For the first time, Starbuck noticed that the junior officer carried
a swagger stick under his left arm, black, about a foot and a half
long, tipped with silver at both ends. Quite possibly it was standard
procedure to rap a man with it three times sharply across the mouth for
speaking out of turn, during his probationary period. Cautiously, he
filled a little pocket of air between his lips and his teeth to try to
keep them from being knocked loose.
The lieutenant dropped his clipboard and swagger stick on the platform.
"Why didn't you say so! New man, eh?" He gripped Starbuck by the
shoulders of his new, store-bought uniform. "Let me look at you, son.
Got some muscles there, haven't you? Ha, ha. Don't expect you'll need
them too much on board. We don't work our men too hard. My name's Sam
Frawley. Call me Sam. Come on, let me show you around."
Sam Frawley scooped up his stick and board with one hand and draped the
other arm around Starbuck's shoulders, leading him towards a hoist.
It was not quite what Starbuck had expected for a reception.
* * * * *
The spaceship was _big_, bigger than Starbuck had expected or realized.
He had known some well-fixed people who had visited Mars and Venus
and talked knowingly of an older culture, but he had never been off
of Earth himself. He had been thinking in terms of an airliner or a
submarine. The _Gorgon_ was more like an ocean liner. Or like an ocean.
His and the lieutenant's footsteps echoed and bounced around the huge
corridor. "They haven't got the mats down yet," Sam Frawley explained.
"Sure."
"Well, what would you like to see first? The brain?"
"You mean the captain?"
Sam slapped him on the back. "Bless you, son, no. I mean the electronic
brain. The cybernetic calculator."
"You've got one of those things?" Starbuck asked in unconcealed
surprise.
"You know what the trouble with the human race is, Ben? We're all still
living in the Ellisonian Age."
"Oh, I don't know. I think most of us are pretty sophisticated and
modern," Starbuck said.
"Not on your life. Most people still think leisure is a sin. Hard work
and more hard work, that's the ticket. Don't let a calculator solve
a problem for you; do it yourself with a slipstick. Otherwise it's
immoral."
"That's silly," Ben said awkwardly. "It's just a throwback to a time of
protest against the Automational Revolution. It has nothing to do with
us today."
"You _say_ that, but you don't really believe it. The old morality
is too deeply ingrained. That's why cybernetics have so long been out
of fashion. This one is new to us on the _Gorgon_. But we like _new_
things. We're for _progress_. All spacemen are like that, son."
"Have you had this machine long?" Starbuck asked his progressive
officer.
"They installed it on the trip in. We've never really had a chance to
use it."
"What's it supposed to do?"
"You know our job is exploration, finding new worlds," Sam explained.
"Not just any world the human race hasn't landed upon, but a world
that is a significantly different type than we've ever touched before.
We're really the advance guard of humanity, you see. Well, the brain
is programmed with information on _all_ the worlds Man has explored.
It compares a prospective landing site with what it knows about all
the rest, and rejects all but the really different, unique planets. It
loves the unknown. Its pleasure circuits get a real jolt out of finding
an unknown quantity."
"That brain is really inhuman," Starbuck said. "A basic factor of human
psychology is that all men fear and dislike the unknown."
Sam rubbed his chin. "I suppose so, but--you asked about the captain.
This is him."
* * * * *
A tall, iron-haired man was coming down the corridor. He was holding
the ankle of his right foot in his hand, and hopping along on his left
leg, whistling some little sing-song through his teeth.