d."

"Fine," said Bors without enthusiasm.

"And to go with it," said Logan, his voice indifferent, but his eyes
shining proudly, "just for my own amusement, I computed a complete table
of overdrive speeds for this particular ship, with different strengths
of field. They run from one point five light-speeds up to the maximum
your equipment will give. You have to correct for changes of mass, of
course."

Bors was not quite capable of enthusiasm over the computation of tables
of complex figures. He simply could not share Logan's thrill of
achievement in the results of the neat rows of numerals. Nor had he
struggled unduly to grasp the implication of Logan's explanation.

Instead, he said politely, "Very nice. Thank you very much."

Logan's eyes ceased to shine. His wounded pride made him defiant.

"Nobody else anywhere could have worked out that table!" he said
stridently. "Nobody! Morgan said you'd appreciate my work! He said you
needed my talent! But what good do you see in it? You think I'm a
freak!"

Bors realized that he'd been tactless. Logan's experiences before
Talents, Incorporated had made him unduly sensitive. He'd done something
of which he was proud, but Bors didn't appreciate its magnitude. Logan
reacted to the frustration of his vanity.

"Hold it!" said Bors. "I'm not unappreciative. I'm stupid and worried
about something. You just figured an overdrive jump for me that's the
most accurate I ever heard of! But I'm desperate for time and we've got
to spend two days in solar-system drive because we can't make an
overdrive hop of less than light-days! So we're losing forty-eight hours
or more."

Logan said as stridently as before:

"But I just showed you you don't have to! Cut the field-strength
according to that table."

Bors was jolted. It was suddenly self-evident. Logan had said he'd
figured a table of overdrive fields for the _Isis_ which would work for
anything between one point five light-speeds to maximum. One point five
light-speeds!

It was one of those absurdities in technology that so often go so long
before they are noticed. During the development of overdrive, it had
been the effort of every technician to get the fastest possible drive.
It was known that with a given mass and a given field-strength, one
could get an effective speed of an unbelievable figure. Men had spent
their lives trying to increase that figure. But nobody'd ever tried to
find out how _slowly_ one could travel i