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The astrophysicist made a peculiar sound that could have been interpreted as a grunt of assent. At least, Novee so interpreted it.
“Anyway,” said Novee, “what happened?”
Vernadsky said, “Well, Sheffield's been bunking with me since the kid twirled on his toes and went over backward with space-sickness and he's sitting there at the desk with his damn charts and his fist computer chug-chugging away, when the room phone signals and it's the Captain. Well, it turns out he's got the boy with him and he wants to know what the blankety-blank and assorted dot and dash the government means by planting a spy on him. So Sheffield yells back at him that he'll stab him in the groin with a Collamore macro-levelling-tube if he's been fooling with the kid and off he goes, leaving the phone activated and the Captain frothing.”
“You're making this up,” said Novee. “Sheffield wouldn't say anything like that.”
“Words to that effect.”
Novee turned to Cimon. “You're heading our group. Why don't you do something about this?”
Cimon snarled, “In cases like this, I'm heading the group. My responsibilities always come on suddenly. Let them fight it out. Sheffield talks an excellent fight and the Captain never takes his hands out of the small of his back. Vernadsky's jitter-bugging description doesn't mean there'll be physical violence.”
“All right, but there's no point in having feuds of any kind in an expedition like ours.”
“You mean our mission!” Vemadsky raised both hands in mock awe and rolled his eyes upward. “How I dread the time when we must find ourselves among the rags and bones of the first expedition.”
And as though the picture brought to mind by that was not one that bore levity well after all, there was suddenly nothing to say. Even the back of Cimon's head, which was all that showed over the back of the easy chair, seemed a bit the stiffer for the thought.
Five
Oswald Mayer Sheffield (psychologist, thin as a string and as tall as a good length of it, and with a voice that could be used either for singing an operatic selection with surprising virtuosity or for making a point of argument, softly but with stinging accuracy) did not show the anger one would have expected from Vernadsky's account.
He was even smiling when he entered the Captain's cabin.
The Captain broke out mauvely as soon as he entered. “Look here, Sheffield-”
“One minute, Captain Follenbee,” said Sheffield. “How are you, Mark?”
Mark's eyes fell and his words were muffled. “All right, Dr. Sheffield.”
“I wasnt aware you'd gotten out of bed.”
There wasn't the shade of reproach in his voice, but Mark grew apologetic. “I was feeling better, Dr. Sheffield, and I feel bad about not working. I haven't done anything in all the time I've been on the ship. So I put in a call to the Captain to ask to see the logbook and he had me come up here.”
“All right I'm sure he won't mind if you go back to your room now.”
“Oh, won't I?” began the Captain.
Sheffield's mild eyes rose to meet the Captain. “I'm responsible for him, sir.”
And somehow the Captain could think of nothing further to say.
Mark turned obediently and Sheffield watched him leave and waited till the door was well closed behind him.
Then he turned again to the Captain. “What's the bloody idea, Captain?”
The Captain's knees bent a little, then straightened and bent again with a sort of threatening rhythm. The invisible slap of his hands, clasped behind his back, could be heard distinctly. “That's my question. I'm Captain here, Sheffield.”
“I know that.”
“Know what it means, eh? This ship, in space, is a legally recognized planet. I'm absolute ruler. In space, what I say goes. Central Committee of the Confederacy can't say otherwise. I've got to maintain discipline, and no spy-”
“All right, and now let me tell you something, Captain. You're chartered by the Bureau of Outer Provinces to carry a government-sponsored research expedition to the Lagrange System, to maintain it there as long as research necessity requires and the safety of the crew and vessel permits, and then to bring us home. You've signed that contract and you've assumed certain obligations, Captain or not. For instance, you can't tamper with our instruments and destroy their research usefulness.”
“Who in space is doing that?” The Captain's voice was a blast of indignation.
Sheffield repied calmly, “You are. Hands off Mark A
The Captain's uniformed Chest expanded. “I take no order on board my own ship. Your language is a breach of discipline, Mister Sheffield. Any more like that and it's cabin arrest. You and your A
“Look, Captain, let me explain something. Mark is in the Mnemonic Service-”
“Sure, he said so. Nummonic Service. Nummonic Service. It's plain secret police as far as I'm concerned. Well, not on board my ship, eh?”
“Mnemonic Service,” said Sheffield patiently. ”Em-en-ee-em-oh-en-eye-see Service. You don't pronounce the first em. It's from the Greek word meaning memory.”
The Captain's eyes narrowed. “He remembers things?”
“Correct, Captain. Look, in a way this is my fault. I should have briefed you on this. I would have, too, if the boy hadn't gotten so sick right after the take-off. It drove most other matters out of my mind. Besides, it didn't occur to me that he might be interested in the workings of the ship itself. Space knows why not. He should be interested in everything.”
“He should, eh?” The Captain looked at the timepiece on the wall. “Brief me now, eh? But no fancy words. Not many of any other kind, either. Time limited.”
“It won't take long, I assure you. Now you're a space-going man, Captain. How many inhabited worlds would you say there were in the Confederation?”
“Eighty thousand,” said the Captain promptly.
“Eighty-three thousand two hundred,” said Sheffield. “What do you suppose it takes to run a political organization that size?”
Again the Captain did not hesitate. “Computers,” he said.
“All right. There's Earth, where half the population works for the government and does nothing but compute and there are computing subcenters on every other world. And even so data gets lost. Every world knows something no other world knows. Almost every man. Look at our little group. Vernadsky doesn't know any biology and I don't know enough chemistry to stay alive. There's not one of us can pilot the simplest space cruiser, except for Fawkes. So we work together, each one supplying the knowledge the others lack.
“Only there's a catch. Not one of us knows exactly which of our own data is meaningful to the other under a given set of circumstances. We can't sit and spout every thing we know. So we guess, and sometimes we don't guess right. Two facts, A and B, can go together beautifully sometimes. So Person A, who knows Fact A, says to Person B, who knows Fact B, 'Why didn't you tell me this ten years ago?' and Person B answers, 'I didn't think it was important,' or, 'I thought everyone knew that.'”.
The Captain said, “That's what computers are for.”
Sheffield said, ”Computers are limited, Captain. They have to be asked questions. What's more, the questions have to be the kind that can be put into a limited number of symbols. What's more, computers are very literal-minded. They answer exactly what you ask and not what you have in mind. Sometimes it never occurs to anyone to ask just the right question or feed the computer just the right symbols, and when that happens, the computer doesn't volunteer information.