ANALOG

Grant D. Callin

PROLOG: CATALOG

The Director of Research of the Library of Congress was a good computer man in his younger days, but his real flair was for politicking; he had climbed up the civil service ladder with relative ease to his present post, and promised to go further. Nevertheless, he kept up with the literature of his old field, and he still retained a sweeping imagination.

The man facing him across the desk was his opposite in many respects—brilliant researcher, Huxley Laureate in neurophysiology, and entirely out of his element in the nation's capital. But he, too, was a man of imagination, and had been a friend of the director since their college days. At the moment his fair features were screwed up in mild puzzlement; he was wondering why the director had called him down from the Federation meetings at Atlantic City, apparently to expound on the elementary principles of library information dissemination.

"… Essence, the catalog is simplicity in itself, which you know, Hank. Every time an author submits a scientific paper for publication, he's required to place it in one of our 8,400 main categories, in at least one sub and three sub-subs, and is further encouraged to fit it into as many more as he can. Then when a researcher wants to explore the literature with respect to a particular type of experiment or technique, he simply contacts one of our thousand or so outlets and requests a printout of the categories in which he's interested. A beautiful system, right?"

"Well…"

"Exactly: it stinks and we both know it. There's a frightening loss of information in the semantic chain involved. And frankly, it's getting worse all the time with 5,000 titles a day coming in, and the rate accelerating. Last spring at the LS conference Shalot showed by statistical sampling that the rate of needless experimental duplication is up to ten percent, and will increase during the next generation to almost forty percent before it begins to level off." He switched his tone of voice. "When's the last time you used the LC computer for researching a piece of work you wanted to do?"

The neurophysiologist hunched his small body up on the edge of the chair, and thought for a moment "Let's see, it was about three years ago. I wanted to find out what had been done in the way of using IR microlasers for selective destruction of cortical motoneurones. I went into the computer with 'Microlasers,' sub 'Infrared,' sub-sub 'Biological use of,' which was as close as I could get." He smiled ruefully. "The print out was a list of fourteen hundred odd articles, twenty-seven book and seven monographs; and after half a month of weeding, I finally got down to five articles which were of some value. Guess I was lucky a that; my research fell into only one possible sub-sub."

"Don't kid yourself, my friend. The catalog system runs on Finagle's Second Law; odds are a hundred to one that, buried somewhere in the other half a million sub-subs, there were at least ten more titles of direct interest. Which brings me to the next point. What're we gonna do about it?"

"Well…"

"Never mind. The library science people have beat their heads against that wall for years. They say that a really good system is impossible, and that it would cost about half a GNP to come up with even a mildly significant improvement. Let me ask you something else instead: postulating that he could take in all the information somehow, could a man with total recall hold all the facts now in the Library of Congress?"

"Easily. He wouldn't begin to strain."

"And if I were to ask him about possible new techniques in underwater basket-weaving, would he be able to tell me to look at Whatsitsname's paper on the art of liver surgery because of its discussion of sewing in a viscous medium?"

"If he were reasonably intelligent, and trained in cross-correlation techniques, yes."

"Hah! In that case, Dr. Henry D. Hoffman, I have a proposal to make: let's build a computer for this library which duplicates—at a much higher speed—the associative processes of the human mind, and thereby completely eliminate the semantic gap!"

The neurophysiologist caused his face to go amusedly wry. "Don't forget to implant the three laws of robotics."

"Huh?"

"Oh, come off it, Bob. You've been hung up on Asimov's stories ever since we took that course in-Classics of SF together twenty years ago."

The director blushed, but held his ground. "The time to do this thing must come eventually. Why not now? How many neural synapses in the human brain—somewhere around ten billion?"

"No, that's the number of neurons. The number of synapses is more like 1013."

"Even so, with the new self-breeding circuits Bell developed a couple of years ago a specialized computer with 1013 bits is not only feasible, but the core and its talk circuits could fit into the bathroom of an average-sized condom. What's the sweat?"

Hoffman smiled gently, "Bob, the human brain is not a digital logic machine. It's an analog device with probably thousands, possibly millions, of action potentials generated to form one small thought-chain."

"So? Digital analog simulation has been around for decades."

"Yes, but to duplicate higher brain function by sequential logic processes would probably take too long for what you have in mind. I don't think we could use a DAS any faster than about ten or twenty times biological speed."

"Hm-m-m… what kind of fast-memory core you get in your lab?"

"A Packard-Bell 6240."

"Let's see… that means your machine takes about a tenth of a microsec to go in and grab a bite from core. No wonder you're biased; you have the old wafer/cube system. Fast enough for most work, and dirt cheap, but it can't hold a candle to the new five-molecule layer stuff. Hell, man, the biggest lag in that system is the wiring length; time through a gate is of the order of that of a few electrons jumping orbitals. Core conversation time is determined strictly by the 'nanosec-a-foot' rule. So we can get speeds about fifty times those you're used to, and if that's not enough we can use parallel operation; cores are cheap. Besides," he finished confidently, "we don't want to duplicate the whole brain, just the part that does the coding and association of incoming information."

Hoffman laughed. "Bob, you just encompassed not only the whole brain, but the entire afferent and much of the efferent nervous system, including all the spinal ganglia and the twelve cranial nerves."

"I did?"

"You did. Information coming from any one of the thirty-odd senses is coded logarithmically almost right at the site of stimulation; it's re-coded at the spine according to a power function. And then, depending on the input pathway, it's re-coded again and again and mixed with other signals—including feed-back from commands going out to the periphery—all before it ever gets to the brain! Most information reaching as high as the brainstem appears diffused and garbled almost beyond our comprehension. And virtually all neurons in the higher centers are laced up with hundreds or thousands of synaptic boutons, none of which is capable of independently firing the cell; the brain is really an enormous collection of coincidence detectors.

"In fact, current theory has it that the process of 'thinking' involves largely the raising and lowering of neuronal tone, and that it evolved from anticipating and changing act about to be performed reflexively. Which is beside the point. Fact is what you're asking your computer to do is duplicate coding which is constantly occurring at a huge number of sites over a vast network. Would you be willing to undertake a task of that magnitude?"

"Yes. Even if it took twenty years it would be worth it."

"I agree, but your estimate is no even of the right order of magnitude. Now, I admit that I've complicated the picture a little for dramatic effect; with present knowledge a transmitter action, receptor sites, and nerve fiber geometry, we could probably build a decent analog of an neural pathway. But to know absolutely that we'd duplicate the associative powers of the human brain we'd have to build an exact anatomical analog of an entire nervous system down to the spinal level." Hoffman began tapping his finger on the director's desk to emphasize his points. "All those stories you read about throwing a bunch of 'synapse circuits' together and creating a super-brain are poppycock.

"Anyway, with present slice-and-trace techniques a person can build a full model of a single neuron in about two working weeks. Now assuming that we could do this for each cell in the brainstem without destroying any of the others, we come to the depressing conclusion that the time required for the task would come to four or five hundred million man-years!"

The director held up his hand, a frown coming to his face. "Please! You sound like a conservative editorial of some kind. The people who developed WiBAViS solved that class of problem over ten years ago."

"Hm-m-m… wiring by automatic visual scanning? I never thought of that; those systems are so expensive only the government can afford them. I've never seen one in operation."

"You should. It's an education. Say, don't you remember those two guys about five years ago that used a WiBAViS to build an electric analog of a monkey's kidney? And they did it pretty fast, too, using laser-sliced electron microscope slides. The job only took 'em a couple of weeks, once they got the programming done."

"Yes, I do remember, now that you mention it." Hoffman's face was beginning to light up a little. "It was Ross and Barney, at the Mayo Clinic. And the model worked pretty well, as I recall. Hm-m-m…" A look of speculation began to dominate his face; he began muttering sub-audibly, oblivious to his friend for the moment.

The director smiled to himself; he'd finally got Hoffman thinking seriously about the problem. The bright fall day drew his eyes toward the window, where he saw the denuded cherry trees silhouetted against the bay. They brought to his mind a row of inverted organizational charts, lacking only the neat labels at the branch tips to tag the departmental levels… He focused his ears as the neurophysiologist began talking again.

"… Suming that WiBAViS is sophisticated enough to handle the job—"

"It is, believe me. All you need is an imaginative programmer."

"Well, assuming that, anyway, there's still one insurmountable difficulty. Neurons exhibit two types of activity, depending on the type of synapse: either excitatory or inhibitory. Now when the brain is alive, we can differentiate between these two types by a slight variation of the anatomical geometry; but when we preserve a brain for detailed study, our perfusions also destroy this differentiation. And, of course, anything like X-ray holography is out of the question; it would certainly destroy any live brain on which we used it extensively."

The director frowned a moment, as if trying to remember something, then suddenly began to laugh.

"What's so funny?"

"Y'know, Hank, I got so wrapped up in arguing this project from the computer standpoint I completely forgot what gave me the idea in the first place!" He walked to his bookshelf, pulled out the latest edition of Scientific American. "Read this yet?"

"No. My copy must have arrived after I left for the Federation meetings."

"Take a look at the cover story."

He handed the magazine to Hoffman. On the front was a picture of a multitude of tiny units composed of triple spheres; its caption read: "Water Molecules Frozen in Their Thermal Dance." The story was entitled "Neutrino 'Holograms' Defy Heisenberg Uncertainty." Without a word, Hoffman thumbed slowly through the article, stopping from time to time to read a paragraph and mutter to himself. Finally he looked up and spoke, his eyes beginning to fill with wonder. "Why, this instrument could scan a live brain without destroying a single cell. It just might be possible. It just might."

The director reached for his phone, punched a number.

"Hi, Carol, this is Bob Macpherson. The boss in? O.K., I'll wait." He turned his attention back to the neurophysiologist. "If you were going to attempt a project like this, how much time and money do you think you'd need?"

Hoffman suddenly had a suspicion that the conversation was getting out of control. He replied slowly; "Oh, I don't know… maybe about four or five years. But I'm sure the money's out of sight. Probably over 500 megabucks, not even counting the neutrino—"

"Hello, Glenn? BobbyMac. Remember the idea we talked about Thursday night?… Yeah. Well, I've got him here now, and he thinks he can do it—"

Hoffman panicked. "Hey, wait a minute; I didn't say—"

Macpherson shushed him with an impatient hand, continued talking; "Right. About a five-year gigabuck… Uh-hunh, yeah… O.K., I'll take your word for it, and we'll get started on this end right away… Sure… Thanks a lot, buddy. See you tomorrow at the CC… 12:30, right. Bye."

Hoffman was dumbfounded at the acceleration of events; he was certain that the person to whom the director was talking was Glenn Johnson, the Cabinet Secretary for Research and Technology. He finally found his voice after Macpherson disconnected:

"Hold on now, Bob; all we've done is speculate. There're thousands of smaller problems I haven't even touched on—and any one of them could invalidate everything I just said. And where am I going to find a CS man willing to undertake the computer development? And how do we know this Meneely-or-whatever-his-name-is will be willing to loan us this neutrino thing and show us how to use it? Damn it, I haven't even told you I'd do it. I've got my own job at the University, research projects of my own—"

"Nonsense. Of course you'll do it. And you'll solve the problems, too. Man, this'll probably be the biggest thing since Armstrong's 'one small step.' Leave that snug little academic life behind; I'll even let you pick the location of your lab."

"Well, I don't know; I'd still have to break my contract with the University, and if they got nasty they could stick me for a stiff—"

"I'll give you a flat salary of two megabucks, and all the spending money you want for equipment and hiring."

Hoffman grinned. "Sounds like fun. You have someone in mind to do the computer work?"

"Hm-m-m… tell you what. Let me make one phone call, then we'll go to dinner and talk about it."

As the director finished up his business for the day, the neurophysiologist gazed idly out the window. The naked cherry trees brought a vivid picture to mind: a row of Purkinje cells, with their dendrites standing up into the cerebellar cortex…

INTERLOG: BIOLOG

Dr. Henry Daniel Hoffman approached the office of Dr. Clinton Tucker Meneely with some trepidation. He'd never even talked to the man personally; all his explanations and appointment-making had been done by correspondence, and phone conversations with a secretary. From what he could gather, Meneely was something of a social and professional recluse; his attitude toward the project had been totally noncommittal. Finally—and this was something Hoffman didn't realize on a conscious level—he held the bio-science man's indefinable feeling of awe toward the hard-core physicist.

He walked into the office, and was awarded a polite "Yes?" by the secretary.

"I'm Dr. Hoffman. I believe Dr. Meneely is expecting me."

"Oh, yes, certainly, sir. He's in the lab across the hall; please go right in."

He thanked the girl, stepped quickly across the hall, and opened the opaque plastic door to the physicist's laboratory.

Inside, his eyes were overwhelmed by a shambles of oscilloscopes, commercial and home-built lasers, recording gear of all descriptions, and literally tons of equipment he didn't recognize at all. From somewhere to his left he heard a muttering, and simultaneously became aware of the odor of burning resin-core solder. He carefully picked his way towards the sound/smell, coughing loudly to advertise his presence.

Abruptly the muttering stopped. From behind a bench popped a head, then neck, shoulders, torso in distinct jerks, as if there were sequential time delays for each part of the body to realize the presence of a stranger. Finally the man had straightened out and stood, continuing to stare at Hoffman for a full five seconds. During that uneasy silence, Hoffman burned the physicist into his memory. Meneely was tall and rangy, with narrow face and unkempt hair; but dominating his appearance was a pair of extraordinarily thick glasses in which the neurophysiologist could see only the reflection of the overhead glow-panels. He had time for one wild thought—must be too thick for contacts—before the physicist finally spoke.

"Oh, yes, you must be Dr. Hoffman." His voice was high, nasal, monotonically formal. "Please sit down." He picked up a pile of books and papers from a chair, and put them on an already impossibly cluttered workbench. "I'm intrigued by your letters; I'd be very interested in hearing the exact manner in which you'd like to use the neutrino phaser."

Hoffman had no clues about how to act, but sensed he had to sell both his idea and himself at the same time. He decided on the side of humanity, smiling warmly into his reply: "I sure hope so, Dr. Meneely, because that's why I'm here. We'd like to build a rather unique kind of computer…

"… So we need a completely benign method of internally scanning a live human to build the electric analog. Oh. And one last thing, if you're interested. I've been authorized to offer you a salary of one megabuck if we can use your instrument and services."

Hoffman had talked for fifteen minutes without a sign of life from Meneely. Now the physicist spoke:

"Dr. Hoffman, since I demonstrated the phaser for the first time several months ago, I've had a multitude of requirements, requests, and demands presented me for its immediate employment. None of them interested me more than my current study, so I ignored them as best I could. But what you want to do is both interesting and worthwhile. I'm inclined very much to… say, do you play billiards?"

Hoffman, startled, focused his eyes on the physicist's face. Miraculously, it was engaged in an embarrassed grin. In a flash of insight, the physiologist realized that Meneely was one of those rare people who lacked the ability to shade his relationships with others; he was either completely formal or completed friendly, depending on some mysterious decision circuit in his head. He thought fleetingly that the physicist must have been hurt enough times so that he was usually slow to offer friendship. Considering himself lucky, he smiled.

"Matter of fact, I used to play quite a bit. Out of practice, though."

Meneely somehow looked relieved and eager at the same time. "Come on. I know a place that has tables with real slate beds instead of plastic hardpack. We can talk between innings." He shrugged off his lab coat, seeming to doff about twenty years in the process. Hoffman happily walked out the held-open door.

"… Cause of overlapping surface effects, the single lattice-layers of the new styrometals emit mono-energetic, unidirectional betas along one axis, and likewise neutrinos along another, if you hit them with a uniform magfield and laser pulse at the same time." Meneely was speaking as he lined up the break shot. "What I found out was that you could turn around and make an inferential detector out of the same kind of setup." He pushed his cue ball smoothly with top right english; both men watched as it began its long journey to the red ball, into the left corner, back against the right rail and squarely into Hoffman's ball with a soft click. He was already in Position for the next shot. "The only trick was to set up the computer to analyze the magfield changes in speed-of-light space, then make the coordinate transformations back to our-space quantum mechanics to deduce exactly where the neutrinos are when they pass through the target."

"Good stroke," Hoffman murmured half to himself, then, louder, "Speed-of-light space? What the Devil is that?"

"Huh? Why, I guess you'd call it a convenient mathematics. Some of the theoretical geniuses at Cal Tech dreamed it up about ten years ago to work meaningfully with the so-called massless particles. Gives 'em analogous wavelengths, Pauli numbers, Heisenberg uncertainty, and so forth. Say, I thought physiologists had to have a good background in physics." He missed his fourth billiard by millimeters. "Your shot."

Hoffman wry-grinned. "I thought I did have a good background; but frankly, I couldn't work my way past the 'what-it's-going-to-do-for-science' section of the SA article." He cautiously smoothed a corner-to-corner four-railer, making the billiard with a glancing kiss.

Meneely politely banged the butt of his cue against the floor. "Nice stroke. O.K., forgetting about theory, the instrument consists basically of this neutrino emitter and a couple of detectors. A neutrino pulse goes through the first detector, target, and second detector; and the outputs of the two detectors are compared, using that special SOL mathematics I was talking about. Then by quantum-mechanical 'back-dating,' so to speak, you can deduce the euclidian coordinates of objects the neutrinos went 'near.' " Meneely began to look put. "Its only limits are the bounds of your imagination!"

Dr. Jerome J. Kale gathered his notes together and stepped back from the podium amidst enthusiastic applause from the collected members of the American Association of Scientific Businessmen.

Hoffman, waiting for him in the wings, was still amazed by the duality of the computer scientist. He looked nearly subhuman—short, extremely broad, with low, slanting forehead and thick, dark features. His voice was raspy and his social language—in the short time during the day that Hoffman had had to judge—could be coarse at times. But the man could also be incredibly erudite, and was considered brilliant in his chosen discipline; he held PhDs in electrical engineering and computer science, was the author of a host of papers, owner of several patents, past president of CSAA, an FRS (honorary), ad infinitum. As Kale entered the wings, Hoffman greeted him.

"Pretty good speech."

"You really think so? I can't tell anymore; I give the same talk ten times a year with minor variations. Ready to go?"

"Any time, Jay."

"You're talking my language. I've been excited as a kid ever since I got that phone call from Mac a couple of months ago. Been waiting two years for a good excuse to quit that paper-pushing, butt-spreading vice presidency at General Software, and I'm happy to say that the last word of that speech was my final instant of employment." He forced his massive shoulders into a topcoat. "Meneely still planning to get on the plane in Denver?"

"No; I got a call from him about three hours ago. He had a last-minute job to take care of, so he'll catch a commercial flight to Seattle and meet us there tomorrow." The neurophysiologist glanced at his watch. "In the meantime, our bird leaves in about forty-five minutes.

Let's go."

During the flight Kale snored quietly, victim of the soporific whispering of the ramjet. Hoffman sat unmoving, eyes open, dreaming in that peculiarly self-aware fashion of the complex mind. Kale awoke as the jet changed modes for the descent, and glanced out the window.

"Hey, aren't we pretty far north for the approach to Sea-Tac?"

"Huh?" Hoffman broke out of his reverie. "Oh, didn't I tell you? The airstrip at the laboratory is finished now. We're going directly in to Whidbey Island.

"Oh." The computer scientist yawned, stretched. "How 'bout our condoms. How're they coming along?"

"All ready. You can send for you family and furniture any time. In fact, Meneely's bringing his wife with him so she can buy new furniture in Seattle." Hoffman picked up the yawn from Kale, used it to pop his ears. "Some of the technicians and machinists have already moved in."

"Say, what's this guy Meneely really like? I've heard conflicting stories."

Hoffman smiled, remembering the thoroughly enjoyable week he'd spent with the Meneelys. "A really brilliant man, but a little slow, socially; he takes a while to make friends, sometimes, so go easy on him at first. But you won't have to hold back on shop talk—in fact, I think he's already got some ideas of his own about the phaser-WiBAViS interface." He buckled his seatbelt. "And he shoots a damned good stick of billiards."

As he approached the door to his office, Hoffman reflected that if the hecticity of the three days since his landing on Whidbey were any indication, he'd be a sorry person by the end of the five-year project. He opened the door to find Meneely and Kale each occupying a corner of his desk.

"… A standard algorithm interface modified with a Dibiase splitter to sample in two dimensions."

"Yes, but you see, I'm already using Gestalt algorithms in my interpretive output circuits. Now it might be possible to shortcut directly into the breeder command circuits by—" Meneely looked up, waved casually. "Morning, Hank. Are we finally ready?"

"Hi, Clint, Jay. I hope so. You guys both got your notes warmed up? Good, let's run it." He strode around the desk, sat down, and took a sheaf of notes from the top drawer. "Have a seat, fellas, this is gonna take a while." He reached over to a panel on the side of the desk, flipped a switch, cleared his throat, and began talking in the overloud tone of the novice using a tape:

"Official report. From: Associative Computer Research Project, Whidbey Island, Washington. To: Dr. Robert Macpherson, Director of Research, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Subject: Organizational and first progress report of ACRP. Reporting: Dr. Henry D. Hoffman, Project Director and Chief of Physiological Division, Dr. Jerome J. Kale, Chief of Computer Division, and Dr. Clinton T. Meneely, Chief of Bioinstrumentation Division. The report of the Project Director follows…"

An hour later Hoffman flipped the recorder off, leaned back in his chair, and sighed gratefully. Well, that does it for six months. Now the fun begins. You've both done a fine job of luring good people out here to work on the project." He grinned devilishly. "Being able to offer long contracts at exorbitantly high wages has its advantages. Now. How long do you think it'll take you to set up that self-breeding core, Jay?"

"Well, it appears that we don't have to make any radical design changes, except to modify the WiBAViS to work in the five-molecule matrix. And we have a break with Clint's phaser; the interface looks like it'll be a snap. Our only real problem is to design an efficient setup to take care of the sheer number of core elements involved." He scratched his mop of black hair. "Let's see, I've got Tilsen coming out here from Bell labs in about six months, and I figure it'll be seven or eight months after that we'll be ready to go. Call it fifteen months to be safe."

Hoffman looked doubtful. "Only fifteen months. Are you sure? Nobody's ever tried to set up something this comprehensive before, have they?"

"Don't worry, Hank," Kale said confidently, "the obstacles aren't technological, only adaptive," he smiled; "and, you know, computer men have a long history of adapting creations to novel ends."

"Good," Hoffman said. "Then you'll have time to set up the WiBAViS to do the initial statistical work on the internal and peripheral receptors. Before we can even begin to design the indicator circuits we have to get distribution and density functions for every type of motor and autonomic nerve ending in every part of the body. Our big board is going to be crowded enough even with a five thousand-to-one reduction in the receptor/effector network; and to do that reduction I've got to have those statistics. Now, Clint, when will your brainchild be ready for scanning? I need it as soon as possible."

"For single-volume scans, I'll have it ready just as soon as I get it unpacked and aligned." He took off his glasses, and inspected them myopically. "Call it a couple of weeks. But as for trying to build a picture out of two or more volume shots, we've got to wait until we can come up with that clamp. And the final model, integrated into WiBAViS, will probably be a couple of years in the building."

Hoffman nodded, musing half out loud. "And I'll probably need at least twenty months myself to classify the unknown…" He stopped and thought intently for two minutes, then began again:

"O.K., the way I see it, we'll attack the problems this way…"

Robert Macpherson seated himself comfortably in the easy chair in Hoffman's office, and gazed briefly out the window at the brown and green definition of Whidbey Island in early winter. Hoffman was just beginning to speak.

"… Begin to tell you how grateful we all are at being given a free hand here, Bob. When I told you to give me the money and leave me alone for a couple of years, we were both giggling drunk; I had no ideal you'd take me literally."

Macpherson chuckled. "You've got some old-fashioned ideas about how research administrators operate these days, Hankboy. By the time the first Secretary of Research and Technology was sworn into the Cabinet, the government had learned quite a bit about the science of science, and we've continued to learn. With the Ecological Balance Program under tight control and almost licked, we get more and more money each year allotted to pure research. We're perfectly willing to give modest sums to bright lads with good ideas; and for substantial grants like yours we look at the basic concept, and the reputation and past work of the head man involved, then let him have his head. It's worked beautifully—you ought to see the size of the spin-off patent file from 1980-to-present. Why, even if the associative computer is a complete flop, the whole project will probably pay for itself in medical technology advances alone." He smiled. "But knowing you, I don't think it'll flop."

Hoffman mirrored his smile. "Hope you're right; it's been increasingly harder during the past couple of years to see the forest. But I think we'll be ready in six months or so to start putting it all together." He stood up. "Well, ready for the two-bit tour?"

"Lead on."

Hoffman stepped to the door, opened it, and motioned Macpherson out. "To the left; we'll visit the bioinstrumentation lab first." He checked his watch. "Clint Meneely should still be there; I'll let him tell you about his setup."

They walked into Meneely's laboratory; as always, it was a visual assault. Papers, scopes, and instrument racks abounded in apparently thoughtless disorder. Hoffman looked at the director's face, laughed softly. "It used to affect me that way, too, but I got over it. It's the only kind of environmeat Clint feels at home in. He—" Meneely's face popped up from behind a small core-talk unit "Speak of the devils Hi, Clint. Meet Bob Macpherson."

Meneely came around to the front of the console, wiping his hand on his lab coveralls. "How do you do, sir." They shook hands rather warmly while Hoffman looked on thankfully. He liked them both, and had done as much verbal groundwork as possible to make the physicist feel at home with Macpherson.

Meneely spoke shyly: "Welcome to the 'rat's nest,' Dr. Macpherson."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Clint. Understand you shoot a good stick."

Meneely's eyes lit up. "Well, my game's been going downhill the past couple of years." He looked slyly at Hoffman. "No competition, you know."

Macpherson hooked his thumb at the neurophysiologist. "If he's the only guy you have to play with, I don't blame you. I tried to teach him the game in college, but he couldn't do much more than soak up the rudiments."

Hoffman, laughing, broke into the conversation. "Please, fellows, my poor ego! Besides, we've only got half an hour till luncheon—then we'll see who sniggers at whom."

"You're on," said Macpherson, grinning. Then, turning to the physicist, "Say, I understand you've got a tourist attraction around here, somewhere."

"You mean the phaser setup? It's right in the next room. Come on, I'll show it to you."

As Meneely opened the door for the Director, Hoffman followed, really understanding for the first time the reason for Macpherson's success in the human hustle of the nation's capital. The man honestly enjoyed people; others felt that enjoyment, and responded to it.

The appearance of the "examining room," as it was called by the staff, was a neat visual opposite of Meneely's private lab—attesting to the essential orderliness of the technicians who worked there. Its dominating feature was a high, man-sized table in the center, ringed by six pieces of apparatus that looked disturbingly like laser slicers. The left-hand wall was completely occupied by several special-purpose computers, and the r...