Baley cleared his throat and had nothing more to say on the subject.
"Out in this direction," he said a moment later, "and we're a quarter of a mile from our apartment."
It was a grim, lower-class apartment. One small room and two beds. Two fold-in chairs and a closet. A built-in subetheric screen that allowed no manual adjustment, and would be working only at stated hours, but would be working then. No washbasin, not even an Unactivated one, and no facilities for cooking or even boiling water. A small trash-disposal pipe was in one corner of the room, an ugly, unadorned, unpleasantly functional object.
Baley shrugged. "This is it. I guess we can stand it."
R. Daneel walked to the trash-disposal pipe. His shirt unseamed at a touch, revealing a smooth and, to all appearances, well-muscled chest.
"What are you doing?" asked Baley.
"Getting rid of the food I ingested. If I were to leave it, it would putrefy and I would become an object of distaste."
R. Daneel placed two fingers carefully under one nipple and pushed in a definite pattern of pressure. His chest opened longitudinally. R. Daneel reached in and from a welter of gleaming metal withdrew a thin, translucent sac, partly distended. He opened it while Baley watched with a kind of horror.
R. Daneel hesitated. He said, "The food is perfectly clean. I do not salivate or chew. It was drawn in through the gullet by suction, you know. It is edible."
"That's all right," said Baley, gently. "I'm not hungry. You just get rid of it."
R. Daneel's food sac was of fluorocarbon plastic, Baley decided. At least the food did not cling to it. It came out smoothly and was placed little by little into the pipe. A waste of good food at that, he thought.
He sat down on one bed and removed his shirt. He said, "I suggest an early start tomorrow."
"For a specific reason?"
"The location of this apartment isn't known to our friends yet. Or at least I hope not. If we leave early, we are that much safer. Once in City Hall, we will have to decide whether our partnership is any longer practical."
"You think it is perhaps not?"
Baley shrugged and said dourly, "We can't go through this sort of thing every day."
"But it seems to me - "
R. Daneel was interrupted by the sharp scarlet sliver of the door signal.
Baley rose silently to his feet and unlimbered his blaster. The door signal flashed once more.
He moved silently to the door, put his thumb on the blaster contact while he threw the switch that activated the one-way transparency patch. It wasn't a good view-patch; it was small and had a distorting effect, but it was quite good enough to show Baley's youngster, Ben, outside the door.
Baley acted quickly. He flung the door open, snatched brutally at Ben's wrist as the boy raised his hand to signal a third time, and pulled him in.
The look of fright and bewilderment faded only slowly from Ben's eyes as he leaned breathlessly against the wall toward which he had been hurled. He rubbed his wrist.
"Dad!" he said in grieved tones. "You didn't have to grab me like that."
Baley was staring through the view-patch of the once-again-closed door. As nearly as he could tell, the corridor was empty.
"Did you see anyone out there, Ben?"
"No. Gee, Dad, I just came to see if you were all right."
"Why shouldn't I be all right?'
"I don't know. It was Mom. She was crying and all like that. She said I had to find you. If I didn't go, she said she would go herself, and then she didn't know what would happen. She made me go, Dad."
Baley said, "How did you find me? Did your mother know where I was?"
"No, she didn't. I called up your office."
"And they told you?"
Ben looked startled at his father's vehemence. He said, in a low voice, "Sure. Weren't they supposed to?"
Baley and Daneel looked at one another.
Baley rose heavily to his feet. He said, "Where's your mother now, Ben? At the apartment?"
"No, we went to Grandma's for dinner and stayed there. I'm supposed to go back there now. I mean, as long as you're all right, Dad."
"You'll stay here. Daneel, did you notice the exact location of the floor communo?"
The robot said, "Yes. Do you intend leaving the room to use it?"
"I've got to. I've got to get in touch with Jessie."
"Might I suggest that it would be more logical to let Bentley do that. It is a form of risk and he is less valuable."
Baley stared. "Why, you - "
He thought: Jehoshaphat, what am I getting angry about?
He went on more calmly, "You don't understand, Daneel. Among us, it is not customary for a man to send his young son into possible danger, even if it is logical to do so."
"Danger!" squeaked Ben in a sort of horrified pleasure. "What's going on, Dad? Huh, Dad?"
"Nothing, Ben. Now, this isn't any of your business. Understand? Get ready for bed. I want you in bed when I get back. You hear me?"
"Aw, gosh. You could tell a fellow. I won't say anything."
"In bed!"
"Gosh!"
Baley hitched his jacket back as he stood at the floor communo, so that his blaster butt was ready for snatching. He spoke his personal number into the mouthpiece and waited while a computer fifteen miles away checked it to make sure the call was permissible. It was a very short wait that was involved, since a plain-clothes man had no limit on the number of his business calls. He spoke the code number of his mother-in-law's apartment.
The small screen at the base of the instrument lit up, and her face looked out at him.