 Why did Pete build killer robots?
The robots were built to serve Man; to do his work, see to his comforts, make smooth his way. Frowning, worrying about the sounds, Alan momentarily forgot to watch his step until his foot suddenly plunged into an ant hill, throwing him to the jungle floor. At midday some few of the blue sun's rays filtered through to the jungle floor, but now, late afternoon on the planet, the shadows were long and gloomy. Anybody who can build a robot that hunts by homing in on animals' mind impulses ..." Without pausing to think, Alan leaped back, and fell sprawling over a bush just as one of the robots rolled silently up from the right, lowering its blaster barrel to aim directly at his head. With an awkward jerk the robot swung around and fired its blaster, completely dissolving the lower half of the cat creature which had clung across the barrel. But the back pressure of the cat's body overloaded the discharge circuits. The robot started to shake, then clicked sharply as an overload relay snapped and shorted the blaster cells. "I suppose," he muttered to himself, "that Pete assembled these robots in a batch and then activated them all at once, probably never living to realize that they're tuned to pick up human brain waves, too. The metal killers, tuned to blast any living flesh, would murder them the instant they stepped from the ship! A pretty girl, Peggy, the girl he'd married just three weeks ago. It was crazy, he supposed, to marry a girl and then take off for an unknown planet, with her to follow, to try to create a home in a jungle clearing. Crazy maybe, but Peggy and her green eyes that changed color with the light, with her soft brown hair, and her happy smile, had ended thirty years of loneliness and had, at last, given him a reason for living. In the movement, his elbow struck the top of a small earthy mound and he was instantly engulfed in a swarm of locust-like insects that beat disgustingly against his eyes and mouth. Then, like an ambient fungus, it slithered off into the jungle undergrowth. The planet's double moon had risen and he could see a robot rolling slowly across the clearing in his general direction, blasting indiscriminately at whatever mind impulses came within its pickup range, birds, insects, anything. Apparently the robot hadn't sensed him yet, but Alan didn't know what the effective range of its pickup devices was.
 Pete did not intentionally build killer robots. Clearly, something went wrong.
 Pete did not intentionally build killer robots. The robots became sentient and decided organic life forms were the enemy.  Pete did not intentionally build killer robots. Clearly, something went wrong.  Pete did not intentionally build killer robots. The Waiameans must have reprogrammed them to kill the colonists.  Pete lost his mind during the voyage to Waiamea. He just wants to watch the planet burn.