[1][2] A group of six worn-out robots, colloquially called robums, has been squatting in an abandoned mansion in Coquina Beach, North Carolina.

Most run on liquid fuel, for which they must forage; their leader, Napoleon, is nuclear-powered, but confined to the rotting mansion by his great weight and an inoperative leg.

While the robums share the usual robotic inhibitions against hostility to human beings, this programming has been eroded by their decrepitude, and in the case of Napoleon completely broken down under the influence of hard radiation leaking from his atomic pile.

The kidnapped mendicant intended as his patsy has bolted in panic and been felled by his hench-robot, Hercules; under the heaviness of the latter's blow the victim has been "damaged beyond repair."

Archie asks Homer what happened, but he, his vocal circuits damaged, can only spout a few lines of meaningless poetry before his remaining systems fail.

"[3] John Clute, reviewing Souls in Metal, considered the collection an "atrocious little money-spinner," whose contents could not have "required more than a modicum of research to uncover," but was kinder in regard to the stories themselves.

"[4] Peter D. Pautz lumped the story together with the rest of the contents of Top Science Fiction as "precious gems," and rated the anthology as a whole as "the kind ... that creates new fans, warms the hearts of old ones, and restores the faith of the jaded.

"[5] Mike Ashley, discussing de Camp's science fiction from the 1950s, cited the story as an instance of his humorous works, characterizing it as "a spoof about a bunch of robot gangsters."

Noting that the author "dipped his toe into the science-fiction pool less frequently as the decade progressed," Ashley called "[h]is appearances ... always welcome, because de Camp's fiction seldom followed the fashion.