Intelligent Machine Alien

An intelligent type of artificial life forms was encountered by the SS Attenborough in her voyage to document life on other worlds. Its living structural components are crystalline, but not organic.

Biology
These living machines are cuboid in shape and travel through the universe using retractable solar sails. When they get into a planetary system, they retract the sails and analyse the planets, then produce probes suited for exploring said planets, for instance: a centipede-like robotic probe to explore Greenworld. These probes are equipped with energy weapons that can easily pulverize a small life form, such as a Pud.

On planets suited from them, the machines may grow and form increasingly complex structures. Different kinds of probes are created for mining resources, exploring, and sending minerals back into space. When in space, they can also use beams of energy to obliterate comets and scavenge their rock and ice components to obtain chemical energy that they can use.

Appearances

 * Natural History of an Alien, a.k.a. Anatomy of an Alien (1998)