Mike the Angel didn't like.

"No," said the robot, "I am not doing anything against His will. Only
human beings and angels have free will, and I am not either, so I have
no free will. Therefore, whatever I do is the will of God." He paused
again, then began speaking in queer, choppy sentences.

"If I do the will of God, I am holy.

"If I am holy, I am near to God.

"Then God must be near to me.

"God is controlling me.

"Whatever is controlling me is God.

"_I will find Him!_"

He backed up, spun on his treads, and headed for the door.

"Whatever controls me is my mind," he went on. "Therefore, my mind is
God."

"Snookums, stop that!" Leda shouted suddenly. "_Stop it!_"

But the robot paid no attention; he went right on with what he was
doing.

He said: "I must look at myself. I must know myself. Then I will know
God. Then I will...."

He went on rambling while Leda shouted at him again.

"He's not paying any attention," said Mike sharply. "This is too tied up
with the First Law. The Second Law, which would force him to obey you,
doesn't even come into the picture at this point."

Snookums ignored them. He opened the door, plunged through it, and
headed off down the corridor as fast as his treads would move him.

Which was much too fast for mere humans to follow.

* * * * *

They found him, half an hour later, deep in the ship, near the sections
which had already been torn down to help build Eisberg Base. He was
standing inside the room next to Cargo Hold One, the room that held all
the temperature and power controls for the gigantic microcryotron brain
inside that heavily insulated hold.

He wasn't moving. He was standing there, staring, with that "lost in
thought" look.

He didn't move when Leda called him.

He didn't move when Mike, as a test, pretended to strike Leda.

He never moved again.

* * * * *

Dr. Morris Fitzhugh's wrinkled face looked as though he were on the
verge of crying. Which--perhaps--he was.

He looked at the others at the wardroom table--Quill, Jeffers, von
Liegnitz, Keku, Leda Crannon, and Mike the Angel. But he didn't really
seem to be seeing them.

"Ruined," he said. "Eighteen billion dollars' worth of work, destroyed
completely. The brain has become completely randomized." He sighed
softly. "It was all Vaneski's fault, of course. Theology." He said the
last as though it were an obscene word. As fa