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houses began to ring. "Is Johnny home from school yet?"
"No. Is Jane?"
"Not yet. I wonder what can be keeping them?"
"Something new, I guess. Oh, well, the roboteachers know best. They will be home soon."
"Yes, of course. It's foolish to worry."
The children did not come.
After a time a few cars were driven to the schools. They were met by the robots. The worried parents were escorted inside. But the children did not come home.
And then, just as alarm was beginning to stir all over the land, the robots came walking, all of the robots from the grade schools, and the high schools, and the colleges. All of the school system walking, with the roboteachers saying, "Let us go into the house where you can sit down." All over the streets of the cities and the walks in the country the robots were entering houses.
"What's happened to my children?"
"If you will go inside and sit down--"
"What's happened to my children? Tell me now!"
"If you will go inside and sit down--"
Steel and electrons and wires and robotic brains were inflexible. How can you force steel to speak? All over the land the people went inside and sat nervously waiting an explanation.
There was no one out on the streets. From inside the houses came the sound of surprise and agony. After a time there was silence. The robots came out of the houses and went walking back to the schools. In the cities and in the country there was the strange and sudden silence of tragedy.
The children did not come home.
* * * * *
The morning before the robots walked, Johnny Malone, the Mayor's son, bounced out of bed with a burst of energy. Skinning out of his pajamas and into a pair of trousers, he hurried, barefooted, into his mother's bedroom. She was sleeping soundly, and he touched one shoulder hesitantly.
"Mother!"
The sleeping figure stirred. His mother's face, still faintly shiny with hormone cream, turned toward him. She opened her eyes. Her voice