The Project Gutenberg EBook of Robots of the World! Arise!, by Mari Wolf

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Title: Robots of the World! Arise!

Author: Mari Wolf

Release Date: March 12, 2010 [EBook #31611]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science Fiction July 1952.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.

[Illustration: "_After all--aren't we genuine 'made-in-Americans'?_"]

ROBOTS of the WORLD!

ARISE!

By Mari Wolf

_What would you do if your best robots--children of your own
brain--walked up and said "We want union scale"?_

* * * * *

The telephone wouldn't stop ringing. Over and over it buzzed into my
sleep-fogged brain, and I couldn't shut it out. Finally, in
self-defense I woke up, my hand groping for the receiver.

"Hello. Who is it?"

"It's me, Don. Jack Anderson, over at the factory. Can you come down
right away?"

His voice was breathless, as if he'd been running hard. "What's the
matter now?" Why, I wondered, couldn't the plant get along one morning
without me? Seven o'clock--what a time to get up. Especially when I
hadn't been to bed until four.

"We got grief," Jack moaned. "None of the robots showed up, that's
what! Three hundred androids on special assembly this week--and not
one of them here!"

By then I was awake, all right. With a government contract due on
Saturday we needed a full shift. The Army wouldn't wait for its
uranium; it wouldn't take excuses. But if something had happened to
the androids....

"Have you called Control yet?"

"Yeah. But they don't know what's happened. They don't know where the
androids are. Nobody does. Three hundred Grade A, lead-shielded pile
workers--missing!"

"I'll be right down."

I hung up on Jac