It 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.
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....
