Wrong tense. Had built a ship!
For Lanning said, "The robots have stopped. Not one has moved today."
"It's completed then? Definitely?" asked Powell.
"Now how can I tell?" Lanning was peevish, and his eyebrows curled down in an eye-hiding frown. "It seems done. There are no spare pieces about, and the interior is down to a gleaming finish."
"You've been inside?"
"Just in, then out. I'm no space-pilot. Either of you two know much about engine theory?"
Donovan looked at Powell, who looked at Donovan.
Donovan said, "I've got my license, sir, but at last reading it didn't say anything about hyper-engines or warp-navigation. Just the usual child's play in three dimensions."
Alfred Lanning looked up with sharp disapproval and snorted the length of his prominent nose.
He said frigidly, "Well, we have our engine men."
Powell caught at his elbow as he walked away, "Sir, is the ship still restricted ground?"
The old director hesitated, then rubbed the bridge of his nose, "I suppose not. For you two anyway."
Donovan looked after him as he left and muttered a short, expressive phrase at his back. He turned to Powell, "I'd like to give him a literary description of himself, Greg."
"Suppose you come along, Mike."
The inside of the ship was finished, as finished as a ship ever was; that could be told in a single eye-blinking glance. No martinet in the system could have put as much spit-and-polish into a surface as those robots had. The walls were of a gleaming silvery finish that retained no fingerprints.
There were no angles; walls, floors, and ceiling faded gently into each other and in the cold, metallic glittering of the hidden lights, one was surrounded by six chilly reflections of one's bewildered self.
The main corridor was a narrow tunnel that led in a hard, clatterfooted stretch along a line of rooms of no interdistinguishing features.
Powell said, "I suppose furniture is built into the wall. Or maybe we're not supposed to sit or sleep."
It was in the last room, the one nearest the nose, that the monotony broke. A curving window of non-reflecting glass was the first break in the universal metal, and below it was a single large dial, with a single motionless needle hard against the zero mark.
Donovan said, "Look at that!" and pointed to the single word on the finely-marked scale.
It said, "Parsecs" and the tiny figure at the right end of the curving, graduated meter said "1,000,000."
There were two chairs; heavy, wide-flaring, uncushioned. Powell seated himself gingerly, and found it molded to the body's curves, and comfortable.
Powell said, "What do you think of it?"
"For my money, The Brain has brain-fever. Let's get out."
"Sure you don't want to look it over a bit?"
"I have looked it over. I came, I saw, I'm through!" Donovan's red hair bristled into separate wires, "Greg, let's get out of here. I quit my job five seconds ago, and this is a restricted area for non-personnel."
Powell smiled in an oily self-satisfied manner and smoothed his mustache, "O.K., Mike, turn off that adrenalin tap you've got draining into your bloodstream. I was worried, too, but no more."
"No more, huh? How come, no more? Increased your insurance?"
"Mike, this ship can't fly."
"How do you know?"
"Well, we've been through the entire ship, haven't we?"
"Seems so."
"Take my word for it, we have. Did you see any pilot room except for this one port and the one gauge here in parsecs? Did you see any controls?"
"No."
"And did you see any engines?"
"Holy Joe, no!"
"Well, then! Let's break the news to Lanning, Mike."
They cursed their way through the featureless corridors and finally hit-and-missed their way into the short passage to the air lock.
Donovan stiffened, "Did you lock this thing, Greg?"
"No, I never touched it. Yank the lever, will you?"
The lever never budged, though Donovan's face twisted appallingly with exertion.
Powell said, "I didn't see any emergency exits. If something's gone wrong here, they'll have to melt us out."
"Yes, and we've got to wait until they find out that some fool has locked us in here," added Donovan, frantically.
"Let's get back to the room with the port. It's the only place from which we might attract attention."
But they didn't.
In that last room, the port was no longer blue and full of sky. It was black, and hard yellow pin-point stars spelled space.
There was a dull, double thud, as two bodies collapsed separately into two chairs.
Alfred Lanning met Dr. Calvin just outside his office. He lit a nervous cigar and motioned her in.
He said, "Well, Susan, we've come pretty far, and Robertson's getting jumpy. What are you doing with The Brain?"
Susan Calvin spread her hands, "It's no use getting impatient. The Brain is worth more than anything we forfeit on this deal."
"But you've been questioning it for two months."
The psychologist's voice was flat, but somehow dangerous, "You would rather run this yourself?"
"Now you know what I meant."
"Oh, I suppose I do," Dr. Calvin rubbed her hands nervously. "It isn't easy. I've been pampering it and probing it gently, and I haven't gotten anywhere yet. Its' reactions aren't normal. Its answers - they're queer, somehow. But nothing I can put my finger on yet. And you see, until we know what's wrong, we must just tiptoe our way through. I can never tell what simple question or remark will just... push him over... and then- Well, and then we'll have on our hands a completely useless Brain. Do you want to face that?"