Without looking around, Four said, "I asked him already. Fweep's afraid to come along."
"I'm sure we would be very good to him," Joyce said swiftly. "I've always liked pets. Why, I once had a goldfish of my very own!"
"Which you let die," Fred said dryly, "because you forgot to feed it."
"Oh, he's not afraid of people," Four told them. "He's afraid of space and unpolarized gravity and things like that. He's lived here all his life—that's a long time—and it makes him feel awful funny just to think about leaving. He says he can still remember the way our linear gravitation felt inside when we landed."
"Well," Joyce said firmly, "he'll just have to fight it, that's all. If a person let that kind of neurotic impulse rule his life, he'd be completely demoralized in no time."
Four glanced over his shoulder at Joyce, as if to see if she were joking. Shaking his head, he returned to the computer's innards. A moment later, he swung around and stared accusingly at Grampa. "You've cannibalized Abacus!"
"Well, now," Grampa protested, licking his lips nervously. "You see, I—"
"That's where you got the parts for the pircuits!" Four said with merciless logic.
Joyce stood up virtuously and shook her finger at Grampa. "First you entice us out here in this nasty old flivver; then you get us stuck; and now you've ruined the computer for your nasty old games!"