Destination: Void

"I'll take the board on the count," Flattery said, and they began the change of watch.

Timberlake, sensing Bickel's questions, realized that Flattery's emphasis on Doctor Weygand had not been aimed at the electronics engineer.

Raj was saying something to me, Timberlake thought. He was telling me that Doctor Weygand may have had medical reasons for her strange behavior. Raj is telling me to keep my mouth shut.

And Timberlake found himself resenting the fact that Flattery had found the warning necessary.

Bickel closed off his link to the controls, slipped off his couch, and began exercising the stiffness out of his muscles. Remembering the classes he had shared with Prue Weygand - computer math, servo-sensor repair, ship function - he recalled the woman. She was a disturbing female-plus creature, sensitive and with her feelings all too apparent. Bickel realized then that a photograph of Prue Weygand in repose would show a rather unassuming woman with regular features and a good, but not sensational figure. She was the kind who attracted male stares, though. She radiated some vital, sparking thing - especially when she walked.

Is that why I chose her? Bickel wondered. He broke off his exercises to consider the question. The Prue kind of woman presented a source of trouble in an otherwise all-male crew - unless they all went on anti-S. But they couldn't afford to dull their faculties that way.

I chose her because, in a ship of quintuple backup, she appears unique, Bickel reassured himself. She is trained in ecology, medicine, and computer math. She is going to be damned useful to us.

But doubts remained.

Bickel forced them out of his mind by looking around Com-central, focusing his attention on the ship. The ship-cum-computer-cum-hybernating-colonists - here was one set of resources that Bickel felt they could fit into a logical pigeonhole, assess and weigh and use as they needed.

He sensed the ship stretching out from him in its sixteen concentric shells, a great ovoid bulk almost a mile across its long axis. Beyond the water barrier and baffles that shielded the core lay miles of corridors and tubeways, self-sealing compartments. Through it all stretched the organized clutter of material needed to make life possible for humans in an alien environment.

In the hyb tanks they had two thousand adult humans, a thousand human embryos, and more than six thousand animal embryos...full ecological spectrum."

Bickel turned, looked at his own computer board. His plan involved dangerous risk to the computer, but the risk was necessary. The others might fight him, but they would have to come around.

He looked at Flattery busy on the big board, Timberlake taking a relaxing massage on his action couch. He looked back at the computer board. The Tin Egg's computer was basically a multisystem system with internal ruby laser "real time" clocks to log its own "experiences." It incorporated more than 800,000 specialized routines (installed by a prodigious spending of manpower). Bickel weighed the computers untried potential: its trinanosecond thoughtput and multischeduling facilities allowed it to interleave thousands of programs simultaneously. It could monitor sequencing, cuing, and input through a core memory with enormous reserves of trapping functions, branching operations, and alarm systems networks.

With an OMC tied in as supervisory program - as supreme decision-maker - the computer and the ship it controlled had been a living creature of metal. But three brains had failed in that delicately powerful linkage. And Bickel-the-pragmatist trusted only that which worked. Without an OMC, the ship computer remained an inert mass of machinery whose output-on-demand followed a fixed design and could be accepted or rejected only after a human decision.

"How long until Prue will be with us?" Bickel asked.

"About three hours," Timberlake said.

"I want her opinion on the postmortem," Bickel said. "I'm not satisfied with what we found in the first two brains."

Timberlake shut down his couch massage, directed a probing stare at Flattery.

The psychiatrist-chaplain only smiled, reminding himself that Bickel was logic-prone with a disregard of everything except the main line of reasoning that made him sound boorish at times.

"Moonbase'll ask some questions for which we have no answers," Bickel said. "We can't afford to sound fumbling." He looked at Timberlake. "They're going to take us apart, one by one - life systems to..."

"Life systems were perfect!" Timberlake snapped.

"We'd better be able to prove it," Bickel said.

"I went through the entire console when Brain One failed," Timberlake said. "Check it yourself."

"I did. A couple of things bothered me. Brain One preferred to be called Myrtle. Why? I find nothing in the memory core to explain that - except that Brain One was removed from a genetic monster that probably was female."

"Myrtle's personal life system tested within .0002 of homeostatic center on the Anders Base," Timberlake said.

"Don't let that identity preference seduce you," Flattery said. "It was for our benefit - so we could anthropomorphize the ship-OMC."

"Yeah," Bickel said. "That's the reason they each gave, but is it the right one?"

"Those brains were as perfect as any ever born," Flattery said, and he wondered why he allowed Bickel's attitude to irritate him. "Okay, they were raised from infancy as part of the total ship-sensor-servo system. So what? They didn't know any other life or want -"

"You said a couple of things were bothering you," Timberlake interrupted. "What's the other one?"

"Your life-systems report," Bickel said, "entry 9107 on Myrtle. It says: 'None of the systems appear then to have been at fault.' Why'd you use that word appear, Tim? You have some doubts you couldn't enter in the report?"

"Not a damn one!" Timberlake said. "Those systems were perfect!"

"Then why didn't you just say so?"

"He was only being cautious," Flattery said. "If you have checked the records, you'll find my medical report confirms his findings in every respect."

"Except one," Bickel said.

"And what is that?" Timberlake asked. He glared at Bickel, his face flushed. A muscle worked along his jaw.

Bickel ignored the signs of anger, said: "Nothing explains the internal burn damage that Raj found in those brains. 'Internal burn damage,' you say, 'especially along the overlarge axon collaterals of the afferent side.' What the devil do you mean overlarge? Overlarge compared to what?"

"A main cha

"The design specs on the OMC process explain all that," Bickel said. "Compensatory growth, yeah, but I don't find one word about large axon collaterals. Not one word."

"These brains had been in the system longer than any others ever examined," Timberlake said. "The literature reports only on four previously that died of natural causes, and we -"

"Natural causes?" Bickel asked. "What's a natural cause fatal to an OMC?"

"You know what happened as well as I do," Flattery said. "Accidents - irritant matter in the food bath, a radiation shield left down for -"

"Human error, not OMC error!" Bickel snapped. "Not natural. And here is another thing: Myrtle lapsed into catatonia or whatever you want to call it just ten days, fourteen hours, eight minutes, and eleven seconds from Moonbase. We threw Little Joe into service and he lasted six days, nine hours, one second. So we turned the ship over to Harvey - our last chance - and Harvey took fifteen hours even. Kaput!"