"If they did, it wasn't air," Doc said.
"Bring back all you can, Maraffi," the skipper said. "But leave them outside the ship. Everybody on the detail takes double decontamination. And we'll put you down for hazard pay."
"Aye, aye, sir. We're on our way."
"They're androids," Doc said. He'd gone out in a protective suit to the grisly pile. "These must be the false starts."
The other technicians watched him on a closed-circuit hook-up from inside the ship.
"Are they like us?" Ernest asked. "They look it from here—what there is of them."
"Damn near," Doc said. "Smaller and darker, though. Rosco, you were right about the communication. There's a tiny transceiver built into their skulls. Those that have heads, that is."
"If that's the case," Rosco said, "then why weren't these—stillbirths, whatever you want to call them—turned to dust like the others?"
"Because they'd never been activated," Doc said. "You can't blow a fuse if it isn't screwed in. Skipper, I've seen about all my stomach can stand for now. I suppose I'm a hell of a queasy sawbones, but these—things—are too much like human beings for me to take much more of them at the moment."