egistry. But he almost never used it; he hardly ever even
thought of it. For twenty of his thirty-five years of life, he had been
a trained Guesser, and for fifteen of them he'd been The Guesser of
_Naipor_.

He was fairly imposing-looking for a Guesser; he had the tall,
wide-shouldered build and the blocky face of an Executive, and his
father had been worried that he wouldn't show the capabilities of a
Guesser, while his mother had secretly hoped that he might actually
become an Executive. Fortunately for The Guesser, they had both been
wrong.

He was not only a Guesser, but a first-class predictor, and he showed
impatience with those of his underlings who failed to use their ability
in any particular. At the moment of the ship's landing, he was engaged
in verbally burning the ears off Kraybo, the young man who would
presumably take over The Guesser's job one day--if he ever learned how
to handle it.

"You're either a liar or an idiot," said The Guesser harshly, "and I
wish to eternity I knew which!"

Kraybo, standing at attention, merely swallowed and said nothing. He had
felt the back of The Guesser's hand too often before to expose himself
intentionally to its swing again.

The Guesser narrowed his eyes and tried to see what was going on in
Kraybo's mind.

"Look here, Kraybo," he said after a moment, "that one single Misfit
ship got close enough to do us some damage. It has endangered the life
of the _Naipor_ and the lives of her crewmen. You were on the board in
that quadrant of the ship, and you let it get in too close. The records
show that you mis-aimed one of your blasts. Now, what I want to know is
this: were you really guessing or were you following the computer too
closely?"

"I was following the computer," said Kraybo, in a slightly wavering
voice. "I'm sorry for the error, sir; it won't happen again."

The Guesser's voice almost became a snarl. "It hadn't better! You know
that a computer is only to feed you data and estimate probabilities on
the courses of attacking ships; you're not supposed to think they can
predict!"

"I know, sir; I just--"

"You just near came getting us all killed!" snapped The Guesser. "You
claim that you actually guessed where that ship was going to be, but you
followed the computer's extrapolation instead?"

"Yes, sir," said the tense-faced Kraybo. "I admit my error, and I'm
willing to take my punishment."

The Guesser grinned wolfishly. "Well, isn't that big-hear