figure three point
one four one five nine. Compy would still be baffled; but, unlike the
first set, most people would be, too."

"Yes. Perhaps two out of ten would get your message."

"Now take something really new, like the original work on gravitation or
relativity. No possible computer would be of any use. That takes a
_brain_!"

"The brain of a Newton or an Einstein, yes." Belle thought for a minute,
then grinned at him impishly. "Now watch the brain of a Bellamy perform.
Get into high gear, brain.... I wish I knew something about biochemical
embryology; but I read somewhere that ova are sterile, so our galaxy is
an ovum. Therefore our super-galooper is a gal--which incontrovertible
fact accounts for and explains rigorously the long-known truth that
women always have been, are now, and always will be vastly superior to
men in every quality, aspect, and...."

"Hold it!" Garlock snapped. His face hardened into intense
concentration. Then: "Do you think you're kidding, Belle?"

"Why, of _course_ I'm kidding, you big...."

"Look here, then." He picked up a pencil and filled in blank after blank
after blank. "I'm making one unjustifiable assumption--that the
_Pleiades_ is the first intergalactic starship. The super-being is a
female, and she is just becoming pregnant...."

"Flapdoodle! There are no blood cells in a sperm, and I don't think
there are any in an ovum."

"I didn't mention either sperm or ovum. The analogy is so loose here
that it holds only in the broadest, most general terms. The actual
process of reproduction is unknowable. But wherever we went, we changed
things. Not only by what we actually did, but also as a
catalyst--no...."

"No, not a catalyst. A hormone."

"Exactly. Each of these changes would cause others, and so on. An
infinite series. Calling the first three terms alpha, beta, and gamma,
we operate like this...." Garlock's pencil was flying now. "Following
me?"

"On your tail." Belle was breathing hard; as the blank spaces became
fewer and fewer her face began to turn white.

"From this we get that ... and _that_ makes the whole bracket tie into
the same conclusion I had before. So, except for that one assumption,
it's solid."

* * *

"My Lord, Clee!" Belle studied the chart. "I mentioned Newton and
Einstein ... add to that 'the brain of a Garlock, better than either.'"
Then, seeing his reaction, "You're blushing. I didn't think...."

"Cut the com