UNWISE CHILD
RANDALL GARRETT
When a super-robot named Snookums discovers how to build his ownsuperbombs, it becomes obvious that Earth is by no means the safestplace for him to be. And so Dr. Fitzhugh, his designer, and LedaCrannon, a child psychologist acting as Snookums’ nursemaid, agreeto set up Operation Brainchild, a plan to transport the robot to a fardistant planet.
Mike the Angel—M. R. Gabriel, Power Design—has devised the power plantthat is to propel the space ship Branchell to its secret destination,complete with its unusual cargo. And, as a reserve officer in the SpacePatrol, Mike is a logical replacement for the craft’s unavoidablydetained engineering officer.
But once into space, the Branchell becomes the scene of somefrightening events—the medical officer is murdered, and Snookumsappears to be the culprit. Mike the Angel indulges himself in a bit ofsleuthing, and the facts he turns up lead to a most unusual climax.
Unwise Child
RANDALL GARRETT
DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC.
GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK
1962
All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblanceto actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 60-13524
Copyright © 1962 by Randall Garrett
All Rights Reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition
Transcriber's Note
Extensive search has failed to uncover any evidence that theU.S. copyright of this publication has been renewed.
BOOKS BY RANDALL GARRETT
Biography
Pope John XXIII: Pastoral Prince
Science Fiction
Unwise Child
Books by “Robert Randall”
The Shrouded Planet
The Dawning Light
“Robert Randall” is a pseudonym used on books written incollaboration with Robert Silverberg.
With sincere appreciation,
this book is dedicated
to
TIM and NATALIE
who waited ...
and waited ...
and waited ...
and waited for it.
1
The kids who tried to jump Mike the Angel were bright enough in a lot ofways, but they made a bad mistake when they tangled with Mike the Angel.
They’d done their preliminary work well enough. They had cased thejob thoroughly, and they had built the equipment to take care of it.Their mistake was not in their planning; it was in not taking Mike theAngel into account.
There is a section of New York’s Manhattan Island, down on thelower West Side, that has been known, for over a century, as“Radio Row.” All through this section are stores, large andsmall, where every kind of electronic and sub-electronic device can bebought, ordered, or designed to order. There is even an old antiqueshop, known as Ye Quainte Olde Elecktronicks Shoppe, where you can buysuch oddities as vacuum-tube FM radios and twenty-four-inch cathode-raytelevision sets. And, if you want them, transmitters to match, so youcan watch the antiques work.
Mike the Angel had an uptown office in the heart of the businessdistrict, near West 112th Street—a very posh suite of rooms on thefiftieth floor of the half-mile-high Timmins Building, overlooking the[12]two-hundred-year-old Gothic edifice of the Cathedral of St. John the