Story, first published: Galaxy Science Fiction, June 1957
A fully automated spaceship christened Lulu falls in love with her human crew and "elopes" with them. Her data banks had been fed sentimental novels and bad poetry written by Jimmy, one of the crew. The crew tries to make Lulu angry by being inactive, one of the conditions a busy computer should hate. Lulu strikes back by landing herself on an Earth-type planet, fooling the crew, who all dash outside. (Lulu is programmed not to take off without members of the crew aboard.) The crew finds some ruins of an advanced civilization, containing some valuable artifacts, and are attacked by a strange beast, a "rhinoceros on wheels," a hybrid of biological and machine life dubbed Elmer, who Lulu says is after the phosphate in the crew's bones. When the crew protests at such treatment, Lulu reminds them, " ... if there were metal in Elmer that humans wanted, you'd break him up without a second thought. That's the trouble with you and your human race". To the crew's dismay, Lulu is "shacking up" with Elmer, and the two conspire to keep the crew away from the ruins. To break the stalemate, Jimmy, the bad poet, reads his "saga" to Lulu, a sucker for everything he writes. She boots Elmer out and takes off to "wander the starways." Jimmy is warned by the rest of the crew to write about the "comforts and glory of home."
Ewald, Robert J.: When the Fires Burn High and the Wind is from the North, p.67-68