occurred

among the group since beginning the current observations. These would be suspended for the next several moments, however, as there was a strict prohibition against anyone being born, dying, or otherwise engaging in extraneous activity while their particular bank was either alerted or in action.)

Raeillo/ee13 and Raellu//2 felt the group discipline take hold much more firmly than the free-and-easy mesh which each unit enjoyed with the complete group-mind during periods of leisure.

With a speed that would have been dizzying and incomprehensible to any individual unit, the observing banks relayed huge masses of extraneous data to the interpretive bank. They strained out the salient facts and in turn passed these to the computing:prediction section. Here they were routed to the groups who would deal with them. Raeillo/ee13 and Raellu//2 found their own talents pressed into service a dozen or more times in the space of the minute and a half it took the computing:prediction and interpretive banks to arrive at the answer.

“It’s aimed here,” the interpretive bank reported.

“Here!” a jumble of incoherent and anarchistic thoughts resounded [90] from many shocked and temporarily out-of-mesh units.

“Order!” came a sharp command from the elite corp of three thousand disciplinary units.

As stillness settled back over the group-mind the speculative bank once more came in. “By here … do you mean right here?”

“Approximately

,” replied the interpretive bank with what would have sounded suspiciously like a chuckle in a human reply. “According to calculations the craft should land within half a mile of our present location.”

“Let’s go there then and wait for it!” That thought from the now seldom used reservation of impulse.

The speculative bank murmured, “I wonder if there would be any danger. How hot is that exhaust?”

Calculations were rapidly made and the answer arrived at. The Rell prudently decided to remain where they were for the present.

Captain Leonard Brown, USAF, hunched over the instruments in the cramped control cabin which, being the only available space in the ship, doubled as living quarters. A larger man would have found the arrangement impossible. Brown, being 5' 2" and weighing 105 pounds found it merely intolerable.

At the moment he was temporarily able to forget his discomfort, however. The many tiny dials and indicators told a story all their own to Brown’s trained vision.

“Just another half hour,” he whispered to himself. “Just thirty more minutes and I’ll land. It may be just a dead planet but I’ll still be the first.”

There really wasn’t a great deal for Brown to do. The ship was self-guided. The Air Force had trusted robot mechanisms more than human reactions.

Thus Brown’s entire active contribution to the flight consisted in watching the dials (which recorded everything so even watching them was unnecessary) and in pressing the button which would cause the ship to start its return journey.

Of course the scientists could have constructed another mechanism to press the button and made it a completely robot ship. But despite their frailties and imperfections, human beings have certain advantages. Humans can talk. Machines may see and detect far more than their human creators but all they can do is record. They can neither interpret nor satisfactorily describe.

Brown was present not only to report a human’s reactions to the first Mars flight; he was also along to see that which the machines might miss.