talk, could you?” (This was Munting, of course.)
“Well, no. There’s a trifling hitch there, I admit—always supposing anybody wants to hear your bright conversation.”
“Then there is something—what I call Life—which you can’t imitate.”
“Well, yes. But I daresay we shall find it some day. It can’t be anything very out-of-the-way, can it? I mean, there’s an awful lot of it knocking about. The trouble is, one doesn’t seem to be able to find it by chemical analysis. If one could, you know, it would probably turn out to be something quite ordinary, and then one could make it.”
“The lost formula of Rossum’s Universal Robots , eh?”
“Very likely,” said Leader, “that’s a play, isn’t it? I never go to highbrow plays. All rot, you know—more in your line. But there it is. Analyse you and you’re just so much dead matter. Analyse toadstools, and you get this muscarine stuff. Makes one think a bit less of the marvels of Nature, don’t it?”