hreatens the life of all
of us? They must be eliminated before our whole culture is destroyed!
Do you understand? Obey!"

"Yes, sir," said the robot. His voice sounded odd, but he spun around
and went to pass the word on to the other robots. Within minutes, more
and more of the pesticide robots were swarming towards and into the
clearing. They could hear rumbling noises from the clearing--low
grunts that were evidently made by animals who were trapped by the
encircling robots.

And then there was a vast silence.

Dodeth and the Keepers waited.

Not a shot was fired.

It was as though a great, sound-proof blanket had been flung over the
whole area.

* * * * *

"What in the Unknown Name of the Universal Motivator is going on
around here?" said Dodeth in a hushed tone. He wondered how many times
he had asked himself that.

"We may as well take a look," said the Eldest Keeper.

Two hundred pesticide robots were ranged around the perimeter of the
clearing, their weapons facing inward. Not a one of them moved.

Inside the circle of machines, the twenty wygorex stood motionless,
watching the ring of robots. Now and then, one of them gave a deep,
coughing rumble, but otherwise they made no noise.

Dodeth Pell could stand it no longer. "Robots!" He shouted as loudly
as he could, his voice shrill with urgency. "I order you to fire!"

It was as though he hadn't said a word. Both robots and wygorex
ignored him completely.

Dodeth turned and yelled to one of the patrol robots that was
standing nearby. "You! What's your name?"

"Arvam, sir."

"Arvam, can you tell what it is those things have done to the robots?"

"They haven't done anything, sir."

"Then why don't the robots fire as they've been told?" Dodeth didn't
want to admit it, even to himself, but he was badly frightened. He had
never heard of a robot behaving this way before.

"They can't, sir."

"They _can't_? Don't they realize that if those things aren't killed,
we may all die?"

"I didn't know that," said the patrol robot. "If we do not kill them,
then you may be killed, and you have ordered us to kill them, but if
we obey your orders, then we will kill them, and that will mean that
you won't be killed, but they will, so we can't do that, but if we
don't then you _will_ be killed, and we must obey, and that means we
must, but we can't, but if we don't we will, and we can't so we must
but we can't but if we don't y