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HUMAN ERROR
BY RAYMOND F. JONES
_Illustrated by Paul Orban_
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science
Fiction April 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Sidenote: _The government was spending a billion dollars to convince
the human race that men ought to be ashamed to be men--instead of
errorless, cybernetics machines. But they forgot that an errorless man
is a dead man...._]
During its three years' existence, the first Wheel was probably the
subject of more amateur astronomical observations than any other single
object in the heavens. Over three hundred reports came in when a call
was issued for witnesses to the accident that destroyed the space
station.
It was fortunately on the night side of Earth at the time, and in a
position of bright illumination by the sun. Two of the observers had
movie cameras attached to their ten-inch mirrors. The film in one of
these was inadequate, but the other carried a complete record of the
incident from the moment of the _Griseda's_ first approach, through the
pilot's fumbling attempt to correct course, and the final collision.
The scene was lost for a few seconds as the wreckage drifted out of the
field. The observer had been watching through a small pilot scope,
however, and had wits enough to pan by hand so that he got most of the
remaining fall that was visible above his horizon as the locked remnants
of the Wheel and the _Griseda_ began their slow, spiral course to Earth.
By the time this scene was finished, word of the disaster was already
flashing to Government centers. Joe McCauley, radio operator aboard the
Wheel, had been talking with Ed Harris on the _Griseda_. As a matter of
routine, all their conversation was taped, and some of this was
recovered from the crash and played back at the investigation.
"--and get this," Ed was saying, "my kid had his fifth birthday just
last week, and I've got him working through quadratic equations already.
You've got to go some to beat that one."
"Doesn't mean a thing," said Joe. "You know how these infant brain boxes
burn out. Better take him fishing and forget that stuff for a while.
Hey--what the devil's going on? You got a truck driver in the control
room? I just saw you out the port and it looks like you're right on top
of us!"
"Jeez, I dunno. It's been like that ever since we cleared Lunaport.
Sometimes I think this guy Cummins trained in a truck the way he--Hell,
he's comin' up on the wrong side of the Wheel! I relayed the orders to
go to the east turret. Acknowledged them himself--"
"Ed! I can see you outside the port--we're going to hit!"
The words were ripped by the shattering, grinding roar of colliding
metal. Then a moment later the blast of an exploding fuel tank.
"Ed!"
"Joe--yeah, I'm here. Lights gone. Emergency power still on. Take the
emergency band if you've still got a rig. I'll stand by--"
Joe switched over without comment and called Space Command Base on the
emergency channel, which was always monitored. "Wheel just rammed by
_Griseda_," he said. "Possible loss of orbital velocity. Extent of
damage unknown."
Lieutenant James, on duty at the Base, had just returned from a three
day leave and was scarcely settled in the routine of his post once more.
He glanced automatically at the radar tracking screen and his face paled
at the sight of the irregular figure there, slightly out of the
centering circle. It was no gag.
"You're dropping," he said. "Orbital velocity must be down. Can you
correct?"
"I haven't been able to contact the bridge," said Joe. "Alert all
Command and have crash point computed. Stand by."
It developed that the bridge was entirely gone, along with a full thirty
percent of the station. Captain West had been spared, however, being on
inspection in the other sector of the station. He came on at once as Joe
McCauley managed to get the communication lines repatched.
"Emergency red!" he called. "All stations report!"
One by one, the surviving crew chiefs reported conditions in their
sectors. And when they were finished, they all knew their chance of
survival was microscopic. Captain West ordered: "Communicate with Base.
Request plotting of crash point."
"Done, sir," Joe answered.
"Command post will be established in the radio room. Emergency steering
procedure will be started on command. Man all taxi craft."
It was all on the tapes that were salvaged. Everything was done that
desperate men could humanly do.
* * * * *
At Base, its Commander, General Oglethorpe, was in the communications
and tracking room by the time Joe McCauley had established contact with
Captain West.
He picked up the mike at the table. "Plug me in to the station," he
commanded the Lieutenant.
He got Joe first, but the radio operator put Captain West on as soon as
he arrived in the radio room. "Hello, Frank," said General Oglethorpe in
a quiet voice.
"Yes, Jack--" Captain West answered. "I'm glad you're there. Does it
look pretty bad?"
"Orbital velocity is down two percent. You've been falling for eight
minutes."
"That's pretty bad. I've got all steering stations manned, but only
thirty percent of them are still operable. We're using the taxis to give
a push too. But we haven't been able to dislodge the _Griseda_. Its
inertia takes almost half our available energy."
"Couldn't you get a blast from the _Griseda's_ tubes to put you in
orbit?"
"Adler's got a crew out there working on it. But his controls are gone,
besides his fuel tanks being opened. And even if we could get their
rockets operating it's doubtful we could get the right direction of
thrust. Our hope is in our own rockets, and in breaking the ship away
from the station."
But the closer the massed wreckage dropped toward Earth, the higher were
its requirements for orbital velocity. While the crews worked at their
desperate tasks General Oglethorpe sat with his eyes on the tracking
scope, and the voice of his friend in his ear. He listened to Captain
West's measured commands to the men in the station and to those working
to free the ship. General Oglethorpe heard the repeated reports of
failure to free the _Griseda_. He listened to West's orders to transfer
fuel from the ship to the station as the latter's supply ran low. He
watched the continued deviation of the spot on the tracking scope.
Then he turned as a lieutenant came up behind him with a sheet of
calculations. "Present rate of fall indicates a crash point in the San
Francisco Bay region, sir."
The General gripped the paper, his face tightening. West said, "Did I
hear correctly, Jack? The San Francisco area?"
"Yes."
"We'll have to try to keep it from happening there. I'll order the
rockets shut off now. We'll save enough fuel to try to do some last
minute steering as we approach Earth."
"No!" General Oglethorpe cried. "Use it now! Its effect will be the same
as later. Blow the chambers apart! Get back in orbit!"
"We can't make it," West said quietly. "We've gained forward velocity,
but I'll bet your computers will show us better than four percent below
requirements at this orbit. Spot our crash as accurately as possible on
free fall from our present position. We'll save remaining fuel for last
minute steering in case we're near a city."
The General was silent then as he heard the responses come back from the
men who manned the rockets and who knew that with the closing of their
fuel valves their own lives had also come to an end.
"We'll want testimony account for the investigation," Oglethorpe said
finally. "Get the responsible officers on the circuit--but you first,
Frank--"
There was a moment of silence before Captain Frank West began speaking
in changed tones. "What is there to say?" he asked, finally. "You won't
need to hold an investigation. I can tell you all you need to know--all
you'll ever find out at least,--right now. Your decision will be the
same one so many hundreds and thousands of investigating boards have
made in the past: Pilot Error.
"_Human_ error! That's what killed the first Wheel, and the _Griseda_. I
don't know why it happened. Adler doesn't. Neither does any other man up
here with us. Those who were with Cummins in the control room are dead,
but they didn't know any more than we do.
"We spent a million dollars training that man, Cummins. We believed he
was the best we could produce. We measured his reflexes and his
intelligence and his blood composition until we thought we knew the
function and capability of every molecule in his body. And then, in just
one split second, he makes the decision of a moron, fumbling when he
needed to be precise."
"Just what did he do?" Oglethorpe asked gently.
"Our customary approach is to the west turret. This time he had been
ordered to go to the east side because of repairs on the other end of
the hub. Cummins had seen and acknowledged the orders. Apparently, they
slipped his mind during approach to the Wheel and he came up on the west
side. Then he remembered and tried to correct his position.
"Everything must have gone wrong then. The decision was a blunder to
begin with. Wrong approach, yes. But it was suicide to attempt such a
detailed maneuver that close to the station. He used his side jets and
slammed the _Griseda_ into the Wheel at a forty-five degree angle,
locking the ship in the wreckage of the rim and in the girders of the
spokes."
"Was there any previous indication of instability in the pilot that you
know of? We'll get a better answer on that from Adler, but we need to
know if you were aware of anything."
"The answer is no! Cummins was checked out before the start of the
flight just three days ago. He was all right as far as any of our means
of evaluation go. As right as any man will ever be--
"Jack, listen to me. Remember when we were back at White Sands and
talked of the days when there would be a Wheel up here, and ships taking
off for the Moon and for Mars?"
"I remember," said General Oglethorpe softly.
"Well, we've got a piece of that dream. But there'll never be any more,
and what we've got is going to go smash unless we correct the one
weakness we've never tackled properly. You'll fail again and again as
long as men like Cummins can destroy twenty years' work and billions of
dollars worth of engineering construction. One man's stupid, moronic
error, and all of this goes to destruction, just as if it had never
been.
"On the ground, a plane crashes--the board puts it down as pilot error
and planes go on flying. You can't do that out here! The cost is too
great. It's a sheer gamble putting this mountain of machinery and effort
into the hands of men we can never be sure of. You think you know them;
you do everything possible to find out about them. But you just don't
_know_.
"We've solved every other technical problem that has stood in our way.
Why haven't we solved this one? We've learned how to make a machine that
will perform in a predictable manner, and when it fails to do so we can
provide adequate feedback alarms and correctors, and we can find the
cause of error.
"With a man, we can do nothing. We have to accept him, in the final
analysis, on little more than faith.
"A couple of hundred men are going to die because of a human error. Give
us a monument! Find out why men make errors. Produce a means of keeping
them from it. Do that, and our deaths will be a small price to pay!"
* * * * *
These were the words of a dead man. They were heard again and again in
the committee rooms and investigation chambers. They were printed and
broadcast around the world, and they enabled General Oglethorpe to do
the thing that became a burning crusade with him.
He would probably have failed in his effort if those words hadn't been
spoken by a dying man while a shrieking, white-hot mass plunged through
the atmosphere to land, finally, in the waters of the Pacific.
The wreckage missed the city of San Francisco without the necessity of
guidance by the rocket fuel so preciously hoarded by West. The Wheel and
the _Griseda_ were doomed the moment the pilot, Cummins, decided to
shift the position of the ship with respect to the station.
* * * * *
In the anteroom of the Base Commander's office, Dr. Paul Medick rubbed
the palms of his hands against his trouser legs when the secretary
wasn't watching, and licked the dryness that burned the membrane of his
lips.
The secretary remembered him. She probably had been the one to make out
his severance papers and knew all about Oglethorpe's firing him.
Now she was no doubt wondering about the General's calling him back
after that bitter occasion--just as Paul himself was wondering.
But he was pretty sure he knew. If he were right it was the opportunity
of a lifetime, and he couldn't afford to muff it.
The girl turned at the sound of a buzz on the intercom. She smiled and
said, "You may go in now."
"Thanks." He stood up and told his nerves to quit remembering the last
time he passed through the door he was now entering. General Oglethorpe
was nobody but the Base Commander, and if Paul Medick got thrown out
once more he would be no worse off than he now was.
Oglethorpe looked up, a grim trace of a smile at the corners of his
mouth. He shook hands and indicated a chair by the desk, resuming his
own seat behind it. "You know why I called you--in spite of our past
differences."
Paul hesitated. He didn't want to show his anxiety--and hopefulness--He
weighed the answers that might be expected of him, and said, "It's this
crash thing--and the appeal of Captain West?"
"Would there be anything else?"
"I'm flattered that you thought of me."
"There's nothing personal involved, believe me! I'd a thousand times
rather have called somebody else--anybody else--but there's nobody that
can do the job you can."
"Thanks."
"Don't bother thanking me. I expect there'll still be a great deal of
difference between us about the basic goals of this project. But once we
start I don't want to have to fire you again."
"Just what is the nature of this project," said Paul, "its goals? Fill
me in on the details."
"There are no details--beyond what you've read and heard--you're going
to provide them. The objective is to find a kind of man that will keep
the Frank Wests of the future from dying, as those men aboard the Wheel
did."
"What kind of man do you expect that to be?" Paul asked.
"One who will eliminate, for all time, the damning verdict that has been
handed down in tens of thousands of investigations of accident and
disaster: _human error_.
"We're going to find a kind of man who can be depended on to function
without error. One who can undertake a complicated task of known
procedure and perform it an infinite number of times, if necessary,
without a single deviation from standard."
Paul Medick regarded the General through narrowed eyes. In spite of his
almost agonizing desire to possess the appointment to head up this
Project he had to have a clear understanding with Oglethorpe now. He had
to risk his chances, if necessary, to make himself absolutely clear.
He said, "For untold thousands of years the human race has spent its
best efforts to reach the goal of perfection without achieving it. Now
you propose to assemble all the money in the world, and all the brains
and say: give us a perfect man! The United States Space Command demands
him!"
"Exactly." General Oglethorpe's face hardened as he returned Paul's
steady gaze. "No other technical problem has been able to stand before
such an attack. There is no reason why this one should. And the problem
_must_ be solved, or we're going to have to abandon space just as we
stand on the frontier, getting our first real glimpse of it."
"Your world is such a simple, uncomplicated place, General," said Paul
slowly. "You want a man with two heads, four arms, and a tail? Order it!
Coming up!
"That's the way you operated when I set up your basic personnel program
five years ago. It didn't work then; it won't work now."
The General's face darkened. "It _will_ work. Because it has to. Men are
going to the stars--because they have to. And they're going to change
themselves to whatever form or shape or ability is required by that
goal. They've done everything else they've ever set themselves to
do--life came up out of the sea because it had courage. Men left their
caves and struck out across the plains and seas, and took up the whole
Earth and made it what it is--because they had courage.
"But to go to space, courage is not enough. We need a new kind of man
that we've never seen before. He's a man of iron, who's forgotten he was
ever flesh and blood. He's a machine, who can perform over and over the
same kind of complicated procedure and never make an error. He's more
reliable and endurable than the best machines we've ever made.
"I don't know where we'll find him, but he can be found, and you _will_
do it, because you believe, as I do, that Man's frontier must not be
closed. And because, in spite of your cynicism, you still understand the
meaning of duty to your society and your race. There is no possibility
of your refusal, so I have taken steps already to make your appointment
official."
"You must also have prepared yourself," said Paul, "to accept me with
the basic philosophy that must guide me in this matter. And my
philosophy is that this Project _must_ fail. It has no possibility of
success. The man you seek does not exist. An errorless man would be a
dead man.
"Any living man is going to make errors. That's the process of learning:
make an approach, correct for error, approach again, correct once more.
It's the only way there is to learn."
The General inhaled deeply and hesitated. "I know nothing about that,"
he said finally. "You know what I want. Even if what you say were
partially true, there remains no reason why that which has been learned
cannot be performed without error. I may have to put up with it, but
you'll save yourself and all of us a lot of time if you don't spend
three months digging up reasons why the Project can't succeed."
He stood up as if everything had been said that could possibly be said.
"Let's go and have a look at your laboratory quarters."
* * * * *
In the hot sunlight of the Southwest desert, they walked across the yard
from the administration building to a large laboratory which had been
cleared to the bare floor and walls. Paul felt a sense of instability
returning. But only for an instant. He'd all but insulted the General
and told him he had no intention of producing the iron superman the
Space Command contemplated. And still he had not been thrown out. They
must want him very badly, indeed!
He had no qualms of conscience about taking the post now. General
Oglethorpe had been forewarned and knew what Paul Medick's hopes and
intentions were.
"You can build your staff as big as you need it," the General was
saying. "This Project has crash priority over everything else. We've got
the machines to go to space. The machines need the men.
"You can have anybody you want and do anything you like to them. We hope
you can put them back together again in reasonable shape, but that
doesn't matter too much."
Paul turned about the bare room that would serve adequately as office
space. "All right," he said. "Consider Project Superman begun. Remember,
I have no hope of finding a solution in an errorless human being. I'll
find whatever answer there is to be found. If you have any objections to
my working of those terms, say so now. I don't intend to get fired again
with a Project in the middle of its course."
"You won't be. You'll find the way to give us what we need. I want you
to come down to the other end of the building and meet a man who will be
working closely with you."
There had been sounds of activity in the distance, and General
Oglethorpe led Paul towards them. They entered a large area in which
instrumental equipment was being set up. A tall, thin, dark-haired man
came up as they entered.
"Dr. Nat Holt," said the General, "instrument and electronics expert.
This is Dr. Medick, the country's foremost man in psychology and
psychometric analysis.
"Dr. Holt will be your instrument man. He will design and build whatever
special equipment your researches call for. Let me know soon what you'll
need in the way of furniture and assistants."
He left them standing in the nearly bare room. Through the window they
watched his stiff form march back to his own office.
Nat Holt shifted position and grinned at Paul. "I may as well tell you
that the General has briefed me thoroughly on what he considered your
probable reaction to the Project. I'm just curious enough to want to
know if he was right."
"The General and I understand each other--I think," said Paul. "He knows
I'm contemptuous of his approach to a problem of human behavior by
ordering it solved. But he knows I'll take his money and spend it on the
biggest, deepest investigation of human behavior via psychometrical
analysis that has ever been conducted."
"It ought to be enough to buy gold fringed couches for all the analysts
in the country."
Paul raised his brows. "If it's that way with you, then why are you
joining me?" he asked.
"Because I have a stake in this, too! I want to see the problem solved
just as much as the General does. And I think it _can_ be solved. But
not this way!
"There's only one way to produce men of superior abilities. The method
of adequate training. Hard, brutal discipline and training of oneself.
I'm going to convince Oglethorpe of it after he's seen the failure you
intend to produce for him."
"That shouldn't be hard," said Paul. "It's the General's own view. The
Project is simply to implement that view.
"But let's not have any misunderstanding about my intentions. I expect
to give honest value in research for every dollar spent. I expect to
turn up data that will go a long way toward providing better spacemen
for the Command--and to give Captain West the monument he asked for!"
* * * * *
Alone in his hotel room that night, Paul stood at the window overlooking
the desert. Beyond the distant hills a faint glow in the sky marked the
location of Space Command Base. He regarded it, and considered the
enormity of the thing that was being brewed for the world in that
isolated outpost. Now the chance was his to prove that manhood was a
quality to be proud of, that machines could be built and junked and
built again, but that a man's life was unique in the universe and could
never be replaced once it was crushed.
For years he'd struggled to probe the basic nature of Man and find out
what divorces him from the merely mechanical. He'd known there would
probably never be enough money to reach his goal. And then Oglethorpe
had come, offering him all the money in the world to reach a nebulous
objective that Space Command did not know was unobtainable.
_Somebody_ was going to spend that money. With clear conscience, Paul
rationalized that it might as well be him. He'd see that the country got
value for what it spent, even if this was not quite what the Space
Command expected.
Nat Holt was going to be a most difficult obstacle. Paul wished the
General had let him pick his own technical director, but obviously the
two men understood each other. In their separate fields, they were alike
in their approach to human performance. Whip a man into line, make him
come to heel like a reluctant hound. Beat him, shape him, twist him to
the form you want him to bear.
_Discipline_ him. That was the magic word, the answer to all things.
Paul turned from the window in revulsion, drawing the curtains on the
skyglow of the Base.
Human error!
When would Man cease to indulge in this most monumental of all errors?
When would he cease to regard himself and his fellows as brute creatures
to be beaten into line?
He had to find the right answer before Oglethorpe and his kind found
some flimsy validation for the one they had already chosen long ago.
He stood up and glanced at the clock, deciding he wanted dinner, after
all. Tomorrow he'd wire Betty and the kids to get packed and be on their
way. No--he'd phone tonight. She had a right to know immediately the
outcome of his interview.
The dining room was almost empty. He ordered absently and clipped the
speaker of his small personal radio behind his ear while waiting. He
seldom used it, but here in the desert was a sense of isolation that
made him seize almost compulsively upon any contact with the bright,
distant world. The music was dull, and the news uninspiring. He was
about to turn it off when his order arrived.
The wine was very bad; the steak, however, was good, so Paul considered
it about even. His finger touched the radio switch once more. The
newscaster's voice changed its tone of pounding urgency. "Repercussions
of the recent crash of the world's first space station are still being
heard," he said. "Murmurs of protest against construction of a new Wheel
are rising in many quarters. Today they approach the proportions of a
roar.
"The influential New England Times states that it is 'unqualifiedly
opposed' to any restoration of the Wheel. 'In its three years' existence
the structure proved beyond any question of doubt its utter lack of
utility. Now its fall to Earth demonstrates the menace constituted by
its presence over every city on the face of the globe.'
"Senator Elbert echoes these sentiments. 'It was utter folly in the
first place to spend billions of dollars to construct this Sword of
Damocles in the sky of all the world. I propose that our Government go
on record denying any further intention to rebuild such a threat to the
peace and well-being of nations who stand now on the threshold of
understanding and friendliness which they have sought for so long.'"
Paul switched it off. He remembered the hours of world-wide tension
while the Wheel was falling toward the city of San Francisco. In panic,
the whole population of the Bay Area attempted evacuation, but there
wasn't time. The bridges became clogged with traffic, and some
hysterical drivers left their cars and jumped to the waters below.
As the wreckage neared Earth, the computers narrowed their circle of
error until it was certain at last that the city would not be struck.
But the damage was done. The fear remained, and now was congealing in
angry determination that another Wheel would not be built.
Paul finished his meal, wondering what effect this would have on the
plans to build a new Wheel--and on Project Superman. Maybe Congress
would react in anger that would cut off all appropriations to the
Project.
He wondered, in sudden weariness, if this would not be an unmixed
blessing, after all.
* * * * *
The next three days were spent in telephone and telegraph communication
with members of his profession as he proceeded to recruit a staff.
On Friday, Betty arrived with the kids. By the end of the following
week, laboratory furniture had been installed and the first trickle of
potential staff members was coming in to see what Superman was all
about. Nat, too, had been busy forming his own staff and setting up
basic equipment.
Paul had the feeling that they were opposing camps setting up on the
same site of exploration. He tried to tell himself it was completely
irrational, until Nat approached him a few days later.
"Quite a crew you're getting in here," the technician said. "You'll have
to take Oglethorpe up on his offer of new buildings if you expect to
find couch space for all your boys."
"That's what you're here for," Paul suggested mildly, "to do away with
couches."
"Right." Nat nodded. "Anything a couch can do, a meter can do twice as
efficiently."
"Sometimes both are necessary. You forget my specialty is psychometry."
"No, I'm not forgetting," said Nat. "But that's what makes it so hard
for me to figure out. You're attempting to span two completely
incompatible fields: science and humanities. Man behaves either as a
machine or as a creature of unstable emotion. To function as one you
have to suppress the other."
"Splitting Man in two has never produced an answer to anything. It has
been tried even longer than couches--and with far less result."
"I'll make you a small side bet. We're going to have to work together on
Superman, and coordinate all our procedures and results. But I'll bet
the final answer turns up on the side of a completely mechanistic man,
shorn of all other responses and motivations."
"I'll take that!" Paul said with a grim smile. "I don't know how much of
an answer we'll find, but I know _that_ won't be it!"
"Let's say a small celebration feed for the whole crew when Superman is
completed. Nothing chintzy, either!"
They shook on it. And afterward Paul was glad the incident had occurred.
It left no doubt about the direction Nat Holt would be traveling in his
work.
* * * * *
Four weeks to the day, from the time Paul had stepped into Oglethorpe's
office, he called the first meeting of his staff leaders. Invitations to
the General and to Nat Holt were deliberately omitted. He wanted this
first get together to be a family affair.
He felt just a little shaky in the knees as he got up before that group
for the first time.
"I won't repeat what you already know," Paul said carefully. "You all
know the background events that produced Project Superman.
"I am sure that each of you has also caught the two basic errors that
have been assumed by the Space Command, first, that an errorless man is
possible, and second, that genuine scientific discovery can be secured
wholly upon command. General Oglethorpe recognizes that we consider
these assumptions erroneous, but he also knows that our professional
integrity demands that we pursue vigorously a course which he believes
will result in success.
"We recognize, too, that we are not here to invent or produce anything
that does not already exist. But, in a sense, our superiors and some of
our co-workers expect us to do exactly that.
"We can agree, however, that most of Man's potential still remains to be
discovered. And for us, who have hoped for a means of understanding that
potential, this Project is the fulfillment of dreams. If we fail to take
full advantage of it, we will win the condemnation of our profession for
a century to come.
"Space Command has already concluded that a man can be stripped of his
humanity and driven to an utterly mechanistic state with the robotic
responses of a machine. Let there be no mistake about it: we have been
brought here to validate that conclusion.
"We will validate it by default, so to speak, unless we can produce a
clean-cut analysis and demonstrations of the thing that most of us
believe: that the essence of Man is more than a piece of machinery or a
collection of bio-chemical reactions.
"Our science of mind and Man is on trial. If we fail, we give consent to
a doctrine that will spread from space technology to all the rest of our
society, and bind Man in an iron mold that will not be broken for
generations. While we have been hired and will ostensibly work at the
task of developing an errorless man, our basic purpose must be to
validate the humanity of Man!"
He waited for their reaction. Outside, far across the open desert at the
station, a rocket screamed into the air. They waited until the sound
died away.
Professor Barker stood up. "There is scarcely a human being who has not
by now read or heard the words of Captain West's appeal. They will be
looking for the day when there will come marching from our laboratories,
like a robot, the errorless man he asked for.
"Do you mean we have to fight the stated objectives of this Project? Can
we not discover sufficient understanding to establish some method of
training which will accomplish, in another way, the things the Space
Command needs?"
"We are not fighting the Space Command's desire for more adequate men
for its ships," said Paul. "We are fighting only against the false
conclusions they have already formed concerning the nature of such men.
"We must solve the problem of human error. We know its purpose in the
learning process. We must discover the reason for its existence in a
_learned_ process. We have to find out what training actually means.
"We have to ask how we know when an error has been made. It is obvious,
of course, when a spaceship rams a fixed orbit station. But what of the
subtler situations, where results are less dramatic, or are postponed
for a long time--?
"The primary thing to remember at this point is that our basic goal is
to prevent any false confirmation of the dogma that Man is no more than
a badly functioning machine, which will gain value when he has been
tinkered with sufficiently so that he can slip in beside the gears and
vacuum tubes and be indistinguishable from them. And to reach this goal
we must discover his true nature."
* * * * *
It was two weeks later that General Oglethorpe made his first visit
since Superman got under way. The soldier's face seemed more deeply
lined and his eyes more tired than Paul remembered seeing them before.
"You seem to have things well in hand," he said. "How soon can you give
us some tangible results?"
"Results! We've just started housekeeping. In a year, maybe two, we'll
have an idea where to begin a concentrated search for what you want to
know."
The General shook his head slowly, his eyes remaining on Paul's face.
"You aren't going to have anything like a year. You haven't got time to
run down one line of research and then another. Run them all at once--a
thousand of them if you want to. Why do you think you've got the budget
you have!"
"Some things," said Paul, "like threading a needle--or analysing a human
being--don't go much faster when a thousand men work at it than when
there's only one."
"They do when there're a thousand needles to thread--or brains to pick.
And that's what we're up against here. We need a volume of the kind of
men we've been talking about, and we need them quick!"
"We have to find out how to get the first one."
"And you haven't got as much time now as we thought you had when
Superman began. They're trying to close us up.
"We hadn't planned to build another Wheel right away, not until some
refinements of design had been worked out, and we had some results from
Superman.
"Now, all that's been scrapped. We've received orders from Washington
that erection of a second Wheel is to begin at once, using the plans of
the first one. Fabrication of structures is already under way."
"I don't understand," said Paul.
"If we don't get another one up there within a matter of weeks, this
hysterical opposition among the public is liable to prevent us ever
getting one there again. We have to act while we still have authority,
before the crackpots persuade Congress to take it away. And by the time
it's built, I want some men to put in it. Men who can be trusted to not
jeopardize it the moment they put their clumsy feet aboard. I want them,
Medick, and I intend to have them. That's by way of an order!"
The General rose, but Paul remained seated. "You can't get them that
way, and you know it," the latter said. "We'll do all we can, as I've
told you before."
"I think you'll do considerably more, now. That was quite a talk you
delivered to your boys a couple of weeks ago. We will 'ostensibly work
at the task of developing an errorless man', is the way I believe you
put it. You're going to do a lot more than ostensibly work at it,
Medick. Just how much do you think you can get away with?"
Paul remained motionless in the chair. Only his lips moved. "So you had
a report on our little meeting? I hope it was complete enough to give
you the rest of the things I said, that my basic purpose was not to
produce human robots, but to validate the humanity of man."
Oglethorpe leaned closer, his fists resting on the top of the desk. "The
humanity of man be damned! I told you before we want men who've
forgotten they were ever human, men of metal and electrons. If I didn't
think you were the man who could do it--probably the _only_ man in the
whole country--you wouldn't last here another minute. But you _can_ do
it, and you're going to.
"Your little lecture was enough to ruin your career in any place you try
to run to, if you undermine Superman. Who do you suppose would trust you
with any kind of research after that expression of intent to sabotage
the Project your Government entrusted you with, and which you agreed to
carry out?
"You're finished, Medick, washed up completely in your own profession,
unless you give me what I've asked for! I won't take promises any more.
The only assurance you can give me from here on out is results! I want
those men, and I want them damn fast!"
* * * * *
Professor Barker listened attentively as Paul sat across from him in the
administration office and reported Oglethorpe's visit and demands.
"We're caught in a squeeze, and we've got to push both ways," Paul said.
"If the Base goes down, Superman goes with it, and we've lost an
opportunity that will never come again in our lifetimes. So we've got to
do two things: We've got to give active support to the rebuilding of the
Wheel, and we've got to develop some kind of show that will convince
Oglethorpe that Superman is giving him what he wants. It will mean
detouring our basic objectives, but it's necessary in order to have a
project at all. I'd like you to take charge of it."
"It'll be a waste of time," Barker said slowly. "I wonder if we'll ever
get back on the track."
"We'll have to gamble on it," said Paul. "I don't want you to feel I'm
deliberately pushing you up a blind alley, but I think you're the best
man for bringing up something we can sell Oglethorpe--while we try to do
some real research on some honest goals."
"We can follow the usual lines of so-called training--brute conditioning
through shock and fear and pain and discomfort. Most of the men here are
already well anaesthetized in that respect. Their breakdown level is
high."
"Cummins' was the highest," said Paul, "and he cracked. But work along
those lines anyway. Maybe we can find a way to thicken the conditioning
armor. At the same time let's push a genuine investigation into the
nature of error as hard as we can. For the moment we'll forget broader
objectives, until we know the Project is safe."
Barker agreed reluctantly, feeling that they would end up as mere
personnel counselors before long. As soon as he left, Paul called
Oglethorpe.
"I've got a suggestion," he said. "Let's not get on the defensive about
this thing. Why don't you propose a Senatorial investigation of Space
Command?"
"Are you crazy? Why would we want to have them come out here and pick
our bones to pieces before making final burial?"
"We've got a story to tell them--remember? We've got Superman, that's
going to produce for the first time in the world's history a man
adequate to go into the dangers of space. And there's that little story
of yours about courage. I think that would go over with them. We'd be
out in front if we took the initiative in this instead of just waiting
until it rolled over us."
There was a long pause before Oglethorpe spoke again. "I wonder just
what you're trying to do," he said finally. "I know you don't mean a
word of what you're saying at all--"
"But I do mean it," Paul said earnestly. "I want Superman saved; you
want the Wheel. It amounts to the same thing."
"You could be right. You might even be telling the truth. I'll give it
some thought."
* * * * *
The officer in charge of the rocket crews and the take-off stand was a
young engineer-soldier named Harper. Paul had met him during the first
week at Base. His endorsement of Project Superman was enthusiastic.
After talking with Oglethorpe, Paul took a jeep over to the stand and
located Harper. The engineer was overseeing the fueling process on a big
rocket.
"Doc Medick!" Harper exclaimed. "How's your crew of head shrinkers
coming along? We're just about ready for your new breed of pilots."
"What do you mean?"
"This is the nucleus ship. She's going out in orbit tonight with the
first batch of supplies and instruments to get ready for the new Wheel.
We're going to need your men awfully fast."
"That's what I came to talk about. Can you spare a few minutes?"
"Sure." Harper led him to the office, where the whining of fueling pumps
was silenced. "What can we do for you?"
"I wanted to ask about Cummins. You knew him pretty well, didn't you?"
"Buddies. Just like that." Harper crossed his fingers.
"What went wrong, do you think? I know it's all been hashed over in the
investigations, but I'd like your personal feelings about him."
Harper's face sobered and he looked away a moment. "Cummins was as good
a guy as they come," he said. "But in a pinch he was just a weak sister.
That doesn't mean he didn't have a lot on the ball," Harper added
defensively. "He was a better pilot than most of us ever will be, but he
was just human like the rest of us."
"What do you mean, 'human'?"
"Weak, soft, failure when the going gets rough--everything we have to be
on guard against every minute we're alive."
"I take it you don't think much of human beings, as such."
Harper leaned forward earnestly. "Listen, Doc, when you've been around
ships as long as I have, you'll know what Captain West really meant. The
weakest link in any technological development has always been the men
involved with its operation. In space flight our weakness is pilots and
technicians. Set a machine on course and it'll go until it breaks
down--and flash you a warning before it fails. With a man, you never
know when he's going to fail, and you have to be on guard against _his_
breakdown every minute because he won't give any warning.
"Think what it's like to be in our shoes! We take the controls of a few
hundred million dollars worth of machinery, and we know that every last
man of us is booby-trapped with some weakness that can break out in a
critical moment and destroy everything. We fight against it; we struggle
to hold it in and act like responsible instruments. And we grow to hate
ourselves because of the weak things that we are.
"Cummins was like that. He fought himself every waking hour, knowing
that he had a weakness of becoming confused in a tight spot. Oh, it was
nothing that even showed up on the tests, and he was the best man of any
of us on the Base. But he knew it was there, just as we all know our
closets bulge with skeletons that we try to keep from breaking out."
"Do you fight yourself the way Cummins did?" Paul asked.
"Sure."
"What would happen if you pulled a blunder that wrecked that ship out
there on the stand."
"I'd have had it, that's all. I'd never get within ten miles of a rocket
base again as long as I lived. And there wouldn't be much worth living
for--"
"It would be pretty wonderful to feel you weren't constantly on the
verge of some disastrous blunder, wouldn't it?"
"It would be a rocket man's idea of heaven to handle these ships with
that kind of a feeling inside him."
"We're about ready to begin running tests on Superman, and I'd like you
to be the first to help us out. Can you arrange it?"
"We're tied up like a ball of string on getting the nucleus ship in
orbit. I know Oglethorpe gave orders we were to jump when you called,
but I'll have to check on replacements for those of us you take. What
kind of test are you going to run on me?"
"I want to find out how long it takes you to make a serious error, and
what happens to you when you do!"
* * * * *
Arrangements were made for initiating this series of tests two days
later. Paul had designed them, and Nat Holt's crew had built the
equipment.
But before they were started, Paul grew increasingly aware of the clamor
and public agitation against the Wheel. Instead of dying out after a
small spurt of anger, it was accumulating momentum in every corner of
the nation.
A rabble rouser named Morgan in the middle-west had proposed a motor
caravan to Space Command Base, where the participants would go on a
sit-down strike until assurance was given that no Wheel would be built
again. And on the heels of this came the demand by an increasing number
of Senators for a full investigation of the Base.
Paul met Barker after seeing the newscast of Morgan's revivalist type
appeal for a caravan of protest against the Base. "This looks like it
could get to be something that would be hard to handle," Barker said.
"It doesn't seem reasonable that the near-crash of the first Wheel at
San Francisco could be responsible for all this commotion."
"I don't think it is," Paul answered reflectively. "The sinking of a big
ocean liner doesn't produce hysterical demands that no more ships be
built. The crash of an airship with a hundred people aboard is accepted
for what it is, without this kind of reaction. I think these broadcasts
and write-ups of Captain West's appeal have sunk in deeper than
Oglethorpe or anyone else ever intended.
"For a long time there has been building up a sense of man's inferiority
to his machines. Now this incident of the Wheel and the world-wide
broadcast of West's final words have triggered that inferiority into a
genuine fear. They're afraid to have another Wheel up there over their
heads. They're afraid that no man is capable of mastering such a piece
of machinery."
Not only the public was infected with this fear, but the very men on
whom the operation of the ships depended. Harper was right, Paul
thought, as he reached his own office again. It must be terrible to be
in their shoes, fighting constantly the conviction that they were poor
miserable creatures hardly fit to polish the shining hulls of their
creations!
They were trained in the best of military traditions, crushing their
weaknesses by sheer force. And they had concluded their own breakdown
was inevitable, in spite of their training and traditions. How could
such men even hope for the stars!
But where was the flaw in it all? If the answer was not in men who were
more nearly like their own machines, where was it?
They needed a year or two to even approach the problem properly, and
some kind of answer was demanded within weeks!
Oglethorpe came to the laboratory the morning Harper was to begin his
test runs. "We're going on a complete crash-priority basis, with
round-the-clock shifts," he said. "It's been a toss-up whether to close
Superman and put everything we had on the new Wheel, or leave it open in
the hope of getting something out of it.
"For the time being I'm leaving it open, but remember that every hour
Harper or one of his men spends here is an hour away from the job on the
Wheel.
"We didn't need your suggestion about an investigation. Plenty of other
people thought of it first. The Senators will be here in four or five
days. You're going to talk to them. You're going to tell them what you
proposed to tell them."
"Of course. And what are you going to do about Morgan's cavalcade?"
Oglethorpe spat out an exclamation. "We'll set up barricades that they'd
better not cross within ten miles of Base!"
"That won't help," Paul warned. "I think you'd better let me prepare
something for them, too."
"Forget them! Take care of the Senators and the Project and you'll be
doing enough."
Harper arrived shortly, nervous in spite of his attempt to appear
composed. But he was put at ease when they took him to the laboratory of
complex testing equipment assembled by Nat Holt.
Paul indicated a seat in the middle of the mass of equipment. "As near
as we've been able to make it," he said, "this simulates the landing
procedure of a rocket craft. There are a hundred and thirty-five
distinct actions, observations and judgements involved. A taped voice
will lead you through the sequence, asking you to press buttons and make
adjustments to indicate your observations and responses. When you can do
all this to your satisfaction, you will turn off the tape and continue
for as many cycles as you can."
"How long? A man could do that for a month, provided he didn't have to
sleep."
"I think you'll be a little surprised. You will continue until your
accumulation of errors becomes so great that the entire procedure
collapses."
"It still looks like a kid's game to me," Harper said confidently.
"Let's get started."
Carefully, they fitted the multiple electrodes of the
electro-encephalograph recorder to his skull. The tape instructor was
turned on, and Harper began the first cycle.
Behind the one-way glass of the observation room, Paul sat with Nat Holt
and Professor Barker and two assistants, watching. The rocket engineer
began jauntily, contemptuous of the simple actions required of him,
impatient to have it over with and get back to his duties at the
take-off stand.