lete
readout display panel, a spare from one of the Cow's bridge consoles;
and quickly connected it in to the data link on which the vocoder
operated. Then, carefully instructing the computer as to the required
display, he settled back.

"That'll do it," he said. "The Cow can tell us all we need to know
right on that panel--about acceleration, lack of it, or change of it
that we may cause by changing the parameters of our experiment. Those
racks were checked out to stand up under eighty gees," he added.
"Typical overspecification. They never said what would happen to the
personnel under those conditions."

Ishie turned the Confusor off and then back on, and watched the
display gauge rise to the six hundred forty mark, and then show the
fraction above it .12128. Then carefully, ever so infinitesimally, he
adjusted a knob on the device. The readout sank back towards zero,
coming to rest reading 441.3971.

"We'll have to put a vernier control on this phase circuit," Ishie
said to himself. "It jumped thirty per-cent, and I scarcely breathed
on it."

After a few more checks on the operation of the phase control, he
turned to the power control for the magnetic field. Carefully, Ishie
lowered the field strength, eye on the readout panel. As the field
strength lowered, the reading increased.

The indication was that by lowering the field strength only ten per
cent, he had increased the thrust to sixteen hundred pounds--which,
he felt, was close to the tolerance of the machine structure.

Carefully he increased the field strength again. Faithfully the
reading followed it down the scale.

Then he had another thought. Running the field strength down and the
pressure up, and again arriving at sixteen hundred pounds, he turned
off the Confusor, waited a few moments, and turned it back on.

The reading remained zero.

Apparently, then a decrease in field strength would cause an increase
in thrust; but the original field strength was necessary in order to
initiate the thrust field.

Carefully he nudged the field strength back up, and suddenly there
were seven hundred ten pounds indicated thrust.

Thrust could apparently be initiated by a field strength a few per
cent lower, but not much lower, than the original operating point.

* * * * *

Captain Naylor Andersen arrived on the bridge with an accusing air,
but feeling refreshed. He had slept longer than he intended--and
though he had as