('Powers of Observation' by Harry Harrison)

I just climbed his back, locked my legs around his waist, and twisted his neck. He still hadn't said anything, I doubt if he could talk, but he thrashed his arms something terrible and tried to pull me off. He just couldn't reach me. I turned and turned until he was glaring back at me over his right shoulder. And then I turned some more. He was facing straight backwards now, clicking his teeth at me. And I kept twisting. There was a sharp crack and his eyes closed and all the fight went out of him. I just turned some more until his head came off.

Of course there was a lot of trailing wires and piping and that kind of thing, but I pulled it all loose and put the decapitated head on the ground. Some of the wires sparked when they grounded.

Now I had to find out where the brain was. Just because a robot looks like a man there is no reason to assume that its brain is in its head. Svirsky may have thought with his stomach. I had to find out.

Ever since we had heard the rumors that a humanoid robot was being field-tested in Yugoslavia we had all been planning for this moment. Servo motors and power plants and hardware we knew about. But what kind of a brain were they using? We were going to find out. I pulled his shirt open and they hadn't even bothered to put the plastic flesh back completely the last time they had serviced him. They must have been in a hurry to leave. A flap of skin was hanging loose just above his navel and I put my finger in and pulled. He peeled open just like a banana, showing a broad, metallic chest under the soft plastic. An access plate covered most of it, just like on an airplane's engine, with big slotted fasteners in the corners. I bent a ten dinar coin twisting them open, then pulled the plate off and threw it away.

Well, well, I smiled to myself, and even went so far as to rub my hands together. Motors, junction boards, power pack, and so forth, all feeding into a bundle of wires in a realistic location where the spinal cord should have been and heading up through the neck. Brain in head -and I had the head.

"Thank you, Comrade," I said, standing and dusting off my knees, "you have been very helpful. I'm going to borrow your shirt, because you tore mine, and take some pictures of your innards to make our engineers happy."

I removed the shirt from the headless torso and propped him up so that the sun shone in through the access port. Now camera. I looked around carefully to be sure no one was in sight, then threw my torn shirt away.

"We have our secrets, too," I told him, but he didn't bother to answer.

I pushed with my thumbnail atthe flesh over my sternum, thenpulled with both hands until my skin stretched and parted. The lens of my chest camera protruded through the opening. "F2.5 at a 125th," I estimated, correctly of course, then shot the pictures, clicking them off with a neural impulse to the actuator.

agging aloud. "Just like the space race, Comrade, neck and neck. And you went to the robot race the same way. Build strong, build for excess power, build double and treble in case of failure. That makes for a mighty heavy robot. Not even room left for speech circuits. While we built with micro and micromicrominiaturization. Sophisticated circuitry. More goodies in the same size package. And it works, too. When Washington heard you were going to be tested down here they couldn't resist field-testing me at the same time."