Part 2 (1/2)

”Gets more work done, though,” she said comfortably. ”You want anything more?”

”Not right now.”

”Buzz if you do. The idgit is working out the supply list for that new exploration s.h.i.+p, and it wants service, too,” she reminded him. ”It's worse than you are,” she added.

He looked up at her familiarity with a twinkle.

”It can't fire you,” he said softly.

”Oh?” she asked. ”You think not? Just let me feed it a few wrong data and watch what happens to your li'l ol' lovin' secretary.” She winked at him, laughed, and went back to her office.

Sector Chief Hayes sighed, and pulled the stack of cards toward him.

First he must sort them out according to protocol because his diplomacy wouldn't be worth the breath used in it if he called the wrong man first. At a glance he saw that the idgit had already sorted them correctly according to status.

”If you're so smart,” he muttered to the absent machine, ”why didn't you call them too?”

He picked up the first card, and dialed the man's intercom number. It would be like opening the lid of Pandora's box....

At that instant the red light of the E intercom flashed on. Hayes dropped the ordinary key back into its slot, and pushed the E key to open. He did not recognize the voice that came through.

”How soon,” the voice asked, ”will we be able to get into this Eden matter?”

”I'm setting it up now,” he said quickly. ”By tomorrow morning, surely.

That is, if we haven't solved it ourselves. Something minor that wouldn't require an E.”

”Morning will be fine. Two, possibly three Seniors will be available.”

The red light flashed off, showing the connection had been broken. He sat back in his chair, suddenly conscious that his forehead was wet with sweat, that his s.h.i.+rt was sticking to his body. Not conscious that he was grinning joyfully.

Now let those pesty scientists challenge him with the question of whether any E's would be listening to their review. Two of 'em. Maybe three. Besides, of course, all the Juniors, the apprentices, the students.

He dialed the first scientist again. But this time he didn't mind it being Pandora's box. It was a terrible thing for a man to realize he could never be an E. The scientists had to take it out on somebody. He understood.

”h.e.l.lo, Dr. Mille,” he said cordially in answer to a gruff grunt. ”This is Bill Hayes, of Sector Administration.”

”All right! All right!” the voice answered testily. ”What is it now?”

3

In the early dawn, out at the hangar, away from the main E buildings and the endless discussions going on inside them, Thomas R. Lynwood moved methodically through his preflight inspection.

Speculative thinking was none of his concern. His job was to pilot an E wherever he might want to go, and bring him back again--if possible. To Lynwood reality was a physical thing--the feel of controls beneath his broad, square hands; the hum of machinery responsive to his will. He liked mathematics not for its own sake but because it best described the substance of things, the weight, the size, the properties of things, how they behaved. He was too intelligent not to realize mathematics could also communicate speculative unrealities, but he was content to wait until the theorists had turned such equations into machines, controls, forces before he got excited.

He was one who, even in childhood, had never wanted to be an E. He didn't want to be one now. Somebody had once told him in Personnel that was why he was a favorite pilot of the E's, but he discounted that. They didn't try to tell him how to run his s.h.i.+p--well, most of them didn't--and he didn't try to tell them how to solve their problems.

The men around the hangar had another version of why the E's liked him to pilot them around--he was lucky. Somehow he always managed to come back, and bring the E with him. Well, sure. He didn't want to get stuck somewhere, wind up in a gulio's gullet, ga.s.sed by an atmosphere that turned from oxygen-nitrogen into pure methane without warning or reason, and against all known chemical laws, or whiffed out in the lash of a dead star suddenly gone nova.

But sometimes a pilot couldn't help himself. These E's would fiddle around in places where human beings shouldn't have gone. Most of the time they weren't allowed even one mistake. He was lucky, sure, but part of it might be because he'd never been sent out with the wrong E.