medbot n.

‘No wonder the entire loony world is taking advantage of National Rob... oof.’ One of the white-enameled robots had thrust a thermometer into the old man’s wrinkle-ringed mouth. ‘Health test,’ it said out of the talkhole in its midsection. Spitting angrily, old Nelson Hackensacker, Jr., got the plastic stick out. ‘What a pair of ninnyhammers,’ he screamed. ‘Burton, is this the best we can do in the way of med ’bots?’

One of us and two of the telescope personnel were wounded in the first minutes. We want a working medbot. And we want food. But only in unopened cans. You won’t drug us. And we want five more hostages, as insurance you won’t reprogram the medical robot or try to drug the food.

‘It still might be a good idea, if I might be so bold as to suggest it, to allow a medibot to exam….’ ‘Not now.’

‘Looks like a stroke,’ Baum said, tapping one of the wall squares by the door. ‘I’ll get the Med section.’ It seemed forever before Cal heard the medibot purring down the hall on its cushion of air. Its snakehead sensor peered around the door, triangulated the distance to Grober, and dragged its padded stretcher body into the room. Multijointed arms slipped under Grober’s back and scooped him out of Cal’s arms. Without a pause it transferred Grober to its padded top and backed out without looking along its memory track of the way it had come.

Firefall was close enough for the Presence to contact Melita directly, Ike concluded, and with no misgivings ordered a medibot up from sick bay.

He snapped some kind of medbot into the arm of Ezekiel’s chair and positioned it over Ezekiel’s skull.

The medbot checked her vital signs while hot cocoa bubbled.