Dr. Sarton

Dr. Sarton is the Spacer scientist whose murder drives the investigation and whose work becomes central to its solution. His death is first treated as a deliberate killing, but the final reconstruction reveals a fatal misidentification: Commissioner Enderby intended to destroy R. Daneel, whom Sarton had designed in his own image, and instead killed Sarton when Enderby could not distinguish the two without his glasses. The reversal makes Sarton’s likeness to his creation both a mark of his scientific work and the condition that led to his death.

Identity and Work

Sarton worked with Commissioner Enderby and designed R. Daneel. The investigation establishes that Daneel’s human appearance was not incidental: Sarton had made him in his own image. That likeness would later make it possible for Enderby, under pressure and without his glasses, to mistake Sarton for the robot he meant to attack.

Sarton also knew the purpose for which Daneel had been designed. According to Elijah Baley’s reconstruction, Sarton had discussed with Enderby the possibility that the project could influence public opinion in the Outer Worlds and affect whether Spacetown continued. Sarton’s work therefore placed him at the intersection of scientific design and the political dispute over Earth’s future.

Murder and Investigation

Sarton was found dead in his dome at Spacetown. The image Baley later displayed of the dome showed Sarton’s body at its center, confronting Enderby with the scene connected to the case. The discovery had left two conspicuous problems: Enderby had been present, yet no murder weapon was found with him.

Baley initially proposed that Enderby had deliberately murdered Sarton. In that account, Enderby arranged for R. Sammy to carry a blaster across the open country, entered Spacetown through the Personal, received the weapon from K. Sammy, killed Sarton, and returned the blaster to the robot for its journey back to New York City. Baley further alleged that Enderby later destroyed K. Sammy because the robot knew too much. The theory accounted for the missing weapon and Enderby’s presence, but R. Daneel rejected its central claim: the Commissioner’s cerebroanalysis made deliberate murder impossible.

The Accidental Killing

Baley’s revised explanation distinguished deliberate murder from an unintended death. He argued that Enderby had entered Spacetown intending to destroy Daneel, not to kill Sarton. As an earnest Medievalist, Enderby feared that Daneel’s design might help draw Earthmen away from Earth. He hoped that demonstrating the strength of Medievalism on Earth would discourage the Spacers and strengthen opposition to the Spacetown project.

In Baley’s reconstruction, Enderby came to the dome early, at dawn, expecting Sarton to be asleep and Daneel to be awake. Enderby had ready access to Spacetown, while a robot such as R. Sammy could not identify Daneel as a machine because of his human appearance. The same resemblance that complicated the attempted attack also explains why Enderby could not simply delegate it to the robot.

At the dome, Enderby dropped and broke his glasses while nervous. When a figure resembling Daneel appeared at the door, he fired, gathered the remains of his glasses, and fled. The person he had shot was Sarton, who had risen early. Without his glasses, Enderby could not tell the scientist from the robot Sarton had made in his own image. The killing was therefore accidental, though it arose from Enderby’s planned sabotage of Daneel.

Significance

Sarton’s death resolves the apparent contradiction between the evidence against Enderby and Daneel’s insistence that he could not have committed deliberate murder. Baley’s final account preserves both facts by identifying Enderby’s intended target as Daneel and Sarton as the unintended victim. The case turns not on a hidden distinction between two unrelated figures, but on their visible likeness—and on the broken glasses that temporarily made that likeness impossible to read correctly.

The revelation also ties the murder to the conflict surrounding Sarton’s work. Enderby’s opposition to the possibility that Daneel could contribute to Earth’s movement away from Earth led him to attack the robot; Sarton’s design made the attack fatal to its creator instead. Sarton thus remains central even after his death: the purpose of his creation supplies the motive, and the creation’s resemblance to him supplies the explanation.