out in the
city, every one of them. We've had a dozen police reports already."

"Police reports! What's wrong?"

Jack shook his head. "It's crazy. They're swarming all over Carron
City. They're stopping robots in the streets--household Robs,
commercial Droids, all of them. They just look at them, and then the
others quit work and start off with them. The police sent for us to
come and get ours."

"Why don't the police do something about it?"

"Hah!" barked a voice behind us. I swung around, to face Chief of
Police Dalton of Carron City. He came straight toward me, his purplish
jowls quivering with rage, and his finger jabbed the air in front of
my face.

"You built them, Don Morrison," he said. "You stop them. I can't. Have
you ever tried to shoot a robot? Or use tear gas on one? What can I
do? I can't blow up the whole town!"

Somewhere in my stomach I felt a cold, hard knot. Take stainless steel
alloyed with titanium and plate it with three inches of lead. Take a
brain made up of super-charged magnetic crystals enclosed in a leaden
cranium and shielded by alloy steel. A bullet wouldn't pierce it;
radiations wouldn't derange it; an axe wouldn't break it.

"Let's go to town," I said.

They looked at me admiringly. With three hundred almost indestructible
androids on the loose I was the big brave hero. I grinned at them and
hoped they couldn't see the sweat on my face. Then I walked over to
the Copter and climbed in.

"Coming?" I asked.

Jack was pale under his freckles but Chief Dalton grinned back at me.
"We'll be right behind you, Morrison," he said.

Behind me! So they could pick up the pieces. I gave them a cocky smile
and switched on the engine, full speed.

Carron City is about a mile from the plant. It has about fifty
thousand inhabitants. At that moment, though, there wasn't a soul in
the streets. I heard people calling to each other inside their houses,
but I didn't see anyone, human or android. I circled in for a landing,
the Police Copter hovering maybe a quarter of a mile back of me. Then,
as the wheels touched, half a dozen androids came around the corner.
They saw me and stopped, a couple of them backing off the way they had
come. But the biggest of them turned and gave them some order that
froze them in their tracks, and then he himself wheeled down toward
me.

He was one of mine. I recognized him easily. Eight feet tall, with
long, jointed arms for pile work, red-lidded phosphorescent