obably controlled
from a vehicle, and it's anybody's guess where that is now. When you
threw that switch, it sent out an impulse that activated them. They're
running their instruction-tapes, and putting the others through all
their tricks."

Three more shots went off. Jerry Rivas was shouting: "Hey, whattaya
know! I killed one of the buggers!"

There were any number of ways in which a work-robot could be shot out
of commission with a pistol. All of them would be by the purest of
pure luck. The next time we go into a place like this, Conn thought,
we take a couple of bazookas along.

"Turn everything off and let's go. See what we can do outside."

Anse put on his flashlight and pulled the switch. They got into the
lift and rode down, going outside. As soon as they emerged, they saw a
rectangular object fifteen feet long settle over their aircar, let
down half a dozen clawed arms, and pick it up, flying away with it. It
had taped instructions to remove anything that didn't belong in the
aisleway; it probably asked the supervisor about the aircar, and the
supervisor didn't return an inhibitory signal, so it went ahead. Conn
and Anse both shouted at it, knowing perfectly well that shouting was
futile. Then they were running for their lives with one of the
crablike all-purpose jobs after them. They dived under the slightly
raised bed of a long belt-conveyer and crawled. Jerry Rivas fired
another shot, somewhere.

The robots themselves were having troubles. They had done all the work
they were supposed to do; now the supervisors were insisting that they
do it over again. Uncomplainingly, they swept and raked and
vacuum-cleaned where they had vacuum-cleaned and raked and swept forty
years ago. The scrap-pickers, having picked all the scrap, were going
over the same places and finding nothing, and then getting deflected
and gathering a lot of things not definable as scrap, and then
circling around, darting away from one another in obedience to their
radar-operated evasion-systems, and trying to get to the outside scrap
pile, and finding that the doors wouldn't open because the door
openers weren't turned on, and finally dumping what they were carrying
when the supervisors gave them no instructions.

One of them seemed to have dumped something close to where Clyde
Nichols was hiding; if his language had been a little stronger, it
would have burned out Conn's radio. Their own immediate vicinity being
for the moment clear