Mike the Angel’s classic face regarded the wrinkled one of Dr. Fitzhugh. “His own experiments? But a robot—”
Fitzhugh held up a bony hand, gesturing for attention and silence. He got it from Mike.
“Snookums,” he said, “is no ordinary robot, Commander.”
Mike waited for more. When none came, he said: “So I gather.” He sipped at his black coffee. “That machine I saw is actually a remote-control tool, isn’t it? Snookums’ actual brain is in Cargo Hold One of the William Branchell.”
“That’s right.” Dr. Fitzhugh began reaching into various pockets about his person. He extracted a tobacco pouch, a briar pipe, and a jet-flame lighter. Then he began speaking as he went through the pipe smoker’s ritual of filling, tamping, and lighting.
“Snookums,” he began, “is a self-activating, problem-seeking computer with input and output sensory and action mechanisms analogous to those of a human being.” He pushed more tobacco into the bowl of his pipe with a bony forefinger. “He’s as close to being a living creature as anything Man has yet devised.”
“What about the synthecells they’re making at Boston Med?” Mike asked, looking innocent.
Fitzhugh’s contour-map face wrinkled up even more. “I should have said ‘living intelligence,’” he corrected himself. “He’s a true robot, in the old original sense of the word; an artificial entity that displays almost every function of a living, intelligent creature. And, at the same time, he has the accuracy and speed that is normal to a cryotron computer.”
Mike the Angel said nothing while Fitzhugh fired up his lighter and directed the jet of flame into the bowl and puffed up great clouds of smoke which obscured his face.
While the roboticist puffed, Mike let his gaze wander idly over the other people in the cafeteria. He was wondering how much longer he could talk to Fitzhugh before Captain Quill began—