The Project Gutenberg EBook of Unspecialist, by Murray F. Yaco

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Title: Unspecialist

Author: Murray F. Yaco

Release Date: November 11, 2007 [EBook #23443]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNSPECIALIST ***

Produced by Greg Weeks, Bruce Albrecht and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science
Fiction, October, 1959. Extensive research did not reveal any evidence
that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Dialect
spellings, contractions and discrepancies have been retained.

UNSPECIALIST

[Illustration]

_A machine can be built to do any accurately described job better
than any man. The superiority of a man is that he can do an unexpected,
undescribed, and emergency job ... provided he hasn't been especially
trained to be a machine._

BY MURRAY F. YACO

Banner ripped open his orders, read them, stared in disbelief for a
quick moment, then cursed wildly while reaching for the telephone.

"Hello, Gastonia? Yes, I got 'em. What kinda way to waste our time you
lunkheads think ... oh, it's you, colonel!"

Banner dropped the receiver and let it dangle. He sank into the only
soft chair in the apartment and watched hypnotically as the phone's
receiver limply coiled and uncoiled at the end of the wire.

Somebody knocked on, then opened the door. "Hi, pretty boy, you got our
orders?"

"Come on in and hear about it," Banner said. He got up from the chair,
ran his hands compulsively through his recently short-cropped red hair,
hung up the phone and shoved the orders into his co-pilot's hands.

Warcraft read them over three times, then sank into the chair just
vacated by Banner. Finally--while Banner poured them both a drink--he
managed to blurt, "Potato fertilizer and tractor fuel--Oh, no. Oh, no,
no, no!"

"Oh, yes, yes, yes," Banner said bitterly. "We are heroes of the
spaceways; yes, indeed. We train for ten years. Acquire great skill in
the art of the patrol. We dedicate ourselves to the protection of t