Part One
Plainclothesman Lije Baley awoke with a start. He’d had the dream again, and as before woke bathed in sweat — frightened, breathing hard — yet with an aching erection.
Why must he dream about Daneel? And why this same dream, over and over?
Baley was on his way home to Earth via hyperspace, having successfully solved the question of who on the planet Aurora had incapacitated — or caused its “brain-freeze,” as the robotisists have it — of the humaniform robot Jander. In doing so, he had also saved his own career. But more important, his investigative triumph had saved Earth and paved the way for further space colonization by Earth’s billions.
Baley’s sometime humaniform partner R. Daneel Olivaw (the “R” was for robot) was accompanying him on the flight, just as he had when Baley had been sent on his journey from Earth to Aurora. Although Daneel was doing so officially as Baley’s protector, there was little if any reason to believe this was strictly necessary. But Auroran protocol demanded it, and Baley suspected that Daneel wished to act in this capacity in order to spend a little more time with him. A robot cannot, of course, feel love or even a smaller emotion like friendship, but in his own mechanical fashion, Daneel considered himself Lije Baley’s friend. On some obscure level, Baley’s presence gave the robot a kind of pleasure through the artificial construct of his positronic brain.