John W. Campbell of Astounding Science Fiction so disliked the story that he rejected it with the chemical formula for butyl mercaptan.

It was the last story he wrote for 14 months, as he became busy with graduate school, got a job at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, and met and married Gertrude Blugerman.

However, as the tour proceeds, the robots repeatedly (and unintentionally) surprise the Jovians with their immunity to extremes of heat, cold and radiation.

ZZ One (with his considerably lower reasoning capacity than the other robots) argues, from the perspective of the First Law, that the Jovians simply realized that they could not harm humans.

When the Jovians' superiority complex was confronted by the strength and resistance of the robots to all manner of hazards, it crumbled and led to their acquiescence.