now.

He stepped through the hot-air curtain and flipped up his faceplate.

"Why did you go out in the blizzard?" said a clear, contralto voice
directly behind him.

Mike swung around angrily. "Look, lady, I--"

He stopped.

The lady was no lady.

A few feet away stood a machine. Vaguely humanoid in shape from the
waist up, it was built more like a miniature military tank from the
waist down. It had a pair of black sockets in its head, which Mike took
to be TV cameras of some kind. It had grillwork on either side of its
head, which probably covered microphones, and another grillwork where
the mouth should be. There was no nose.

"What the hell?" asked Mike the Angel of no one in particular.

"I'm Snookums," said the robot.

"Sure you are," said Mike the Angel, backing uneasily toward the door.
"You're Snookums. I couldn't fail not to disagree with you less."

Mike the Angel didn't particularly like being frightened, but he had
never found it a disabling emotion, so he could put up with it if he had
to. But, given his choice, he would have much preferred to be afraid of
something a little less unpredictable, something he knew a little more
about. Something comfortable, like, say, a Bengal tiger or a Kodiak
bear.

"But I really _am_ Snookums," reiterated the clear voice.

Mike's brain was functioning in high gear with overdrive added and the
accelerator floor-boarded. He'd been lured out onto the Wastelands by
this machine--it most definitely could be dangerous.

The robot was obviously a remote-control device. The arms and hands were
of the waldo type used to handle radioactive materials in a hot
lab--four jointed fingers and an opposed thumb, metal duplicates of the
human hand.

But who was on the other end? Who was driving the machine? Who was
saying those inane things over the speaker that served the robot as a
mouth? It was certainly a woman's voice.

Mike was still moving backward, toward the door. The machine that called
itself Snookums wasn't moving toward him, which was some consolation,
but not much. The thing could obviously move faster on those treads than
Mike could on his feet. Especially since Mike was moving backward.

"Would you mind explaining what this is all about, miss?" asked Mike the
Angel. He didn't expect an explanation; he was stalling for time.

"I am not a 'miss,'" said the robot. "I am Snookums."

"Whatever you are, then," said Mike, "would you mind explaining?"

"No,"