ON THE DISTANT COLONY WORLD OF a robot-dependent civilisation, mobile sandminer Storm Mine 4 is eight months into a two-year tour of an uncharted mineral-rich desert. The giant vehicle is run by a large complement of Voc robots and a human crew of nine who chase localised sandstorms in the search for valuable lucanol deposits. When government meteorologist Chub is strangled by one of the robots in the forward storage bay, Commander Uvanov believes the only suspects are a pair of stowaways discovered in a dust scoop by robots V9 and D84.
The intruders are the Doctor and his new companion Leela. Their guilt appears certain after SuperVoc controller SV7 finds the Doctor apparently hiding the body of Kerril in a storage hopper and D84 discovers Leela with Cass’ corpse in Uvanov’s quarters. Both crew members have been strangled, like Chub, but only Chief Mover Poul believes that the Doctor and Leela are innocent. As the robots’ primary programming prevents them from harming any human, no-one is prepared to entertain the Doctor’s suspicion that a robot killer is at large on the sandminer.
Then Zilda is found dead just minutes after accusing Uvanov of murdering her brother. Poul orders SV7 to restrain the commander and Pilot Toos assumes command. Chief Fixer Dask discovers that Borg has also been strangled and the sandminer’s drive links have been sabotaged. The vehicle’s motive units race out of control but the Doctor helps Dask to repair the damage and prevent the sandminer from sinking beneath the desert sand.
“My command program has been restructured. All humans are to die.” V5, Part Three
When the Doctor learns that Poul and D84 are corporate detectives working undercover to investigate threats of a robot revolution, he realises that the murders and sabotage have been engineered by Taren Capel, a fanatical roboticist who is masquerading as one of the surviving crew members. But Capel has already bypassed SV7’s primary program and issued the SuperVoc with new orders: to kill the remaining humans…