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It was the strangest order that had ever come into the office of the Consolidated Mechanical Men Corporation.

The specialty of the Consolidated Mechanical Men Corporation, which made robots, was a big, clanking half-ton model that could fetch and carry half-ton loads. The corporation also made a pleasant kitchen model, which baked cookies and tended children, and some smart special models with special brains—they could add and subtract like sixty—but it had never even heard of making anything like this.

The Chief Engineer said it couldn’t be done. The very thought of trying it made him blue in the face.

The Head Designer (who designed heads) said that the head on the plans was impossible, improbable, and impractical. He also said it was bound to be unbalanced, unsafe, unmannerly, and entirely unsatisfactory. “And anyhow,” he added, “what could we do for a brain?”

The Brain Designer (who designed brains for the heads designed by the Head Designer) shook his long head and said some very long words, all of which meant simply, “Nothing. The whole thing’s cuckoo.”

It was only the Office Boy who thought it could be done. Being too young to know that it couldn’t be done, he said, “Aw, it’s just a dog! We make everything else. What’s so hard about making a little old dog?”

“Bah! We make mechanical men—not mechanical dogs,” grumbled the Chief Engineer. “Who ever heard of a robot dog? Who wants it, anyway?”

“The name on the plans is B. B. Brown,” said the Office Boy. “Why, I know him! Everybody calls him Bingo Brown, and when it comes to inventing things, he’s really smart. They say he helps his grandfather design all those secret gadgets we make for the Navy.”

“I do,” said the Office Boy, though he thought it wiser not to mention that Bingo wasn’t yet twelve.

“Well, if he’s old Bridgewater Brown’s kin and helper,” said the Chief Engineer, “he can’t be a nitwit. Maybe we’d better give the thing a whack.”

The assembly line in the factory of the Consolidated Mechanical Men Corporation was so long that all the robot workers had to use roller skates. Whenever the big boss robot pressed the button at the beginning of the line, there would be a mighty whirring clatter, a quick zipping and purring, and a thousand mechanical hands would begin punching, twisting, driving, pounding, and slamming things together. Rods and wires, nuts and bolts, bulbs and sockets, springs and sprockets, and millions of little wheels and cogs would suddenly take shape. Then like magic, zip, zip, zip, one new robot after another would slide off the end of the speeding belt.

The first time they gave it a whack, the assembly line jammed, making an awful mess. Only after they had cleaned the line, oiled it with a zippier zip oil, and given it a stronger whack, did a smallish doglike shape appear.

It was a bit smaller than it should have been, but it was the best the factory could do. As it neared the end of the assembly line, a tentacle plucked down a slightly misshapen brain box—which was all that the brain department could manage—trimmed it a bit to make it fit, and slammed it into place. It was this trimming, unfortunately, that gave Bolts his failings, as well as some of his peculiarities.

As he slid off the assembly line, the Inspector stared at him and shook his head. Bolts, as he had been named on the plans, looked like a cross between a poodle and a dachshund, plus something from outer space. He had short jointed legs, a longish jointed body, and a funny sort of head that was much too big for the rest of him.

“What would anyone want with a thing like you?” the Inspector muttered, not knowing that Bolts had been designed for a very particular purpose, and that he had turned out a bit smaller than Bingo Brown had planned.

Bolts didn’t answer because his switch wasn’t on yet. He merely lay still and listened while the Inspector inspected him, oiled his joints, and stamped his number, name, and master’s name on the plate covering his switch box. The plate now read: Z-1—BOLTS—B. B. Brown.

The moment his eye lights brightened and he began to tick, Bolts jumped to his feet, finding it quite wonderful to be alive. Instantly he raised the steel hackles on the back of his neck, snapped out a set of teeth that would have made a barracuda happy, and gave a frightful “G-r-r-r-r!”

Bolts slid his hinged teeth out of sight, thoroughly satisfied with them. “Nope,” he said gruffly. “Won’t. Just testing.”

“Better watch it,” cautioned the Inspector. “I don’t like those trick teeth. In fact, I don’t like anything about you.”

“Feeling’s mutual,” grumbled Bolts. “You gonna stand there all day not liking me?”

“Not if I can help it. But I’m not turning a thing like you loose on the world till I’ve checked you thoroughly. Now, your name is Bolts Brown, and you—”

“Natch. I been conditioned. Bingo Brown’s my master. They don’t come better—so don’t make no cracks about him, see?”

The Inspector sighed. “At least you have loyalty. You’re going to Battleship Lane, where Bingo lives with his grandfather and a proper robot named Butch. Er—do you like cats?”

“That seems to be the right answer,” the Inspector said doubtfully, glancing at his list. “Though I don’t understand it. What about dogs?”

“I’m a dawg myself. But let me catch some mangy, lop-eared, low-down, bone-snatching cur come meddling with Bingo! Brother, I’ll chew him—but good. Whaddaya think I got teeth for?”

“I did wonder,” the Inspector admitted, shuddering. “But I’m afraid that makes you very dangerous. Would you bite a human being?”

“I doubt if you’ve been conditioned enough.” The Inspector shook his head. “Your speech is absolutely terrible. So are your manners. I’m afraid you’ll never be a proper robot.”

Bolts spun his rotary nose about, and decided he had a sniffer to be proud of. “What’s the diff? I’m only a dawg. Plenty smart, though.”

“I’m afraid not,” the Inspector said sadly. “Your brain had to be trimmed to make it fit.”

“So what?” said Bolts, sniffing him. “Trimmed off the nonsense. Left the smart part. Let’s get on with this. I don’t like your smell.”

“You’re not conditioned to my smell,” snapped the Inspector, getting on with his checking. He was very glad to finish it, turn Bolts off, and pack him into a box to be delivered to his new master.

The box was carted into the shipping room and placed beside another box exactly like it. The shipping clerk was in a hurry that morning, and he made a slight mistake. The names and addresses he wrote were entirely correct—but they were written on the wrong boxes.

So it happened that the box containing Bolts was loaded into a truck that drove away in the opposite direction from Battleship Lane.

Bolts had no way of knowing this. He wasn’t much of a worrier, and being turned off, he couldn’t have worried if he had wanted to. All he could do was wonder a bit. Having a built-in clock, he was aware that time was passing, and he wondered why so much of it had to pass. He had sort of got the idea that Battleship Lane wasn’t far away.

The truck rolled on, hour after hour. Bolts couldn’t move his sniffer, but smells came to him, seeping in through a crack. He didn’t try to count them, for his counting was limited, but there were heavenly smells and some not so heavenly, and hundreds of middling ones in between. What with wondering about them, and the changing sounds, he passed the time quite comfortably.

Suddenly the truck stopped. There were muffled shouts, angry voices that were silenced by a quick order, then running footsteps. Abruptly the box was jerked from the truck, carried a few feet, and thrust into another vehicle that went bouncing away at top speed.

Bolts was still trying to puzzle out what had happened, when the bouncing and jolting ceased. Again he heard running footsteps, and once more the box was lifted and carried a short distance. There were grunts and whispers as the box was set down. All at once he heard a roar, and the third part of the strange journey began.

Curiously, the box rode smoothly now, and the smells and sounds didn’t change. About the only sound was the roar. His basic learning tapes had told him a bit about air travel, and Bolts wondered if he could be flying to Battleship Lane. Not that it mattered, as long as he got there. Battleship Lane was home.

But there was that funny business when the first truck was stopped. Though the voices had been muffled, he could remember one word because it had been the loudest. It had sounded like “holdup.” According to his language tape, a holdup was a kind of halt. Of course it had another meaning—something to do with stealing—but that didn’t make sense. Who would want to steal a robot dog named Bolts Brown? Shucks, he thought, what’s there to worry about? If I just keep plugging along, I’m bound to wind up at Battleship Lane.

After three hours, and some odd minutes that he didn’t feel were worth counting, the roaring stopped. The box bounced a time or two, and for a minute all was quiet. Then he heard excited voices and hurrying footsteps. The box was lifted and carried a short distance and set down in a place full of strange smells.

Bolts, in spite of being turned off, felt a tingling through all his circuits. This must be Battleship Lane. In a few seconds he would see his master. He didn’t know exactly what Bingo Brown looked like, except that he was a boy, had red hair, wore glasses, had brains to spare, and without question would have the very finest of all boy smells. It didn’t take any imagination to know that it would be a heavenly smell composed of ordinary boy smell mixed with a certain amount of dirt, a touch of soap—though not too much of it—plus liniment, pet frogs, old shoes and socks, jam, machine oil, tools, and chemicals.

As the lid came off the box, Bolts was aware of a tremendous number of strange smells, mainly dirt, but the boy smell was missing. Immediately a faint buzzing started in a corner of his trimmed-off brain. It was rather uncomfortable.

Must be my built-in instinct at work, Bolts thought. Yup, something’s kinda wrong here.

Hands reached into the box and tore away the paper and packing around him. There were sudden exclamations of astonishment.

“Comrade Pang, you simpleton,” a rumbling voice roared accusingly, “you’ve stolen the wrong thing!”

“Impossible!” came the sharp reply. “I do not make mistakes, Major Mangler. See, it is in the right box, with the right address. It has to be the new Brown Super-Thought Machine.”

“Bah! Does this foolish contraption look as if it could do any super thinking?”

“Well, it does look like a stupid robot dog,” Comrade Pang admitted. “But I never judge a book by its cover. The new Brown invention is quite small, and very secret. The dog shape could be a disguise.”

“We’ll soon find out,” rumbled Major Mangler, and Bolts was aware of a hand fumbling about the cover of his switch box. “Hold the lantern nearer, Comrade Pang. What does it say here on the plate?”

“H’mm. It says: Z-1—BOLTS—B. B. Brown. Ha! What did I tell you? B. B. Brown is certainly Commander Bridgewater Brown. The Z-1 means it’s the only model of its kind—so it’s bound to be the Super-Thought Machine! And they’ve named it Bolts just to add to the disguise. Am I right?”

“And by the seven plagues, you’d better be! Turn the thing on. Let’s see what kind of super thoughts we can get out of it.”

It was so wonderful to feel the power from his little atomic battery going through him again that Bolts could hardly restrain himself from jumping out of the box. But just in time he realized the trouble he was in. He decided to play it as smart as an ignorant dog could and look carefully before he leaped.

Slowly, while he gathered his feet under him, he raised his head and blinked his eye lights at the two men peering down at him. The big rumbly one called Major Mangler seemed to be all jaw and bristling whiskers. Comrade Pang, who held the lantern, was a thin little yellow man with a face like a hatchet.