"Okay, okay!" he growled, heading back for the ledge before they could reach him. * * * * * "No luck?" Angus asked. Disgusted, Drummond clambered up beside him. "The cave's just a nice-sized room." "Took you two hours to find that out?" The younger man shook his head. "I was hiding by the entrance, waiting for the clunkers to break it up and give me a chance to run for the ship.... How many robots did we decide there were?" "About eight hundred." "Wrong. You can add another four hundred or so." "In the cave?" Drummond nodded. "With their parts spread all the way from here to hell and back." "Dismantled?" "Down to the last nut and bolt. They've even got their secondary memory banks stripped." Angus was thoughtfully silent a long while. "RA ..." he said finally. "Robot Assembler!" "That's what I figured." Drummond turned back toward the robots and funneled his voice through his hands. "Okay, you clunkers! I want all odd-numbered RAs stripped down for reconditioning!" He glanced at Angus. "When they get through, I'll have half of what's left strip the other half, and so forth." McIntosh grinned caustically. "Brilliant! The whole operation shouldn't take more than two or three days." Then his face took on a grim cast. "Drummond, we've only got four hours left to get to those converters." "But you don't understand. Once they get started, they'll be so busy, we'll probably be able to walk away." Angus smiled indulgently. "Once they get started." He nodded toward the robots. They had all returned to their attitude of veneration. "It won't work," McIntosh explained. "Their obsession with religion is stronger than their primary compulsion. That's probably because they've been satisfying their compulsion all along." He jerked a thumb in the direction of the cave. Drummond swore venomously. Angus dropped down on the ledge and folded his knees in his arms. He felt his age bearing down on him for the first time. "Twelve hundred robots," he said meditatively. "Twelve hundred _RA_ robots. Out of touch with civilization for a century. Satisfying their primary function by disassembling and assembling one another. Going at it in shifts. Splitting themselves into three groups." "That device on their left thumb," Drummond interrupted. "It's a burnisher. That's why they're so shiny." Angus nodded. "Three groups. Group A spends so many months stripping and reassembling Group B. Meanwhile, Group C, which has just been put together again, has no memory because their secondary banks have been wiped clean. So, like children, they _learn_ from the working Group A." * * * * * Drummond's mouth hung open in shocked understanding. "And by the time A finishes the job, C's education is complete! And it's A's turn to be stripped!"