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Updated: May 22, 2025
"Miss Crannon.... Yes, sir. Everybody on the project carries those around. Also, Miss Crannon carries a detector for following Snookums around. She's sort of his keeper, you know." "No," said Mike the Angel, "I do not know. But I intend to find out. I'm looking for Captain Quill; where is he?" The four men looked at each other, then looked back at Mike. "I don't know, Commander," said the ensign.
In a human being, such a statement would be regarded as proof positive that he was off the beam. In a robot, it was simply the logical extension of what he had been taught. "He is watching me all the time," Snookums continued, in an odd voice. "He knows what I am doing. I must know what He is doing." "Why are you worried about His watching?" Mike asked, looking at the robot narrowly.
He protected himself, of course, by telling Snookums that he mustn't reveal his source of data. If Snookums told, then the killer would be punished and that effectively shut Snookums up. He couldn't talk without violating the First Law. "Unfortunately, the killer couldn't get Snookums to do away with me.
"... and that, in turn, is making the feeder valve field oscillate," he finished up, nearly five minutes later. Mike was glad that Snookums had pinpointed the trouble first and then had gone on to show why the defect was causing the observed result.
I just wanted to see if he would come if I called 'help. He did, and I want to know why he did." The girl flashed a look at Mike. "Would you please tell Snookums why you went out there? Please don't be angry or anything just tell him." Mike was beginning to get the picture. "I went because I thought I heard a human being calling for help and it sounded suspiciously like a woman."
But I insist we hear from Commander Gabriel before we adjourn." "Not me," Mike said, shaking his head. "I know when I'm beaten." He'd been going to suggest that the Brainchild was a training ship, from Snookums' "learning" periods, but that seemed rather obvious and puerile now. He glanced at his watch, saw the time, and stood up. "Excuse me, gentlemen; I have things to do."
You see, the first two times Snookums' brain was activated, the circuits became disoriented." "You mean," said Mike the Angel, "they went nuts." She laughed again. "Don't let Fitz hear you say that. He'll tell you that 'the circuits exceeded their optimum randomity limit." Mike grinned, remembering the time he had driven a robot brain daffy by bluffing it at poker. "How did that happen?"
"Snookums." Her voice was whispery. He shook his head. "No. Apparently he tried to jump Vaneski and got hit with a stun beam. It shouldn't have killed him but apparently it did." "God, God, God," she said softly. "Here I've been crying about a damned machine, and poor Lew has been lying up there dead." She buried her face in her hands, and her voice was muffled when she spoke again.
What's the trouble?" Jeffers asked. "He's dead," said the Chief Physician's Mate. Leda Crannon was standing outside the cubicle that had been built for Snookums. Her back and the palms of her hands were pressed against the door. Her head was bowed, and her red hair, shining like a hellish flame in the light of the glow panels, fell around her shoulders and cheeks, almost covering her face.
The only thing that disturbed that routine was one particularly restless part of the ship's cargo. Snookums was a snoop. Cut off from the laboratories which had been provided for his special work at Chilblains, he proceeded to interest himself in the affairs of the human beings which surrounded him.
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