In a ruined future Earth, two factions of robots coexist in uneasy servitude. The Protectors are maintenance and repair robots, built to tend the ravaged planet; the Destructors are combat robots who have twisted their programming into a reign of terror, enslaving the Protectors as forced labor. Commanding the Destructors is the vicious Slaughter Steelgrave, who rules through fear and controls the transfer rings that allow robots to pass their consciousness into new bodies.
While repairing a wall under Slaughter's orders, the Protector scavenger Nipper spots a human skull in the rubble and shouts out in excitement. Before she can show it to anyone, the Destructor Gouge smashes her apart with a single blow. Hotshot, the laser-wielding leader of the Protectors, arrives too late to save her but retrieves both the skull and Nipper's shattered body, fleeing through the city with fellow Protector Crank to their hidden underground base.
Thinktank, the ancient Rammor who serves as Hotshot's advisor, examines the skull and immediately recognizes it: its circuitry is shaped in the image of Man himself, proof that the legends are true. A faulty old transfer ring barely saves Nipper's life by placing her consciousness in a new body, though the process wipes her memory. Thinktank explains the legend: Man programmed two kinds of robots to maintain the Earth until his return, then placed himself in suspended animation beneath an armored battlestation in the Forbidden Wasteland. But the Destructors have turned entirely against that purpose.
Meanwhile, Hotshot is hauled before Slaughter and threatened with destruction for moving Nipper's body. Slaughter slices off the arm of Sawtooth — a Destructor secretly sympathetic to the Protectors — as a warning to all, then puts Hotshot on double work-shift. Outside, the fiery Protector Cut-Up agitates for armed resistance while the amnesiac Nipper wanders off scavenging and is chased by Gouge and Speedtrap. A chaotic street battle erupts involving Auntie Tank, Backfire, Runabout, and Tinker, ending when the restored Sawtooth defuses the confrontation and orders Hotshot and Cut-Up released.
Back at the hideout, Thinktank convenes the Council of One Hundred to propose a quest into the Wasteland to find and awaken Man. The messenger robot Motormouth, a spy in Slaughter's employ, overhears the meeting and reports its location to Slaughter. That night, Slaughter sends forces including the blind demolisher Deadeye and his deaf-mute scout Cricket to destroy the cavern. Protector Geo races ahead to warn the gathering, arriving just as Deadeye fires demolisher rockets into the hideout. Thinktank leads the survivors through ancient underground tunnels; at dawn, nearly thirty Protectors emerge beyond the Wall into the Forbidden Wasteland, heading toward Man's armored battlestation. Slaughter watches from above, confident that Man is not easily found — and that the rebellious Protectors will soon be crushed.
Give that special marvelite a timely gift