"I'm back at the power plant," Matsui said exasperatedly. "There's a big thing circling around here; every time I stick my head out, he makes a dive at me. I didn't know robots would attack people."
"They don't. He just thinks you're some more trash he's been told to gather up."
Matsui was indignant. Conn laughed.
"On the level, Ham. He has photoelectric vision, and a picture of what that aisle is supposed to look like. When you get out in it, he knows you don't belong there and tries to grab you."
"Hey, there's a lot of junk in here in a couple of baskets at the converter. Say I chuck one out to him; what would he do?"
"Grab it and take it away, like he's taped to do."
"Okay; wait a minute."
They couldn't see the archway to the power plant, or even the robot that had Matsui penned up, but after a few minutes they saw it soaring away, clutching a big wire basket full of broken boxes and other rubbish. It headed for the mutually repelling swarm of robots around the door that wouldn't open for them. Conn and Anse and Jerry ran toward the rear, joined by Clyde Nichols, who popped up from behind a pile of spools of electric wire. They made it just before the coffin-shaped thing that had carried off the aircar came over to investigate.
"You want to be careful back there," Matsui told them, as they started toward the temporary safety of the power plant. "All the reactor-repair robots are there; don't get them on the warpath next."
Of course! There were always repair-robots at a power plant, to go into places no human could enter and live. Behind the collapsium shielding, they wouldn't have been activated.