THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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The mobile trash-bin went zooming up to the ceiling, reversed within
twenty feet of it and came circling back to the ground, to go zooming up
again. It had gone crazy, literally. It had been getting too many
contradictory orders from its supervisor, and its circuits were
overloaded and its relays jammed. Rats in mazes and human-type people in
financial difficulties go psychotic in very much the same way.

The two surviving all-purpose robots were also headed for a padded
repair shop. They had come close enough to each other to activate their
anticollision safeties. Immediately, they flew apart. Then their order
to pick up that big piece of junk took over, and they started forward
again, to be bounced apart as soon as they were within five feet of one
another. If left alone, their power units would run down in a year or
so; until then, they would keep on trying.

Soulless intelligences, indeed! Then it occurred to him that for the
past however-long-it-had-been he hadn't heard from Mohammed Matsui. He