K. Sammy damaged

The destruction of K. Sammy becomes a pivotal part of Elijah Baley’s account of Dr. Sarton’s murder: Baley says the robot was destroyed because it knew how the killing had been carried out. The explanation links K. Sammy’s fate to the movement of the murder weapon and to the question of who could have entered Spacetown, but R. Daneel Olivaw’s response immediately unsettles Baley’s conclusion about Commissioner Enderby’s guilt.

K. Sammy as a Dangerous Witness

When Baley confronts Enderby, he argues that the case against him has a motive beyond obstructing the investigation: “K. Sammy knew too much.” Baley identifies that knowledge as the way a Spacer had been murdered five and a half days earlier. K. Sammy’s destruction is thus framed not as an isolated incident but as an effort to suppress knowledge connecting the robot to the crime.

Baley’s Reconstruction

Baley explains the robot’s role through the blaster’s passage between New York City and Spacetown. He alleges that Enderby put a blaster in R. Sammy’s hand and directed it where to go and when; Enderby then entered Spacetown through the Personal, where he was relieved of his own weapon. According to Baley, Enderby received the other blaster from K. Sammy, killed Dr. Sarton, and returned the weapon to the robot, which carried it back across the fields to New York City. Baley says Enderby later destroyed K. Sammy because its knowledge had become dangerous.

The account also explains, in Baley’s view, how a weapon could be present when the murderer acted and absent afterward. It avoids requiring a human from New York City to cross a mile of open country at night: a robot could make that journey. K. Sammy’s destruction is therefore the final link in Baley’s proposed chain, removing the witness after the weapon had been returned.

Accusation and Unresolved Guilt

Baley presents the destruction as evidence of concealment, but Daneel distinguishes the plausibility of the reconstruction from the question of Enderby’s intent. He calls Baley’s theory untenable, maintaining that Enderby’s cerebroanalytic properties make deliberate murder impossible. Daneel cannot decide whether the psychological explanation is cowardice, conscience, or compassion, but insists that Enderby did not murder Dr. Sarton. The scene leaves K. Sammy’s destruction embedded in a disputed explanation: Baley treats it as the deliberate silencing of a witness, while Daneel’s objection prevents that accusation from settling the case.