No Life On Wayland II

A Circus Of Hells, CHAPTER SEVEN.

OK. Flandry has analyzed the "bugs" and now knows that they have enamel exteriors, metal exoskeletons and electronic interiors. Needle beams easily immobilize them because of their high heat conductivity. They are powered by accumulators, their feelers are very precise magnetic, electric, radionic, thermal etc sensors and they also have optical and audio systems but no mechanisms for ingestion, self-repair or reproduction. They must go somewhere for recharges and spare parts. There is no recycling of either parts or metal from wrecked bugs. They have been constructed for combat but clearly not for planetary defense because they lack guns. Flandry quibbles about whether these bugs are "machines" and asks where is the line between robots and organisms but the essential point is that the bugs are metal artifacts, not evolved animals.

Flandry sketches relevant technology elsewhere in known space. Some sensor-computer-effectors are more intricate and versatile than some organisms. They function differently but to similar ends: perception; ingestion; self-repair; reproduction; homeostasis; sometimes thought. There has even been an experiment with photosynthesis by self-reproducing solar cells. See A Robotic Ecology.