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There are humans, a rather large corps of them. But my contacts never have been with the humans. I see only the robots and then only when they want to see me. Project Pope is a big operation. No one outside Vatican really seems to know what is going on. One story has it that the robots are trying to built an infallible pope—an electronic pope, a computer pope. There appears to be an idea that the project is an outgrowth of Christianity, an Old Earth religion.”
    â€œWe know what Christianity is,” Jill said. “There still are a lot of Christians, perhaps more than ever before. True, Christianity no longer looms as important as it did before we began going into space. This, however, is a relative thing. The religion is still as important as ever, but its seeming importance has been diluted by the many other faiths that exist in the galaxy. Isn’t it strange that faith is so universal? Even the ugliest aliens appear to have a faith to cling to.”
    â€œNot all of them,” said the captain. “Not all of them by any means. I have run into alien areas, into entire planets, where no one had ever thought of religion or of faith. And, I must say, that they were not the worse for it. Sometimes, I thought better.”
    â€œConstructing a pope,” said Tennyson, “is a strange task to set oneself. I wonder where the robots got the idea and what they expect the end result to be.”
    â€œYou never can tell about robots,” the captain observed. “They are a funny lot. Spend enough time in space and you quit worrying or wondering about why anyone is doing something or what they expect from doing what they do. None of these rummy aliens think the way we do. They’re a bunch of zany bastards. Compared to most of them, robots are downright human.”
    â€œThey should be,” said Jill. “We are the ones who dreamed them up. No other culture did. There are those who will tell you that robots are extensions of ourselves.”
    â€œThere may be some truth in that,” the captain agreed. “Screwy as they may be at times, they are still several cuts above any alien I ever met.”
    â€œYou don’t like aliens,” said Tennyson.
    â€œYou aren’t just whistling through your teeth. Who does like the scummy bastards?”
    â€œAnd yet you use them on your ship.”
    â€œOnly because I can’t pull together a crew of humans. Out here, there aren’t many humans.”
    â€œAnd you haul the aliens out to End of Nothing, then haul them back to Gutshot.”
    â€œSomeone has to haul them,” said the captain, “and I get well paid for doing it. I haul them, but nothing says I have to associate with them. It’s not only that I dislike them, which I do, but we humans have to stick together. If we don’t, they’ll overwhelm us.”
    Tennyson studied the captain. There was nothing of the look of the fanatical bigot about him. He was of indeterminate age—a young-old man—his profile resembling a hatchet. There was no humor in him; he was all deadly business. A strange man, Tennyson told himself—one of those twisted men found in lonely places. More than likely the captain was lonely. For years he had ferried alien pilgrims between Gutshot and End of Nothing, and all the time, out of his loneliness that cried out for humanness, his contempt and horror of his passengers had grown until it now was tightly woven into the fabric of his life.
    â€œTell us about End of Nothing itself,” said Jill. “We’ve talked about it ever since I came aboard and not once have you told me what kind of planet it is. I have no idea if it’s farmland or—”
    â€œIt’s not farmland,” said the captain. “The project does have some gardens and fields, the robots laboring in them, to grow food for their biological brothers. But other than that, it is all wasteland, the environment untouched, standing