5:10
As his coach sped through dusk-darkened Jersey meadows , Ronald Lovegear , fourteen years with Allied Electronix , embraced his burden with both arms , silently cursing the engineer who was deliberately rocking the train . In his thin chest he nursed the conviction that someday there would be an intelligent robot at the throttle of the 5:10 to Philadelphia . He carefully moved one hand and took a notebook from his pocket . That would be a good thing to mention at the office next Monday . Again he congratulated himself for having induced his superiors to let him take home the company 's most highly developed mechanism to date .