eep.

The captain, Dr. Johnston and Chauvenseer remained on the bridge
another hour, convincing themselves that Mike's analysis was correct,
and dictating a report to Earth, before the captain called in an aide
to take over the bridge, and the three retired.

In the morgue, Dr. Y Chi Tung, who still slept peacefully as he had
since the moment he reached his hammock, muttered quietly in his
sleep, "Confusion--"

* * * * *

Mike snapped awake and glanced guiltily at the clock. Six hours had
passed.

A situation report from the Cow was the first thing on his agenda any
time that he had been out of contact for any length of time, flare or
not.

It was not his job to be in constant contact with the complete
situation of the ship and its vast complexities; he was not the
captain. Nor was it in the manuals that he should have access to the
computer's huge memory banks and abilities other than through
"channels"--i.e., Bessie. But the book definition of the information
he needed for his job, and his own criteria, were somewhat different,
and he had built on Earth and installed shortly after he came aboard,
a subcontrol link which put him in direct contact with the placid-Cow.

His original intention in rigging the link had been to use the
calculator for that occasional math problem which might be more
quickly resolved with her help; but then the criteria of needed
information, curiosity, or both, had got the better of him, and the
secret panel hidden in the legitimate control panels of an engineer's
console was actually quite a complete link, covering all of the Cow's
multiple functions without interfering in any was with Bessie's
control links, or revealing its existence. This linkage gave Mike the
only direct access to the computer's store of information and
abilities other than that of the operator at the control console.

And Mike's secret pride was the vocoder circuit with which he had
terminated his link, originated because a teletype system similar to
that used at the control console would have been too obvious; and his
nimble fingers got all tangled up on a keyboard anyhow.

Bessie might speak to the Cow through the teletype link and switches
of her control console, but only Mike had the distinction of being
able to speak directly to the big computer, and get the complacent,
somewhat mooing answers; and only Mike knew of the existence of the
vocoder aboard.

It had taken some