"Second-hand living," I quoted him. "That's what you called reading."
"All right. It's better than not living at all. Anyway, in those old
days, people along the tracks used to wave at the passengers as the
trains roared by, for no reason I can think of. At any rate, for no
_scientific_ reason. What happened to me was pretty much like that.
Sort of romantic, wasn't it?"
"An earth-bound iron sluggard moving through cow pastures. Is that
romantic to a man who's seen Jupiter?"
"No, I guess not," Horse said quietly. "Only to me, I guess."
I turned on the video-viewer above the board, and as the glow
brightened, I could see the robot quarters and Van Elling playing
bridge with three of our brightest automatons. Van's a great boy to
buck impossible odds, but otherwise rational. He's our robot master.
Van looked up from the game at the signal light, and smiled, "About
time, Skipper?"
"You'd have to ask the navigator."