. It would be to his interest to keep me where I couldn’t talk.
    I thought back over the events immediately preceding and following Eli’s death—and I suddenly remembered the sand flask hidden in my dresser drawer. The sand flask with the white spaceship!
    The door to the laboratory opened and Anderson entered the room. He was all smiles and he almost beamed at me.
    “I have been thinking,” he said. “Perhaps I can let you go.”
    “What’s that?” I yelped.
    “I said I was thinking I needn’t keep you here.”
    “But, Doc,” I protested, “I really want to stay. I think—”
    And then I saw it wasn’t any good. If he was ready to let me leave, he would be no protection if I stayed.
    “But why this sudden switch?” I demanded. “If you let me go, I’ll publish the story. Sure as hell, I will.”
    “I don’t think you will,” he said. “Because I am trading you another story for it. A bigger story—”
    “The cure? You’ve found the cure?”
    He nodded. “There had seemed just one thing left to do. A very dangerous thing and with slight chance of success. If that failed, we feared that we were done. We had then explored every possibility. We had come to the end.
    “We tried and failed—or so it seemed. But what had seemed failure was really success. The reaction was slower than we thought, took longer to manifest itself. We know now that we can cure the space sickness.”
    He was staring at the wall again and there still was nothing there—
    “It will take some time,” he finally said. “A little time to perfect the method. But I still have a little time … a little time … enough—”
    “But, Doctor,” I yelled at him, “you must have some salts. You certainly didn’t use all that Eli brought you. There is no need to talk of time.”
    He turned tired eyes to me.
    “Yes, I have some salts,” he said. “Let me show you—”
    He rose and went through the laboratory. I followed him.
    From a