EXPLAIN WHY THE RECEDING SUN SHIFTED INTO THE ULTRAVIOLET INSTEAD OF
THE INFRARED.
It replied: DATA INSUFFICIENT TO ARRIVE AT LOGICAL EXPLANATION.
He paused, pondering his next move. Time was speeding by and he was
learning nothing of value. He would have to move the ship to some
place in the warp where emergence into normal space would not put him
under the blasters of the Slug cruisers. He could not know where to
move the ship until he knew where the ship was at the present. He did
not believe it was in the position given him by the computer, and its
original space warp position had certainly not been the one given by
the computer.
The computer did not have the ability to use its knowledge to explain
contradictory data. It had been ordered to compute their space warp
position by triangulation of the receding sun and stars and was not
at all disturbed by the contradicting shift of the sun into the
ultraviolet. Suppose it had been ordered to calculate their position by
computations based on the shift of the sun's and stars' spectrum into
the ultraviolet?
He asked it: WHAT IS OUR POSITION, IGNORING THE TRIANGULATION AND
BASING YOUR COMPUTATIONS ON THE SHIFT OF THE SPECTRUMS OF THE SUN AND
ORION INTO THE ULTRAVIOLET?
It gave him the coordinates of a position almost two light-years
toward Orion. The triangulation computations had shown the ship to be
going backward at many times the speed of light; the spectrum-shift
computations showed it to be going forward with approximately the same
speed.
THIS SHIP CANNOT SIMULTANEOUSLY BE IN TWO POSITIONS THREE LIGHT-YEARS
APART. NEITHER CAN IT SIMULTANEOUSLY BE GOING FORWARD AND BACKWARD.
DATA ACKNOWLEDGED, it agreed.
USE THAT DATA TO EXPLAIN THE CONTRADICTIONS OF THE TWO POSITIONS YOU
COMPUTED.
DATA INSUFFICIENT TO ARRIVE AT LOGICAL EXPLANATION, it answered.