f a truly classified operation: they don't
have to be too careful, there aren't any voters to offend. About the
circuits, sometimes they worked, sometimes not. That was the way it
went. They wouldn't put manual controls in for us.

It wasn't that they regarded man with too little faith, and electronic
equipment with too much. They just didn't regard man at all. They
looked upon scientific reason and technology as completely infallible.
Nothing is infallible. Not their controls, not their vehicles, and not
their blasted egos.

* * * * *

Lynds was assigned the first flight at escape velocity. They could not
be dissuaded from the belief that at ultimate speed, a pilot operating
manual controls was completely ineffectual. Like kids that have to run
electric trains all by themselves, playing God with a transformer.
That was when I asked them why bother with a pilot altogether. They
talked about the whole point being a test of man's ability to survive;
they'd deal with control in proper order. They didn't believe it, and
neither did we. We all got very peculiar feelings about the whole
business after that. The position on controls was made pretty final by
Bannister.

"There will be no manuals in my ships," he said. "It would negate the
primary purpose of this project. We must ascertain the successful
completion of escape and return by completely automatic operation."

"How about emergency controls?" I asked. "With a switch-off from
automatic if they should fail."

"They will not fail. Any manual controls would be inoperative by the
pilot in any case. No more questions."

I feel the way I do about the monkey, Argus, because, in a way, we all
quit about that time. You don't like having spent your life in a
rather devoted way with purposes and all that, and then being placed
in the hands of a collection of technologists like just so many white
mice ... or monkeys, if you will. Lynds, of course, had little choice.
The project was cleared and the assignment set. He hated it well
enough, I know, but it was his place to perform the only way one does.

It ended the way we knew it would. I heard it all. It wasn't
gruesome, as you might imagine. I spoke with Lynds the whole time. It
was sort of a resigned horror. The initial countdown went off without
a hitch and the hissing of the escape valves on the carrier rocket
changed to a sound that hammered the sky apart as it lifted off the
pad.

"W