The Head laughed. "Your only hope is that a return to a concentrated
diet will poison him. You've no chance of winning over Sanford Grew
alive."
* * * * *
We went from there to the Sunspot. "It's funny," Quinby used to say. "I
don't much like to drink, but a bar's always good for heavy thinking."
And who was I to argue?
Guzub, that greatest of bartenders, spotted us as we came in and had
one milk and one straight whiskey poured by the time we reached our
usual back table. He served them to us himself, with a happy flourish
of his tentacles.
"What are you so beamish about?" I asked gruffly.
Guzub shut his middle eye in the Martian expression of happiness.
"Begauze you boys are going to 'ave a gread zugzezz with your uxuvorm
robods and you invended them righd 'ere in the Zunzbod." He produced
another tentacle holding a slug of straight vuzd and downed it. "Good
lugg!"
I glowered after him. "We need luck. With Grew as our sworn enemy,
we're on the--"
Quinby had paper spread out before him. He looked up now, took a sip of
milk, and said, "Do you cook?"
"Not much. Concentrates do me most of the time."
"I can sympathize with Grew. I like old-fashioned food myself and I'm
fairly good at cooking it. I just thought you might have some ideas."
"For what?"
"Why, a usuform cook, of course. Grew's android cook broke down. We'll
present him with a usuform, and that will convert him, too--"
"Convert hell!" I snorted. "Nothing can convert that sweetly smiling
old--But maybe you have got something there; get at a man through his
hobby--Could work."
"Now usually," Quinby went on, "androids break down because they don't
use all their man-shaped body. But an android cook would go nuts
because man's body isn't enough. I've cooked; I know. So we'll give the
usuform more. For instance, give him Martoid tentacles instead of arms.
Maybe instead of legs give him an automatic sliding height adjustment
to avoid all the bending and stooping, with a roller base for quick
movement. And make the tentacles functionally specialized."