A werewolf among us

well wear it from here on," St. Cyr said. He picked up his shirt, slipped into it and zipped the front. It was a tight fit now.
    "How long do you wear it each day?" the boy asked.
    "When I'm on a case, I wear it twenty-four hours a day."
    "Even when you sleep?"
    "Yes," St, Cyr said, slipping into his jacket, then closing the empty case in which the bio-computer rested. "Even when you sleep, you sense the world around you, and the bio-computer helps you to keep from missing anything. It even interprets my dreams, like a mechanical David."
    The boy tried to discern the machine's lines where it blended with St. Cyr's under the clothes. St. Cyr looked like nothing more than a barrel-chested man. "Aren't you afraid of sleeping while it's—inside you?"
    "Why should I be? It's only a computer, a machine, robot. Robots can't hurt you. The Laws of Robotics prove that, don't they?"
    Though he knew the truth of that, the boy shivered and turned away, left the room.
    "Be afraid of men," St. Cyr told the customs chief.
    "Men can never be trusted. But a machine is always an ally; it's built to be."
    The chief said, "We're finished; you may go. Sorry to inconvenience you."
     
    Ten minutes later, Baker St. Cyr strolled along the main promenade in front of the terminal, enjoying the view of rolling green hills on the resort planet's most hospitable continent. He breathed in the air—free of pollutants and a welcome change from New Chicago, the industrial planet to which his last case had taken him—and looked around, hoping to spot someone who might be there waiting for him.
    While he was looking to his right, a voice on his left said, "Are you Mr. St.
Cyr?"
    The voice was that of a handsome, fair-haired, earnest young boy. When St.
Cyr turned, however, he was confronted by a master unit robot as large as he was and at least twice again his weight. It floated on grav-plates, silent. Of course, he thought, the Alderbans would have the very best in modern conveniences, no matter what the cost.
    "I'm St.Cyr," he said.
    "I am Teddy, the Alderban master unit, and I've come to escort you to the estate." How perfect he would have been in tie and tails.
    Teddy
, St. Cyr mused. A master unit
was
almost human, after all. It had been programmed with a distinct personality—always pleasant and efficient—by the Reiss Master Unit Corporation of
Ionus. Such a machine was a far more companionable associate than a dog; and men gave names to dogs.
    St. Cyr smiled, aware that Teddy could interpret facial expressions. "Hello, Teddy. I'm most anxious to be going."
    "I'll take your bags, Mr. St. Cyr."
    The master unit extended steel arms from his cylindrical body trunk and gathered the suitcases in thin, ball-jointed fingers. He led the way to the promenade steps, down the concrete approach ramp to a sleek, silver ground car, placed the bags in the trunk and opened St. Cyr's door. When the man was seated, he closed
the door and floated around to the other side of the vehicle, where he opened a second door and drifted into the cushionless niche constructed especially for him. With his highly flexible fingers he plugged the steering, braking and acceleration leads into three of the nine sockets that ringed the middle of his body trunk. He drove the car, without hands, from the parking lot onto a wide superhighway, heading away from the lossely architectured sprawl of the city.
    For a while, St. Cyr watched the hills pass by. Stands of pine-like trees thrust up like grasping hands before them, loomed over, fell away in a collapse of green fingers. A dear, blue-green river played quick tag with the road for the first fifty miles, then curved abruptly away, down a rock-walled valley, and never returned.
    Darma, with its abnormally broad and agreeable equatorial belt, its already good weather improved considerably by Climkon's manipulation of its atmosphere, was idyllic. It was the sort of world to which every man dreamed of retiring as early in life as possible. Few, however, could ever afford to leave their industrial, business-oriented home worlds. Planets like Darma, untouched by the noise, smoke and stench of production, were not developed for the poor or for the well-to-do, but only for the extremely wealthy. Only the richest men could afford to live here permanently, and only the very comfortable could manage even a month-long visit.
St. Cyr, then, should have been mesmerized by the vast stretches of untrammeled land, grateful for the chance