housekeeping system and had always worked very well without human interference. That's the best thing about these new household robots, I thought. They're efficient, hard-working, trustworthy—

Trustworthy? Rob O was certainly not on duty. I pulled a shoe on over my bare foot and scowled. Rob was gone. And the androids at the factory were gone too....

My head was pounding, so I took the time out to brew a pot of coffee while I finished dressing—at least the coffee can was in plain view in the kitchen. The brew was black and hot and I suppose not very well made, but after two cups I felt better. The throb in my head settled down into a dull ache, and I felt a little more capable of thinking. Though I didn't have any bright ideas on what had happened—not yet.

My breakfast drunk, I went up on the roof and opened the garage doors. The Copter was waiting for me, sleek and new; the latest model. I climbed in and took off, heading west toward the factory, ten minutes flight-time away.

t was a small plant, but it was all mine. It had been my baby right along—the Don Morrison Fissionables Inc. I'd designed the androids myself, plotted out the pile locations, set up the simplified reactors. And now it was making money. For men to work in a uranium plant you need yards of shielding, triple-checking, long cooling-off periods for some of the hotter products. But with lead-bodied, radio-remote controlled androids, it's easier. And with androids like the new Morrison 5's, that can reason—at least along atomic lines—well, I guess I was on my way to becoming a millionaire.

But this morning the plant was shut down. Jack and a half dozen other men—my human foremen and supervisors—were huddled in a worried bunch that broke up as soon as they saw me.

"I'm sure glad you're here, Don," Jack said.

"Find out anything?"

"Yeah. Plenty. Our androids are busy, all right. They're 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 

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