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"We follow the scientists around and look over their shoulders. They're watching their feet: provable mistakes are bad for them. We're looking as far ahead as we can, and we don't get penalized for mistakes."
- Larry Niven
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| Ruum Spherical Robot | ||
| An autonomous spherical robot, possibly liquid metal, self-energizing, of alien design; a collector. |
The Ruum was left on Earth uncounted ages ago - by accident:
“Excellency,” he said uneasily, “I regret to inform you that because of a technician’s carelessness, a Type H-p Ruum has been left behind on the third planet, together with anything it may have collected.”
The Commander’s triangular eyes hooded momentarily, but when he spoke his voice was level.
“How was the ruum set?”
“For a maximum radius of 30 miles, and 160 pounds plus or minus fifteen.”
There was silence for several seconds, then the Commander said: “We cannot reverse course now. In a few weeks we’ll be returning, and can pick up the ruum then. I do not care to have one of those costly, self-energizing models charged against my ship. You will see,” he ordered coldly, “that the individual responsible is severely punished.”
But at the end of its run, in the neighborhood of Rigel, the cruiser met a flat, ring-shaped raider; and when the inevitable fire-fight was over, both ships, semi-molten, radioactive, and laden with dead, were starting a billion year orbit around the star.
And on the earth, it was the age of reptiles.
As our story begins, prospector Jim Irwin has been dropped off in a remote, unexplored part of the Canadian Rockies.
The cruiser Ilkor had just gone into her interstellar overdrive beyond the orbit of Pluto when a worried officer reported to the Commander.
| ...he rounded a grassy knoll to come upon a sight that made him stiffen to a halt, his jaw dropping.
It was like some enterprising giant’s outdoor butcher shop: a great assortment of animal bodies, neatly lined up in a triple row that extended almost as far as the eye could see... Jim Irwin had once worked with mercury, and for a second it seemed to him that a half-filled leather sack of the liquid metal had rolled into the clearing. For the quasi-spherical object moved with just such a weighty, fluid motion. But it was not leather; and what appeared at first a disgusting wartiness, turned out on closer scrutiny to be more like the functional projections of some outlandish mechanism. Whatever the thing was, he had little time to study it, for after the spheroid had whipped out and retracted a number of metal rods with bulbous, lens-like structures at their tips, it rolled towards him at a speed of about five miles an hour. And from its purposeful advance, the man had no doubt that it meant to add him to the pathetic heap of living-dead specimens. Uttering an incoherent exclamation, Jim sprang back a number of paces, unslinging his rifle. The ruum that had been left behind was still some 30 yards off, approaching at that moderate but invariable velocity, an advance more terrifying in its regularity than the headlong charge of a mere brute beast... When the ruum was six feet away, he saw gleaming finger-hooks flick from warty knobs, and a hollow, stinglike probe, dripping greenish liquid, poised snakily between them. The man turned and fled... Springing to a hillock, he looked back over the grassy plain. The afternoon sun cast long shadows, but it was easy enough to spot the pursuing ruum, still oozing along on Jim’s trail... But there was no change of technique by the ruum; seemingly intent on the footprints of its prey, the strange sphere rippled along...
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| Technovelgy from The Ruum,
by Arthur Porges. Published by Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1953 Additional resources -
|
The Rovers from the late 1960's sci-fi television series The Prisoner were security balls of various sizes.
(The Rover seeks its prey)
In the television show, the Rovers were living creatures modeled to some extent on blowfish. They could alter their size and were equipped with toxins that could incapacitate prisoners who tried to escape (they would give chase to the fastest moving living creature). They also served as eyes and ears for the Village monitors. They were adapted for different environments, including undersea use.
SF fans (as well as fans of supermacromation) remember the early 1980's series The Terrahawks, which had spherical robots called Zeroids were used to fight the evil witch-like alien Zelda.
(Sargeant Major Zero and Zeroid 18)
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'...war-balloons, or, as it would be more correct to call them, navigable aerostats.'
'This robot is a creature... It is a manlike being. Therefore, like any other talking, thinking man, he is entitled to a court trial!'
'...small electric motors at the principal joints worked the prosthetic framework by means of steel cables...'
