ed the voice of the woman who had trained him.

Mike started to say, "At this time of night?" Then he glanced at his
wrist. It was after seven-thirty in the morning, Greenwich time--which
was also ship time.

"What is it you want?" Mike asked.

"Can you dance?" asked Snookums.

"Yes," said Mike dazedly, "I can dance." For a moment he had the wild
idea that Snookums was going to ask him to do a few turns about the
floor.

"Thank you," said Snookums. His treads whirred, he turned as though on a
pivot, whizzed to the door, opened it, and was gone.

Mike the Angel stared at the door as though trying to see beyond it,
into the depths of the robot's brain itself.

"Now just what was _that_ all about?" he asked aloud.

In the padded silence of the stateroom, there wasn't even an echo to
answer him.

14

Mike the Angel spent the next three days in a pale blue funk which he
struggled valiantly against, at least to prevent it from becoming a deep
blue.

There was something wrong aboard the _Brainchild_, and Mike simply
couldn't quite figure what it was. He found that he wasn't the only one
who had been asked peculiar questions by Snookums. The little robot
seemed to have developed a sudden penchant for asking seemingly inane
questions.

Lieutenant Keku reported with a grin that Snookums had asked him if he
knew who Commander Gabriel _really_ was.

"What'd you say?" Mike had asked.

Keku had spread his hands and said: "I gave him the usual formula about
not being positive of my data, then I told him that you were known as
Mike the Angel and were well known in the power field."

Multhaus reported that Snookums had wanted to know what their
destination was. The chief's only possible answer, of course, had been:
"I don't have that data, Snookums."

Dr. Morris Fitzhugh had become more worried-looking than usual and had
confided to Mike that he, too, wondered why Snookums was asking such
peculiar questions.

"All he'll tell me," the roboticist had reported, wrinkling up his face,
"was that he was collecting data. But he flatly refused, even when
ordered, to tell me what he needed the data for."

Mike stayed away from Leda Crannon as much as possible; shipboard was no
place to try to conduct a romance. Not that he deliberately avoided her
in such a manner as to give offense, but he tried to appear busy at all
times.

She was busy, too. Keeping herd on Snookums was becoming something of a
problem. She h