The story opens with the rocket ship describing its state of disrepair, stranded on an unnamed planetoid.
Captain Lamb made small talk with some members of his crew, unaware that two of them, Larion and Belloc, were planning to destroy the ship.
The ship itself, however, was aware of this, and although it was unable to speak, it explained to the reader that it did not approve of the plan, pointing out that survival instincts can be found not only in amoebas and humans, but also in metal objects such as itself.
Larion and Belloc discussed the plan to use bombs to disable the engines, revealing that they were motivated by money to destroy the ship.
Lamb entered the computation room and chatted with Ayres, who was on his first spaceflight, about how people on Earth tended to be atheistic or agnostic, but ended up converting to a religion on their first trip into space.
The Slop and Lamb also chatted, with the Slop mentioning that he joined the mission because his parents were killed by Martians three years earlier, and Lamb stating that he joined because he met a Martian girl on Mars five years prior, before being recalled due to the war.
[1][2] Although he had already written over a hundred stories for various magazines before "I, Rocket" was published, his writing went virtually unnoticed by literary critics.
[4] Stine considers this story to be the one that made Bradbury famous and established his reputation as a writer of science fiction.