Julius Enderby and Roj Nemennuh Sarton’s working relationship

Julius Enderby and Roj Nemennuh Sarton’s working relationship made Enderby a crucial link between the Earth police and the Spacer scientist’s plans for the city. Their morning appointment concerned arrangements for introducing robots into New York City; Sarton’s murder interrupted those plans and made Enderby, who was present in Spacetown at the time, an immediate witness and the one Earthman identified as having been on the scene.

Work and Planned Cooperation

Enderby tells Elijah Baley that he had an appointment with Sarton when news of the murder reached him. He describes the appointment as a professional meeting and stresses how narrowly he missed discovering the body himself: he says he would have found it had he arrived five minutes earlier. The account establishes that the two men were in direct contact, though the evidence does not specify how long they had worked together or the full scope of their past dealings.

The purpose of the appointment emerges as part of the investigation. Sarton had previously cooperated with Enderby, and they were to discuss initial arrangements for the infiltration of the city by robots such as R. Daneel Olivaw. Their cooperation thus extended beyond an isolated meeting: Enderby was the Earth official with whom Sarton intended to begin practical discussions about introducing robots into city life. The plan required a connection across the political and cultural divide between Earth and the Spacers, with Enderby serving as Sarton’s Earth-side counterpart.

The Murder and Its Immediate Effect

Sarton’s murder abruptly stopped the planned arrangements, at least temporarily. The intended conversation did not take place, and the appointment instead placed Enderby close to the crime at the moment it was discovered. He tells Baley that the news began a three-day nightmare for him. His recollection links his personal shock to the larger disruption of the work he and Sarton had planned, though it does not itself establish what he knew about the murder beforehand.

The timing also had political consequences. Because the murder happened while the Commissioner of Police was in Spacetown, it heightened the difficulty and embarrassment of the situation for both Earth and the Spacer community. The relationship therefore became significant not only as professional cooperation but as a point of vulnerability: Sarton’s death halted a proposed initiative and left the Earth official associated with it under the scrutiny of the investigation.

Enderby as Witness and Suspect

The Spacers initially considered whether a Terrestrial could have crossed the area, reached Sarton, and left without detection, exploiting what they described as a blind spot in their security. Enderby’s presence in Spacetown at approximately the time of the murder was relevant to that possibility. The investigators had suggested the cross-country approach to him and began checking it, although Enderby and Baley both initially regarded the theory as implausible or unthinkable.

Later, when Baley challenges the investigation’s lack of a clue or suspect, the answer is that there had been one suspect all along: Enderby, the only Earthman on the scene. This disclosure sharpens the double meaning of the working relationship. Enderby’s appointment with Sarton explains his presence and gives him a legitimate professional connection to the victim, but the same circumstances make him an unavoidable person of interest. The available evidence identifies him as a suspect; it does not, in these passages, resolve his guilt or describe the eventual outcome of the case.

Significance of the Relationship

The relationship is presented through the collision of cooperation and suspicion. Sarton had been working with the Commissioner on a plan whose next step was to bring robots into the city, but the murder turned the scheduled meeting into evidence of Enderby’s proximity to the crime. His official role made him an important intermediary; it also meant that the investigation could not treat his presence as incidental. The relationship thus ties the murder to the interrupted robot-integration plan while placing Enderby at the center of the question of how the killer entered Spacetown and why the crime occurred at that moment.