R. Sammy was destroyed

R. Sammy’s destruction becomes a crisis for the Police Department when the robot is found irreversibly deactivated inside its own premises. An alphasprayer has randomized his positronic brain, and the discovery turns what might ordinarily be treated as damage to property into a potential public scandal. The episode’s central tension is not whether R. Sammy is dead, but whether the law and the Department will name his destruction as murder.

Discovery in the Department

The news reaches Elijah Baley while he is with R. Daneel Olivaw and Francis Clousarr. R. Daneel reports that a corpse has been discovered in the Department; when Baley demands to know who, he identifies the dead figure as K. Sammy, the errand robot. Baley recoils at the word corpse, treating it as an improper description of a machine. R. Daneel smoothly revises the account: it is a robot with a completely deactivated brain. The correction makes the distinction between human and robot explicit, even as the circumstances invite comparison.

Clousarr laughs at the revelation. Baley turns on him, orders him to be quiet, and deliberately draws his blaster. Clousarr then falls silent. Baley’s response places the discovery in the tense setting of an active investigation: the damaged robot is not merely an object of discussion, but a fact with immediate consequences for those present.

The alphasprayer and the manner of destruction

Dr. Anthony Gerrigel explains that he found the robot in a photographic-supply room after taking a wrong turn while using his guide rod. The robot lay prone and was already irreversibly deactivated. Gerrigel identifies the cause from an alphasprayer held in the robot’s partly clenched right fist. The fist touched the robot’s skull, suggesting that his final act had been to bring the device into contact with his head.

The alphasprayer is a small, shiny ovoid, approximately two inches long and half an inch wide, with a mica window at one end. Its construction directs hard alpha radiation through the window. The device has legitimate uses, but killing robots is not one of its legal uses. Held mica-first against the robot’s head, it randomized the paths of his positronic brain and caused immediate, irreversible deactivation. The object thus supplies both the physical explanation for R. Sammy’s destruction and evidence that the act was not an ordinary malfunction.

The Commissioner confirms that the identification is conclusive: the counters detected the alphasprayer from ten feet away, and photographic film in the storeroom had been fogged. Those details corroborate the presence and operation of the radiation-emitting device. Gerrigel’s finding therefore establishes more than the robot’s condition; it anchors the Department’s response in physical evidence.

Property damage, scandal, and legal language

When R. Daneel observes that the discovery scarcely establishes a motive for murder, Baley agrees. The Commissioner then insists on a narrower legal classification: in his view, the act is not murder but property damage. Outside the Department, he says, the destruction would be treated as nothing; within it, the same act threatens to become a first-class scandal.

That distinction gives the episode its institutional force. R. Sammy’s condition is described as death, and the alphasprayer’s use is identified as unlawful, yet the Commissioner resists applying the word murder to a robot’s destruction. His insistence on keeping legal terms straight shifts attention from the act’s human-like consequences to the robot’s status as Department property. The location matters as much as the device: an incident that might otherwise be dismissed becomes politically dangerous because it has occurred inside the Police Department.

The inquiry turns toward Baley

After defining the case as property damage and warning of scandal, the Commissioner addresses Baley and asks when he last saw R. Sammy. The discovery therefore redirects the investigation toward Baley’s own contact with the robot. The available account establishes the question, not Baley’s answer; its significance lies in the pressure it places on him at the moment the Department must account for the destruction of one of its own machines.

R. Sammy’s destruction is at once a forensic puzzle and a test of institutional categories. Gerrigel’s account makes the mechanism unmistakable, while the Commissioner’s language keeps the legal and moral implications unsettled. The robot is irreversibly gone, but the Department’s first concern is how to classify that loss—and how to contain the scandal it threatens to expose.