The dog raced around him, barking furiously. Sprockets was dimly aware of the barking dog and, finally, of two figures approaching in the night. Although his brain was awake, it wasn’t able to do much more than add long columns of large imaginary numbers, full of sevens and nines, just to keep its trillions of circuits in working order. Now he stopped adding numbers and tried to concentrate on the approaching figures. It was very hard with the dog barking in front of him. A light flashed. A man’s voice said: “Enough of that barking, Yapper! What have we here?” “It’s a robot!” exclaimed a boy, very much excited. “A little robot! Oh, Daddy, can I keep him? Huh, Daddy, can I?” “Why, bless me, it is a robot!” said the man. “And hardly as big as you.” “Say, I’ll bet he’s the robot that escaped from the factory. I heard about it on the radio just before I went to bed. Can I keep him, Daddy?” “Absolutely not,” the father said. “He doesn’t belong to us.
