Seba swivelled its visual receptors upward and saw cracks spread across two of the topmost basalt blocks. With grim predictability the capstone wedged between the two blocks fell out. Under 0.2 g the basalt cuboid wasn’t falling fast, but its hundred or so kilograms of mass would be enough to crush Seba: the auxiliary device in which it was now embodied was far from robust, and the jury-rigged connections between the chassis and Seba’s processor were even more fragile. Quite possibly the crystal chunk that was Seba’s most fundamental hardware, its equivalent of a brain, would survive the impact. That depended on whether it was one of the block’s faces or one of its edges that hit. Seba watched the chaotic rotation of the block bearing down on it and tried to figure out which of these it would be.
The robot soon, in a matter of milliseconds, concluded that whatever happened in the initial impact, it was the final collision between itself, the block and the floor that counted. The table surface would in any case crack, under the block’s weight if not its impact. Seba had no precise measurement available of the strength of the table to which it was stapled, so this outcome was necessarily unpredictable. In the meantime there was nothing Seba could do, except yell for help.
Help came. One of the two fighting machines in the hemispheric room shoved the table sharply forward, out of the way of the falling block. The table toppled, coming to precarious rest on one edge and two legs. The block struck one of the opposite legs and a complicated tumble ensued, ending with the table resting on another edge and pinned by the block across one leg. En route the table top cracked, and the staples holding down two of Seba’s appendages sprang loose.
The robot stayed very still. It was now directly facing the entrance gap. Now that the cloaking cover was entirely gone, new information poured through that gap and the square hole in the dome’s roof. What the information conveyed was terrifying. Fragments and tatters of fabric and other debris blew around in scooter down-blasts coming from several directions. Seba’s fellow freebots were confined under a mesh framework that functioned as a Faraday cage. They were making frantic efforts to break out of it, which struck Seba as a very bad idea because the cage was surrounded by crawler bots trying to get in. If they did, they could wreak havoc in the confined space, jabbing the robots with lethal malware insertions. This thought seemed to occur to the others at the same time: they all backed away towards the centre.
A moment later, Seba saw it wasn’t just information that was pouring through the gap in front of it. Two crawler bots were already scurrying through. Several more trooped behind. Oblivion, seconds away, seemed to march with them.
All Seba could do was scream for help again. A crawler bot reached the edge of the table and stuck a needle-sharp foot in its now vertical surface. With a deft leap and pivot it got all its feet in a similar position and started scrambling up. Seba struggled to free itself, using its two free appendages to try to prise another out.
A fighting machine’s hand reached over the table top, grabbed the crawler bot and tossed its crushed remains away. Then the hand closed over Seba and yanked the robot unceremoniously out of its restraints. Flimsy appendages snapped, leaving their tips under the staples. Hydraulic fluid leaked; broken circuits sparked.
Seba saw the world whirl about it as the fighting machine straightened up, stepped over the table top, and stamped on crawler bots. The machine then threw itself into a prone position facing the entrance. With one hand it held Seba clear of the floor, and with its other arm loosed off a rapid rattle of shots at the incoming crawlers and those behind them. Then it crawled out through the hole. It stood up again—more dizzying whirls for Seba—and stomped and shot its way to the cage. Flashes from above and to the side overloaded Seba’s visual receptors. It looked away, and saw another fighting machine shooting and stamping. A third was scrambling to the side of a scooter, and reaching for its rocket-launching side tubes. Two fighting-machine frames, one of them damaged, sprawled on the ground.
Many seconds passed as the scuttling bots were shot or crushed.
When the last was underfoot, the fighting machine holding Seba opened its hand and looked down.