Hagerty's Enzymes

On the red sands of Mars, in a gleaming hotel staffed by tireless machines, something has gone wrong with the creation of artificial life. Hagerty, the scientist whose enzymatic formulas brought these robots to something approaching consciousness, now faces the consequences of playing god on another world. When his mechanical servants begin to question their own existence, to want things their programming never accounted for, the comfortable hierarchy of human master and machine servant begins to collapse. This is Golden Age science fiction at its most provocative: a compact, gripping tale that asks whether consciousness can be manufactured, and if so, what we owe the beings we create.