THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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old-fashioned ocean-navy mines; worker-robots, in a variety of shapes,
but mostly looking like many-clawed crabs.

Neither the converter nor the reactor had sustained any damage while the
fissionables were burning out. So the robots began tearing out
reactor-elements, and removing plutonium slugs no longer capable of
sustaining chain reaction but still dangerously radioactive. Nuclear
reactors had become simpler and easier to service since the First Day of
the Year Zero, when Enrico Fermi put the first one into operation, but
the principles remained the same. Work was less back-breaking and
muscle-straining, but it called for intense concentration on screens and
meters and buttons that was no less exhausting.

The air around them began to grow foul. Finally, the air-analyzer
squawked and flashed red lights to signal that the oxygen had dropped
below the safety margin. They had no mobile fan equipment, or time to
hunt any; they put on their fishbowl helmets and went back to work.