Craig Stevens stood up. "No. Here. Ohm is adjusted to this atmosphere. He knows these rooms. His reactions will be truer if I don't move him."
"And just what do you hope to prove?"
Stevens stared down at the thing he had created. The photo-electric eye seemed to wink up at him. "The human brain has something like ten billion nerve cells, Beale. Ohm has the equivalent of only two, and yet, you'll admit, he gives a lifelike performance. By studying Ohm's frustrations and reactions, we'll be able to draw some very valuable conclusions regarding human nervous disorders and breakdowns."
The other man nodded absently. "I wish," he said finally, "that you'd transfer your experiments to the school lab, Craig. I think it would be safer."
"Safer!" Craig laughed a little too loudly. "No, Beale. I started this in my own way, and that's how I mean to finish it. I'm perfectly safe here. Ohm won't let anything harm me. Will you, Ohm?"
It was coincidence, of course, but at that moment, Ohm turned and scuttled over to Craig's side.
He began the breaking-down process slowly. When Ohm settled himself in a particularly warm puddle of light, Craig would snap it off. Patiently, the robot would begin its search for another pool.
Then Craig moved the hutch, and watched with academic amusement the creature's wild and frantic efforts to locate its home—the source of its life-giving food. Ohm groped in the corner where the hutch had always stood, and pathetic little whirring and buzzing noises came from his open jaws. Again and again he returned to the corner, painstakingly exploring every inch of it, his movements more and more jerky and disconnected.
At last, when it seemed that the creature might destroy itself in its frustration, Craig restored the hutch to its accustomed place. Ohm scuttled in and huddled in a far corner. For a great many hours, the robot refused to venture again from its shelter.