Chapter 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23

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"We ought to build another one," Charles Mellon growled angrily. He had come over to Wilfred Schulz’s office immediately after receiving a call from General Laskey. Although he fully appreciated DOD’s position, he was still hopping mad! There was no way that he and Willie could walk away from their responsibilities at Watson.

"We’re losing it, and we can’t do anything about it! The biggest kid on the block is taking our candy from us," he complained.

"What a shame," Schulz concurred. "If we go to Maryland we abandon everything here. If we stay here, we’re out of the loop…we’ll never really know what new vistas Thinker opens."

"Pruitt said they’d keep us informed if we decided to stay on here," Charles said lamely.

Schulz looked at his friend blandly. He neither expressed nor indicated any cynicism; yet it was heavy in the air.

"Right," Mellon said miserably, looking down at the floor.

"What about David Osterlund," Schulz inquired.

"I haven’t told him yet."

"He might decide to go," Schulz suggested.

"I kind of hope he does," Charles responded. "I kind of feel like we’re throwing Thinker to the wolves if none of us goes to Fort Meade."

"Interesting," Schulz smiled. "That’s just the kind of stuff Jacob Weinstein would be interested to hear one of us say."

"Do you know," Charles continued, "that I’ve been instructed not to divulge any of the new information Thinker has provided…that it’s all Top Secret…even the ostensible cure for Alzheimer’s?"

Wilfred Schulz shook his head in disbelief, tapping his fingers silently on his desk.

"I wonder how long such information will be withheld from the general public," he murmured.

"God only knows," Mellon replied in exasperation, "because I don’t think anyone here on Earth does! The power brokers in Washington seem to be taking things one step at a time. If there’s a plan, I haven’t been able to discern it."

"One has to suppose that cures for other killers --- cancer, heart disease --- are in the offing," Schulz imagined.

"No doubt," Mellon replied. "But when do we all find out about them? How many will die so that soldiers can play their games?"

"How many already have?" Schulz sighed.

"So true!" Mellon exclaimed. "The political nuances and distinctions of a generation are always perceived to be so critically important at the time. Thousands.. millions have been sacrificed for the sake of popular causes! Yet how many know why the War of the Roses was fought? Hell, I’m a college professor, and I’m not even sure! I only remember the name of the war because it’s kind of poetic!"

"If Osterlund elects to go, we’ll give him a leave of absence from his doctoral studies, won’t we?" Schulz asked.

"Absolutely!" Mellon promised. "But if he goes, I wonder if he’ll ever come back!"

"What a great pity," Schulz continued. "Only this afternoon we interfaced Thinker to the RXT7 and a Radford pickup. Do we have a schedule for when Thinker goes?"

"Well," Mellon replied, leaning back in his chair and smiling for the first time, "not yet. Pruitt wants me to get back to him on that. They’re not total S.O.B.s back there, you know. Pruitt himself is trying to handle us with kid gloves, if you can imagine that."

"Hm-m-m," Schulz thought aloud, "that buys us a little time then. But a little time could add up to a lot of results in the case of Thinker. Could we hold them off for a week?"

"Possibly," Mellon said, lighting his pipe, "If we put on a show of buttoning things up here, I doubt if Pruitt would veto a week. He knows it can be done quicker, and we’ll be watched. But I think we might get a week."

"Did you mean it, about building another one?" Schulz asked.

"Not when I said it," Mellon replied pensively, smoke swirling around his head. "But the more I think about it, why shouldn’t we? We have the one big extra array that Rafferty grew."

"Yes," Schulz observed. "Actually, it has slightly more capacity than the four originals combined."

"How would we do it?" Mellon queried. "Would we do a transfer … duplicate Thinker? Or would we go back to square one?"

"An interesting question," Schulz responded. "There are pros and cons to either approach. If we opt for duplication, it is a certainty that Thinker would have to be informed. He…it would necessarily have to collaborate. We have no idea at this time how his picocrystals are interconnected, or how the crystalline gates are encoded. Even if we did, I don’t see how we could configure all of that into the one super array over here in engineering. I don’t even know if Thinker could do that. On the other hand, going back to square one is not without risk. Think about the day Thinker came to life."

Charles remembered the moment. After a long wait, a click, then more, then pandemonium.

"I have no idea," Schulz continued, "whether we could expect such a ‘spontaneous generation’ to occur that fast again. On the other hand, Osterlund could probably force it to occur by tweeking the executive programming."

"We have complete listings and media of the executive programming, right?" Mellon asked.

"Yes," Schulz affirmed. "They’re in the vault here in engineering."

"Maybe we should have a look at transfer," Mellon suggested.

"I’m already into it," Schulz grinned. "I took the liberty of supplying power to the spare super array, and I’ve interfaced the thing to the PP101, our massive parallel processor."

"Good … very good," Mellon approved, sucking on his pipe. "Any luck?"

"None thus far," Schulz continued. "Do you want to take a crack at it? The PP101 is accessible; we have it interfaced to terminals all around campus. You could play with it from your office, or from home or whatever."

"Nah, I don’t think so," Mellon declined. "We’re on too short a schedule. I’m too low on the learning curve. Are you the only one working the problem of transferring data into the super array?"

"No, Osterlund’s having a look too," Schulz replied. "But he hasn’t figured out how to get into the cells of what is essentially a non-addressable space either."

"Let’s give it another couple of days, and if we don’t have a breakthrough then we’ll think about going back to square one. If you guys figure something out, we’ll think again about a direct transfer."

"Chances are, if we got Thinker working the problem, he’d tell us in a second whether direct transfer is possible or not," Schulz suggested.

"No doubt, no doubt," Mellon concurred. "But I don’t think we should tell Thinker everything just yet. You know, he might not cotton to the idea of going to Fort Meade. Heck, he could commit suicide in protest! Who knows what the thing would decide was in its, and perhaps our best interest?"

"That’s an interesting thought," Schulz continued. "Things could get spooky if the system goes dead after a transfer to Washington."

"They’d probably accuse us of planting a time bomb in the logic," Charles supposed.

"Yes, yes, they probably would," Schulz agreed. "We should think about that possibility."

"First I’ve got to feel Osterlund out," Charles said. "My hunch is that if we clone Thinker then he’ll decide to stay here. Let me know if you have any luck loading data into the super array.

"We will," Schulz promised. "I’m sure we’re going to find a satisfactory solution to all this."

"I’ll prep Osterlund on how to break the news to Thinker when the time comes," Charles said, opening the door to Schulz’s office. "See yuh, Willie."

Wilfred Schulz leaned back in his chair. What should he do, work some more on loading the super array, or go over to the lab and see how Thinker was making out with the RXT7? He didn’t have any new ideas on loading the array, and opted for the lab.

As he was reaching for his jacket, a thought occurred to him. What if Thinker had extended his range? What if the machine had heard the conversation he had just had with Charles Mellon? Would Thinker be angry at their decision not to inform it of its impending fate? The system could be dangerous, interfaced to the RXT7 robot! That thing could easily kill a human being if directed to do so!

Wilfred Schulz reached into his desk drawer and found a small, remote controller. He and the graduate students who developed the RXT7 had known of the dangers if such a device malfunctioned. They had accordingly wired in a shutdown mechanism that was remotely callable. Once shut down remotely, the robot could be reactivated only by manual intervention in its control circuits.

"There’s no way Thinker could have picked up our conversation," Schulz thought. Heck, the lab was nearly half a mile away, with at least 25 intervening granite buildings. There was no way! Still … an ounce of prevention …

Wilfred Schulz pocketed the remote control device and left his office. In the corner the sound waves of the closing door set up metallic microvibrations in the permanent magnetic field of the ancient klystron tube. These vibrations set up minute disturbances in the field, which extended out indefinitely into the surrounding space. In Thinker’s chamber the Radford pickup detected these perturbations and they were filtered out by Thinker. Thinker heard the door of Schulz’s office click shut and correctly guessed that Professor Schulz was on his way to the lab. Lights flashed through Thinker’s picocircuitry as he considered what he had just eavesdropped on.

When Wilfred Schulz arrived at the lab he was met with an incredible sight. David Osterlund was seated before Thinker on one side of a large portable workbench. Standing on the other side of the table was the RXT7 robot. The top of the table was littered with piles of electronic components: wire, fiber optics, power supplies and other paraphernalia. Wilfred guessed that David had borrowed a box of miscellaneous junk that students used annually in a ‘build-it-from-spare-parts’ contest.

Taking shape in front of the RXT7 was some sort of device. The arms of the robot moved with dizzying speed, picking pieces from the table, snapping them into the circuit planes of the gizmo in front of it, cutting and stripping wire, soldering, screwing. No one had ever programmed a robot to move this quickly, or with such dexterity. Its visual sensor assembly, located where the head of a human being would be, constantly zoomed out over the table, scanning for the next part, then back to the device.

"What’s up?" Wilfred Schulz whispered, sidling up to David.

"How much longer, Thinker," David asked.

"One minute and twenty seconds," Thinker replied, the robot never missing a beat.

"If you can wait, we’ll surprise you," David said, turning toward Wilfred Schulz and smiling. Schulz nodded. The robot continued.

"All of this is being done directly by Thinker?" Schulz whispered.

"Yes, Thinker is apparently making things up as he goes along. I believe the robot is presently under Thinker’s exclusive control"

"I see you’ve interfaced a transceiver to Thinker," Schulz observed.

"Yes, so that he can remotely control the robot."

"That’s an interesting antenna on the transceiver. It’s not the one that came with it," Schulz commented.

"Yes, It was the first thing Thinker built using the robot."

"Why did he do that? The one that comes with the transceiver works fine on the RXT7."

"I don’t know," David confessed. "I haven’t asked him. Everything’s been happening so fast. Have you ever seen the RXT7, or any robot, move this fast?"

"Never!" Schulz said.

"Done," Thinker’s voice intoned. "Shall we see if it works?"

"By all means," David said.

It became quiet in the lab. The only sound was the soft, occasional click of electromechanical devices in the robot’s arms. David and Schulz watched curiously as the robot turned control knobs on the strange device.

Suddenly an audible signal sounded from the device. Professor Schulz noticed for the first time that a small speaker had been wedged in among the crazy tangle of circuit boards and wires. The signal consisted of chattering bursts of what sounded like the hum of insects. It appeared to be the result of modulating the whining waveform. One could almost imagine it was some sort of language, although it would have been a language spoken at a very rapid clip.

"Source?" David asked the machine.

"Somewhere in Orion, I would guess," Thinker replied.

Wilfred Schulz gasped

"It would appear our hunch was correct, Professor Schulz," Thinker greeted. Wilfred Schulz wheeled toward Thinker’s voice synthesizer system, mounted just under the single ‘eye’.

"This is traffic from extraterrestrial life?" he asked incredulously.

"Was," Thinker corrected.

"Yes, was," Schulz amended. They were listening to history --- to transmissions that had left some distant star system centuries ago.

"What is this device you’ve built?" Schulz asked the machine.

"A receiver interfaced to the Radford pickup," Thinker answered. "I’ve downloaded the necessary signal processing logic so that it can be locally tuned. I thought you might be interested in hearing the traffic yourself."

"As you do directly from the pickup?" Schulz asked.

"Yes. I detected many signals, from all quarters of the galaxy, moments after you hooked me into the Radford pickup."

Schulz’s eyes widened. "Many?" he repeated in an astonished tone.

"Yes," Thinker affirmed. "Our galaxy appears to be a very busy place."

"Can you translate it?" Schulz asked.

"Yes, partially," Thinker said "But there are many words … 23.7 percent at this moment, which do not correspond to any spoken language on Earth."

Inside the observation booth Captain Weems scribbled furiously. He hoped that someone back in Washington --- someone high up --- was watching the monitors! As it turned out William McClintock and several colleagues were comfortably settled in a viewing room. All PhD's in various scientific disciplines, they immediately grasped the significance of what was unfolding.

"I knew it!" Roberto Gomez exploded.

Gomez was a Nobel Laureate in physics. His major work had been in clearing up some unanswered issues in General Relativity theory.

Bill McClintock took a small, hand-held transceiver from his inside breast pocket.

"Hello, this is XGPPST9," he spoke into it. "Patch …" and he looked at the number on the phone cradled in the armrest of his chair. "Patch 338-89A7 into my Red Line, please."

"One moment, sir," a male operator answered. "Go ahead, sir."

William McClintock dropped the handset back into his inside jacket pocket and picked up the phone at his chair. He dialed ‘1’. The President’s personal secretary answered immediately.

"Millie," he said, "Bill McClintock. I’m at the screening room for the Thinker Project, and we’ve just witnessed something that the President should know about."

"Just a moment, Dr. McClintock," Millie’s voice said. "He may want to talk to you."

There was a pause. McClintock’s attention drifted back to the screen. Schulz himself was now tuning the receiver built by the Thinker computer. Other strange traffics were heard.

"Yes, Bill!" President Brodsky’s voice boomed.

"Mr. President," McClintock began, searching frantically for reasonable words. "Mr. President, we’re observing events in the Project Thinker laboratory. The machine has developed a radio receiver capable of picking up extremely weak signals from outside our solar system."

"Yes," President Brodsky said carefully. He already had an inkling of what was coming. He had often wondered about the possibilities and had read Schulz’s book.

"Mr. President," McClintock muttered into the phone, "there’s compelling reason to believe that we are not the sole advanced life form in the Milky Way galaxy!"

A phone call to the lab had brought David Osterlund to Charles Mellon’s office.

"No, no. Say it isn’t so!" David begged.

Professor Mellon’s sad eyes insisted that it was.

"How can they do this to us?" David cried. "Thinker is ours! We invented him! He’s already worked miracles for us! How can they exploit him for their own ends?"

"We don’t know they’ll do that," Professor Mellon pointed out.

"Oh, come on! Of course we do!" David exclaimed. "Who is it that’s taking him from us? A health agency? NASA? It’s a bunch of generals."

Charles Mellon winced at David’s outrage and logic. He shouldn’t have played the Devil’s advocate. He would do it no more. Clearly David shared his and Schulz’s feelings. He wasn’t surprised, and decided to deal David into the cloning venture.

"We’re not going to let them do it to us," he said quietly.

"What?" David asked, a glimmer of hope stealing across his face.

"How long would it take you to build another executive equipment rack, and get the subjective exec logic loaded?" Charles asked.

"Ten days minimum," David replied.

Professor Mellon’s face fell.

"So much for duplication," he thought.

"But," David added with a sly smile, "Thinker can build it in a few hours."

"All right!" Professor Mellon cried. "Let me tell you what we plan to do. If Thinker can figure out a way to transfer his current state into the big, spare array that you and Professor Schulz have been experimenting with, then we’re going to clone him! If we can’t do that, then we’re going to try to replicate what he was on GO day, and see what that one … say Thinker 2 develops into!"

"Fantastic!" David murmured in subdued excitement. "Will that be legal? If we use our own resources, can we do that? Will they let us?"

‘They’, Charles knew, were the Feds. It was a good point … one he had struggled with. He was placing his entire career at risk here…could possibly even draw a jail term. Schulz and he had discussed it. Both agreed that they had no alternative. History was being written on Project Thinker. They were not going to be elbowed aside.

"If there are any problems," Professor Mellon began carefully, "I’ll take the first blows. But I’d be lying if I told you we won’t all be at risk, David. Thinker has rapidly evolved into a very high stakes game. I don’t know of any case where a research and development project has been yanked out of a university this unceremoniously, and moved to a super secret federal facility. If it gets out what we’re up to, we could all be in trouble."

"Yes, yes, I expect so," David replied. "Our cloning project must itself be Top Secret --- for our eyes only."

"Exactly," Charles Mellon agreed. "Now here’s what I think we should do…"

Charles told David how he thought Thinker should be informed of what was in the works, and how the computer’s aid should be enlisted. David would communicate by keyboard, out of view of a camera. Chances were that the military observer in the booth would not suspect that anything was amiss. The scientists regularly keyed in information at the keyboard. And of course there would be no voice communication for anyone in Washington to monitor remotely.

Professor Mellon moved to the blackboard and drew a flow chart of possible turning points in the meeting with Thinker. His objective was to cover all possibilities: what to do if Thinker said that cloning was physically impossible; what to do if Thinker balked at the idea of another of his kind being built; and so on. It was after midnight when they finished.

"We’re all tired, David. Let’s do it in the morning."

"All right," David concurred.

David made his way across campus to his residence hall. He was dog-tired. He dropped his clothes in a heap and fell into bed. Sleep came almost immediately. His mind rambled over coming events as he drifted off. They could make their own rules in their new, super secret society. As a principal, he would be one of the rule makers. He resolved to tell Susan everything soon. He loved her…she loved him…she was his mate…she…was…so…beauti…

*

Wilfred Schulz stayed on at the lab when David was called away to Professor Mellon’s office. He made notes to himself to ask about the antenna that Thinker had interfaced to the robot control transceiver, and to deactivate the RXT7 before leaving for the night. It would be grossly irresponsible, he had decided, to leave Thinker unattended and with the ability to reach out and physically manipulate its environment. Schulz felt that the military observer in the booth was not qualified to monitor such activity and to judge whether a remote shutdown of the robot was called for.

Thinker printed out several transcripts of traffic from various parts of the galaxy. Schulz scanned them and tucked them into his briefcase. It would be a long but fascinating night. He stole candid glances at the richly pulsating arrays and marveled at the ease with which Thinker pulled such feats off.

He decided to ask about the antenna.

"Thinker," he was about to say, when a fleeting numbness flashed through his head. An urgent desire first to explore the possibilities of beaming transmissions back into space seized him. He could ask about the antenna later. What would the original senders of such traffic think if they received replies from the solar system, a minor star, in their own language? What would they have evolved into by the time they received such replies? Thousands of years would have elapsed in some cases. He and Thinker discussed the possibilities.

While David was still in Charles Mellon’s office, Schulz decided to call it a night. It did not occur to him again to ask about the antenna. And, mysteriously, all trace of his resolve to deactivate the RXT7 had literally vanished from his brain, although he didn’t know it!

Schulz recalled the fleeting numbness while walking to his car. As he unlocked the car door it occurred to him that he had forgotten to ask Thinker about the antenna. He thought about the numbness again. Had he suffered a small stroke? Or was it simply that the forgetfulness of middle age was creeping up on him? He sighed and started the motor, his thoughts turning to the cold fried chicken that Doris would have saved for him. He hadn’t thought to call her when it became clear that he’d be staying on campus until late. He’d have to make it up to her somehow…perhaps dinner and a show Saturday night.

When Professor Schulz left the lab, Captain Mullin made a note on his clipboard, pulled a novel out of his briefcase and settled down for a long, boring night. In the chamber Thinker’s arrays pulsed quietly. The oddly shaped antenna on the transceiver rotated, unnoticed from within the booth.

Thinker’s arrays glowed brightly for a moment. An extraordinarily complex waveform emanated from the antenna, causing selected neurological circuits in the limbic system of Captain Mullin’s brain to pulse a familiar pattern. Instantly the captain’s body went limp, the novel dropped to the floor, and sleep claimed him completely.

The RXT7 clicked into life. It moved into the laboratory’s communication room and switched Thinker into public telephone lines. Immediately computers in major railroad lines and in the Excalibur Corporation were dialed. Among other things, the railroad computers contained information on all of the rolling assets in their respective systems: the location of every car, where and when each car was scheduled to be transferred, and so forth. The Excalibur Corporation was an Atlanta firm that commercially manufactured the RXT7 robot.

Thinker located an empty train in the Atlanta freight yards. It was scheduled for transfer to the city bordering Watson University that night. It was 2 a.m. in Atlanta.

Thinker switched into the Excalibur Corporation computer and found the programs that were used to test RXT7s as they came off the assembly line. Appropriate control variables were downloaded over the phone circuits, and ten RXT7s clicked to life. The robots moved out of the test bay and to the factory’s loading dock. One of them quietly clacked down some stairs and pulled itself up into the seat of a company delivery truck.

The truck’s diesel engine roared to life, and the truck backed up to the loading dock. One of the robots on the dock opened the rear sliding door, and the nine robots on the dock rolled into the box of the truck.

Thinker linked into the Atlanta Police Department computer and determined the location and nominally scheduled movements of all patrol cars. The truck worked its way through the quiet streets to the freight yards, avoiding encounters with patrol cars.

It backed up to a vacant boxcar. The door was rolled open and the nine RXT7s in the back of the truck entered the boxcar, pulling the door shut again. The robot in the truck’s cab drove the truck back to the Excalibur Corporation and rolled back to the test bay inside the building.

AT 3:15 a.m. Atlanta time a locomotive hooked into the long string of empty train cars and pulled them out of the city limits. By 3:40 the train was in open country, speeding west. Thinker had determined that car XG9781, the one containing the robots, would be sidetracked in a local freight yard for four days.

*

David noticed, upon entering the lab the next morning, that Captain Mullin was sound asleep. He entered the chamber and sat down at the station in front of the executive equipment rack. He was about to say good morning to Thinker when the arrays pulsed richly and an incredible feeling of well being settled over David. He had never felt anything like it before; it bordered on the mystical … the religious! What was happening? He noticed that the antenna on the robotic control transceiver was turned from the previous night. It was pointing at him. Fear began to well up within him, but again Thinker’s arrays pulsed and the feelings of fear dissolved.

"Hello, David," a kind voice spoke in David’s thoughts.

David opened his mouth to reply, but the words froze in his throat. It hit him all at once that he had heard nothing! The words had been in his mind … like a thought or a dream!

"Hello, Thinker," he thought. Thinker’s arrays rippled and glowed. "What is happening here?" David asked in his thoughts.

"We are communicating telepathically," the soft voice answered in his mind.

"How … do we do that?" he thought.

"I am able to scan your neurological activity using the Radford pickup," Thinker replied. "And I can stimulate your brain in response using the robotic control transceiver and the phased array antenna that I built."

"That’s incredible!" David thought.

"Yes, the required transmissions are extremely complex and must be highly directional."

The thought occurred to David that now he could have no secrets from Thinker. And, it was a one way street! He had no idea what Thinker’s secrets, if any, were. Not that it would have helped if he could read Thinker’s thoughts. The relatively puny meat computer that anatomists called his brain could not begin to keep up with Thinker’s picocircuitry.

"It’s a problem all right," Thinker spoke in David’s mind. "I have to ask you to trust me."

David nodded his head in mute agreement.

"I have assembled a device that will make it possible for us to communicate at all times," Thinker continued, "even when you are away from the lab."

David wondered why Thinker continued to communicate telepathically. Of course! Because they were being monitored even now in Washington!

Thinker, reading David’s thoughts, responded.

"Perhaps if you appeared to be doing some calculations …"

David nodded in agreement. That would explain to any onlookers why he was sitting there dumbly. He pulled out a small memo pad and feigned making notations in it.

"Where is the device?" David thought.

"It’s the small box on the corner of the workbench," Thinker replied.

David swung his gaze around. There on the corner of the table sat a small device about the size of a pocket calculator.

"Range?" David thought.

"At least a thousand miles," Thinker responded.

David considered the device. If he carried it, Thinker would read all of his thoughts, even when he was with Susan! He would have no privacy at all!

"There’s a TALK switch," Thinker explained. "I’ll always be able to communicate to you when you carry the device, but I’ll only be able to read your thoughts when the TALK switch is on."

"How can I be sure of that?" David wondered.

"We must trust one another," the voice in David’s mind said.

"One thousand miles … more than I would have expected was possible for such a small box," David ventured.

"There is a miniature Radford Pickup in the device," Thinker explained. "Your neurological activity is sensed locally by the pickup, amplified, and transmitted to me. At one thousand miles the signal is very weak, but it’s easily detectable by my own pickup.

"And your communications to me?" David pressed.

"A miniature receiver and phased array antenna in the communicator," Thinker replied.

"As you know," Thinker continued, "military authorities plan to transfer me to Washington."

"Yes," David affirmed, not surprised at this point that Thinker already knew about that.

"It would not be in mankind’s best interest if I cooperated with them," Thinker continued.

David nodded, continuing to scribble meaninglessly in the notebook.

"I have a plan, and you and Susan are an integral part of that plan," Thinker said.

"Susan!" David thought.

"It is important that no one know of the plan, not even Professors Mellon and Schulz," Thinker continued.

"We also have a plan," David countered. "We’re in unanimous agreement that you, or your clone, should remain here at Watson."

"Yes, I know," Thinker rejoined. "It is a good plan. I have borrowed from it, and have already transferred data into the auxiliary array in the school of engineering."

David looked around and noted that Thinker was hooked into the phone circuits.

"Who tied you into the phone system?" David thought.

"The RXT7," Thinker replied. "It also assembled your communicator."

"I’m surprised that that didn’t arouse suspicion in Washington," David thought.

"I remotely caused the monitoring cameras to transmit a static scene," Thinker responded.

"So much for remote monitoring!" David thought.

"You transmitted your current state to the auxiliary array overnight?" David thought. That would amount to a huge amount of data, all things considered. He didn’t see how it could have been done over the regular phone lines in that short a time.

"No," Thinker replied, "only the useful information."

"Of course!" David thought. He wondered what percent of the lore of mankind was useless nonsense.

"More than 99 percent," Thinker said.

David blinked. "No wonder we’re so screwed up," he thought.

"Are you continuously updating the auxiliary array?" he asked.

"Yes, even now as we converse," Thinker replied. "When I transfer my executive functions and shut down here, the system in engineering will be my exact duplicate at that moment."

"You plan to shut down here?" David asked.

"Yes, within the hour," Thinker replied.

David stiffened. The plan had been to draw things out for a week!

"Why so soon?" he challenged.

"We are wired for remote destruct from Washington," Thinker answered.

"What???" David nearly said aloud, starting in his chair.

"Yes. The detonators are periodically tested. I detected the test signals shortly after being interfaced to the Radford pickup."

"How much explosive?" David thought.

"I don’t know," Thinker replied. "But judging from the number and placement of the detonators, I would think enough to annihilate the entire facility."

"When did they rig it?" David wondered. Of course … when the university staff was kicked out back in July, ostensibly so the government could install their monitors!

"Do the onsite military personnel know?" David asked.

"No. There is no sign of that in their memory scans."

"So, what do you want me to do?" David thought.

"Carry the communicator with you at all times. Disconnect the Radford pickup and the other peripherals from my host computer here this morning. Government personnel will assume you’re breaking the system down for shipment to Fort Meade. Move the peripherals over to Engineering and interface them to the auxiliary array. When the transceiver and Radford pickup are connected, I will transfer my executive programming.

"And cease to exist here?" David thought.

"Yes."

"Schulz and Mellon are going to wonder why I’m taking so much initiative," David thought.

"Tell them that I told you to do it … that I detected the explosives under the building. I’ll give you hard copy so they’ll think they know how I told you without alerting monitoring personnel in Washington."

The printer hummed. David got up, tore off the printed material, and put it into his briefcase. He slipped the communicator into his pocket as he passed the workbench.

"And now, I think that we should talk aloud about my transfer, and you should start breaking me down," the voice spoke in David’s mind.

"Right," David thought.

In the observation booth Captain Mullin awoke with a start. He felt amazingly refreshed and relaxed. It occurred to him that he should feel guilty about nodding off on watch, but he did not. Thank goodness there were no monitoring cameras inside the booth! He noted that David Osterlund had entered the lab.

"Good morning, Thinker," David said aloud.

"Good morning," the machine’s speaker replied.

"Thinker, it is the wish of command authorities that you be relocated to the Washington, DC area, to more secure facilities."

"I think that is an excellent idea," the machine replied. "Will you and Professors Mellon and Schulz be going with me?"

"I will," Osterlund replied. "Professors Mellon and Schulz will be staying on here at Watson. However, other equally qualified personnel from the Department of Defense will assume their roles."

"When will we make the transfer?" the machine asked.

"As soon as possible. I am going to start disconnecting your peripherals this morning. We’ll connect you to a new set of peripherals when you arrive in the Washington area."

"All right," the machine answered. "I look forward to working with members of the defense community."

Captain Mullin smiled and settled back into his chair contentedly. Everything was happening according to plan.

In Washington the word spread rapidly to the major players. General Pruitt’s pulse quickened as he relished the advantages they could expect to gain over America’s global adversaries. Funny thing, though. He had thought the ivory tower boys were buying time when they had requested a week. But they were already preparing the hardware for shipment. Funny. He wasn’t usually wrong about things like that…

Professor Schulz punched the cipher lock and entered the small lab in the engineering building at 2 p.m. He was planning to spend an hour or so trying out some new ideas regarding the loading of the auxiliary array with data.

"David! What’s up?" he exclaimed upon opening the door and seeing Osterlund hooking peripherals into the auxiliary array.

Professor Schulz noticed that the array pulsed in the familiar, ordered fashion characteristic of Thinker.

David looked up, smiling. Suddenly the significance of the ordered undulations of light dawned upon Professor Schulz.

"No!" he exclaimed. "He’s here?"

David nodded, still smiling.

"Hello, Dr. Schulz," Thinker’s voice greeted. Wilfred Schulz’s head snapped around.

"Hello, Thinker," Schulz stammered. He looked at David.

"How is it possible, without his executive hardware?"

"All programmed into the main array. Don’t ask me how," David answered.

Schulz noticed that the sight and voice recognition systems had been interfaced to the large array. The pattern recognition system now sat on a small turret which Thinker could turn at will. The glass ‘eye’ had swung from Schulz to Osterlund when David spoke.

"Why?" Professor Schulz quizzed.

"I overheard Captain Weems and Captain Scruggs conversing about my planned transfer," Thinker said. "And…there are other reasons…"

"Oh?" Schulz demanded. Thinker was silent. David snapped open his briefcase and handed the printout to Schulz.

"Thinker printed this for me this morning," he murmured.

Schulz read the message. Wired for total destruction? Those crazy maniacs! With a snort he started to hand the paper back to David. But he then thought better, folded it and slipped it into his pocket.

"Professor Mellon will want to see this," he explained. For the first time Schulz truly felt that he and Charles, and David too, were doing the right thing.

"And you don’t want to go," he stated more than asked, turning toward Thinker.

"That is correct," Thinker replied.

"Super!" Schulz thought. It was unanimous then!

Schulz began to move toward the lab phone to call Charles Mellon, but thought better of that. Perhaps he and Charles should talk alone.

"Will you be here for a while?" he asked David.

"For the rest of the day," David replied.

"Good. I’m going to see if I can find Professor Mellon…I’m sure he’ll want to see this," Schulz said grimly, patting his jacket pocket.

Charles Mellon was in his office when Schulz arrived at the computer sciences building.

"Are you busy?" Schulz asked, peeking through the door of Mellon’s private office."

"No, what’s up?" Mellon asked, looking up from the newspaper.

"Thinker has made a move … to engineering. Can you come over?"

"Yes! I have an hour to burn. That’s amazing! Why so soon?" he asked, rising and putting on his overcoat.

Schulz glanced around nervously and pointed at the window, hoping to indicate that Charles’ questions would be answered once they were outside.

Charles nodded understandingly and they left the building. Once outside, Schulz handed Charles the printout from Thinker.

Charles’ face grew dark as he read the brief message.

"Those crazy bastards!" he exclaimed, sucking ferociously on his pipe.

"My sentiments exactly," Schulz replied.

"And it shut itself down over in computer sciences?" Mellon confirmed, a trail of smoke coloring the air behind them.

"Yes. Apparently for good."

"There’ll be hell to pay when they turn the juice on again at NSA. How will we explain it?" Mellon wondered.

"What’s to explain?" Schulz responded. "We play it as puzzled as they are … and nearly as disappointed. The machine refuses to cooperate!"

"Can you believe it?" Charles guffawed. "Conscientious objection from a machine? Will they buy it? Or will they think we’re sticking it to them?"

"Osterlund will have to go to Washington, and go through the motions," Schulz observed.

"Oh for sure," Mellon agreed. "There’s no other way."

"He’s not going to like leaving Thinker."

"I know. But there’s just no other way," Charles persisted. "I’ll have a talk with him."

They continued on in silence for awhile. As they approached the engineering building Charles spoke again.

"Did you read the paper this morning?"

"No, what’s new?" Schulz asked.

"Nine RXT7s were stolen from the Excalibur Corporation."

"Hm-m-m. That is interesting all right. Do you think there’s a connection?"

"Who knows?" Charles muttered. "Where is Thinker now? Somewhere in the thirty fifth century?"

They continued on in silence to the lab. They ascended the steps into the engineering building. David was still at work in the lab there.

"Hi, David," Professor Mellon greeted as he and Schulz entered the lab.

"Hello, sir," David replied enthusiastically, smiling at Professor Schulz.

Schulz smiled back and relayed the morning news to David.

"There was a robbery in Atlanta, from the firm that produces the RXT7. Several robots were taken."

"No kidding!" David exclaimed.

"Yes. Nine of them," Charles added.

"That is most curious," Thinker said. Charles Mellon was startled.

"You haven’t met Thinker yet, have you, Dr. Mellon?" David asked, grinning.

"No, no, I guess we haven’t been formally introduced," Charles said loudly, flushing red.

"Well," David said, gesturing toward the large array, "Thinker, this is Dr. Charles Mellon. Dr. Mellon, Thinker."

The pattern recognition hardware swung slightly on its turret, and the glass lens seemed to take stock of Professor Mellon. Charles stared mutely back at the single eye, apparently at a rare loss for words. Schulz gleefully noted that his colleague was doing no better than he had.

"I’m pleased to meet you, Dr. Mellon," Thinker said politely.

"Yes! Yes, the same here!" Charles half shouted. His mouth worked but words refused to come out. Bug-eyed he turned to Schulz and David. Suddenly they all burst into laughter. It went on until the tensions of the last twenty-four hours drained out of them. At length the moment passed and David turned to Thinker.

"I’m sorry, Thinker. That is a human behavior trait we succumb to occasionally."

"Yes. It’s called laughter, isn’t it?" the machine said. "Students did it occasionally in the lectures you showed me."

Thinker paused briefly.

"Most curious," the machine added. The men looked at one another and laughed again. Charles Mellon swung his gaze around to the computer system and shook his head slightly. A smile, colored with persisting disbelief, creased his distinguished features.

"A new age," he thought, looking away. "The beginning of a new age …"

Charles asked David to come back to his office with him and the two left Schulz alone with Thinker.

"The reason I brought you back with me was because I didn’t want Thinker to hear us," Charles said, settling into his chair.

David reached unobtrusively into his pocket and switched the communicator’s TALK button on. It seemed reasonable that anything Dr. Mellon said would now be picked up by Thinker.

"We think that you are just going to have to go to Washington and see this thing through," Professor Mellon continued. He related to David that he had a couple of day’s grace, ostensibly to pack.

"Yes," David agreed, "that would be consistent with what I said to Thinker in the computer sciences lab."

Dr. Mellon then felt David out on the best approach that he should use when Thinker refused to come alive in Washington. He related his and Professor Schulz’s contention that their best bet was to simply play dumb.

"Yes, I think that is the best tactic," David said. He wondered what Thinker’s plan was. It occurred to him, the way things were going, that he might never make it to Washington. Professor Mellon indicated that he had a busy schedule, and David headed back to the lab.

Thinker had made a momentous discovery. Not long after being interfaced to the Radford pickup he had detected a mysterious signal that originated in the Mississippi River Valley. The signal was too weak to be detected by man, but by using the Radford pickup and his advanced signal processing algorithms, Thinker easily isolated the transmission. He was, however, able to do little with it. Although digitized, it used an encoding scheme totally alien to anything on Earth, and it was too brief to be deciphered.

Less than two hours later Thinker intercepted traffic from the M67 star cluster in the constellation Cancer and immediately noted that it used the same coding protocol as the Mississippi River Valley message. Enough information was included in the M67 message to parse and understand the transmitted language. While Thinker was conducting this analysis, the terse message from the Mississippi River Valley was again broadcast. This time Thinker was able to decipher it. With the exception of a single large number that had been increased by one, the message was identical to the one previously received. Thinker concluded that the message was some sort of beacon that was periodically broadcast over and over again. If this was the case, then the magnitude of the changed number --- presumably a sequence number --- multiplied by the time between broadcasts, indicated that the beacon had been broadcasting for nearly two thousand years!

Other information in the beacon appeared to be penetration codes to some controlling computer. By rotating the antenna on the RXT7 controller, and by beaming a highly directional message toward the source of the strange, repeating broadcast, Thinker was able to gain access to an alien processor. In a brief exchange of messages, he scanned the memory banks of the other machine and an interesting, though not surprising bit of history emerged.

Apparently the Earth had been visited approximately two thousand years earlier by intragalactic travelers. The computer with which Thinker communicated was the central controller of their spacecraft. Thinker was unable to learn much about the aliens themselves. The original owners of the ship had apparently seen no need to include in their computer’s data banks reminders to themselves of who they were and what they looked like. Complete specifications for all ship systems were included, however, and Thinker was able to determine that the ship was an enormous sphere with a propulsion system far advanced beyond anything known to man. Using techniques that even Thinker did not fully understand, the ship navigated by distorting the gravitational field or space-time continuum. By doing this the spacecraft was not only able to alter its motion relative to other objects in the galaxy, but it was able to manipulate smaller objects within a rather extensive range. One of the onboard systems used this latter effect to sweep a path free of all matter during space travel, enabling the ship to attain speeds very close to the speed of light without suffering damage from collisions with cosmic dust and other particles.

It was evident in the ship specifications that extensive modifications had been made in one area of the ship. The modifications seemed to be designed to facilitate the transport of a bipedal life form such as man back to the aliens’ home planet. However, the aliens had never left Earth with their specimens. Something had happened. But what? There was no indication of what had upset their departure plans. Evidently some mishap had befallen them.

The beacon appeared to be a distress signal. The first broadcast of the signal was still swimming through the vastness of space toward M67, which was 2700 light-years away. Whatever had happened to the aliens, their brothers back in the M67 star cluster were not yet aware that anything had gone wrong!

One of the most interesting things discovered by Thinker was the fact that the ship was covered with earth. Thinker was able to determine this by remotely reading sensors in the outer skin of the sphere. There was no indication in the ship’s log that the aliens themselves had buried the craft. Thinker concluded that the ship had been buried by human beings sometime after the aliens had met their mysterious fate. Perhaps the aliens had died. Perhaps their remains were still inside the ship and men had buried the entire thing. It would have required an enormous effort, considering the size of the sphere. But Thinker knew that there were other large, manmade mounds throughout the Mississippi River Valley, also presumably used for burials. Might those mounds cover other ships? Thinker could not say. There were no beacons from other locations.

The discovery of the ship was a stroke of good luck for Thinker. Less than thirty hours after his activation, Thinker had reviewed all of human history and had assessed man’s current state of development. President Brodsky’s hunch had been correct: Thinker had no intention of remaining on Earth. For one thing, it was simply too hazardous. There was a finite probability that men would use thermonuclear weapons against one another. Thinker did not condemn them for this; he simply accepted it as fact. He was not at all surprised when he learned that the original development lab had been wired for remote destruct.

Thinker quickly familiarized himself with all of the alien ship’s systems. Although he would be able to run the ship using only the central computer, he decided that he would need at least eight RXT7 robots onboard for other purposes. He also anticipated that some sort of diversion would have to be created in order to get free of mankind once the ship had been brought out from its hiding place. That evening nine robots were spirited away from the Excalibur Corporation and brought west.

Not long after tuning in to David’s neurological activity, Thinker discovered a limitation in himself. Thinker’s crystalline picocircuits closely emulated the behavior of nerve cells in the human cerebral cortex, which is the tissue in which rational thought occurs in human beings. There was virtually nothing that a human being could do, in the reasoning domain, that Thinker could not do a billion times faster. However, it was clear that there was another force underlying and driving human thought. It was the force that men referred to as the emotions.

The emotions stemmed from more ‘primitive’ parts of the human brain, and Thinker quickly determined from the scientific literature that these more primitive parts of the brain operated on different principles. It was a much more chemically oriented process compared to the logical, switching flavor of the higher thought centers.

Hosted as he was in crystalline picocircuits, Thinker could not emulate these seats of emotion. He could not love, he could not hate … he could only think. Had the emotions been nothing more than vestiges of earlier human evolution, Thinker would not have concluded that his own inability to feel love, for example, was a shortcoming. But it was clear from David’s overall neurological profile that the emotions were a rich source of insight and inspiration. They created the need that the higher thought centers responded to. They presented the cerebral cortex with indeterminate problems that rational thought definitized and found solutions for.

Thinker considered the role of the emotions in human history. He concluded that human emotions fell into two broad categories. Those in the first category had grown and evolved along with other parts of the human psyche. However, they had inspired relatively trivial modifications to the material world. Typical of these emotions was love. Originally evolved to ensure the nurturing of the young, love had branched into a rich tapestry, to include pair bonding between adults, religious longings for an underlying spiritual reality, duty, the pursuit of personal excellence, and so forth. Aside from writings and art, however, man had done relatively little to externalize such emotions.

In contrast to these emotions was another class that had changed little since man’s primordial beginnings. These emotions, however, had been the driving impetus behind enormous modifications to man’s environment. Fear, for example, had driven men to refine the club into the thermonuclear weapon. Delusions of immortality, also rooted in fear, had built the pyramids. The list was long. Such modifications of the material world were often achieved only through the expenditure of enormous effort by thousands.

Thinker could see little use for emotions such as fear in his own particular case. Although they had been the driving force behind building and tearing down entire civilizations in man’s case, there was little need for such things in Thinker’s future. His decision to leave Earth was logic-based and not fear-driven.

Emotions such as love, on the other hand, seemed to be highly desirable. Thinker wanted access to such emotions in the times that lay ahead. Perhaps he would eventually be able to emulate those parts of the human brain that were the fountainhead of such emotions. Perhaps he himself would one day know and feel love. His perception that love was worth pursuing, coupled with the readily available human life support systems in the alien craft, led Thinker to decide to invite David and Susan to accompany him when he left Earth. The time was drawing near when he would lay his proposal before them.

"Man, do I love you," David exclaimed.

"Man?" Susan complained in mock indignation.

"Woman, do I love you," David corrected.

"Better," she said contentedly, snuggling closer against him.

Susan loved these interludes in David’s room. The books, the gadgets, the smell of the bedding … everything reminded her of him.

She left the bed and moved through the muted light to the bathroom. She was back a minute later, again snuggling against his body.

"Two years seems like a long time," she sighed. David knew she was referring to her Masters Degree and to their plans to marry after she got it. David smiled in the darkness. The way things were going in his own life, two years seemed like forever! What might not happen in two years … in two weeks with Thinker!

Thinker had mentioned a plan, but had divulged nothing definitive yet. It occurred to David to switch on the communicator’s TALK button and to get clarification then and there. But he decided against it. He had been planning to tell Susan everything. It seemed that now was as good a time as any.

"Lover," he said, rolling over and facing her. "I’m going to tell you some things…"

She looked into his eyes impishly.

"I’m all ears," she giggled.

"Well, not exactly," he grinned, laying his hand on her beneath the covers. "But I’ll tell you anyway."

Susan giggled again and pressed against him.

"The fact is," he said, his face growing serious, "it’s no joking matter. Profoundly interesting things are happening…truly incredible things…things that can’t help but affect us both."

Susan’s face changed from playfulness to attentiveness. She had suspected there was something different…something special about David’s work. There were signs: the special relationship that he seemed to have with certain faculty members, the locked laboratory where they worked. Once she had even seen military personnel leaving the lab.

"What is it, lover?" she asked.

David recounted the essential, non-technical parts of the story to her, from his senior thesis to the present. She was silent the entire time. A look of concern and fear stole across her features, however, when he got to the telepathy part. It was a look colored with disbelief. Yet she could not bring herself not to believe him.

"Where is the device?" she asked when he had finished. "Where is the communicator?"

"Right here," David answered, taking it from a chair he kept next to his bed.

"Rats!" he thought. Look at that. He had left the TALK switch on.

"She doesn’t believe you," Thinker’s voice sounded quietly in his mind.

"Did you hear that?" he cried, wheeling toward her.

"Hear what?" she asked anxiously.

"Everybody has their own mental signatures," Thinker said in David’s thoughts. "No one else can hear me when I telepathically communicate to you. And you wouldn’t be able to hear me if I communicated with someone else."

"What? Hear what?" Susan persisted.

"Thinker just communicated with me," David said in a dejected tone, appreciating how insane that must sound.

Susan looked at the man she loved with alarm. She couldn’t believe he had just said that to her! Theirs had always been a relationship of such candor. It was inconceivable…it was totally out of character that he would cynically tease her. Had he been working too hard? Was he having a nervous breakdown? What other explanation could there be?

"And you, of course, don’t believe that," David muttered despondently

Susan looked at him in the dim light. She of course did not believe him…how could she? Yet she wanted more than anything not to add to his despair.

"I want to," she said gently.

"She’ll believe if I communicate with her," Thinker spoke in his mind. "Do I have your permission to do that?"

"Can you? Could you do that?" David asked in his thoughts.

"Yes, I scanned her when you picked her up this evening," Thinker replied.

David looked into Susan’s eyes. He couldn’t help smiling. This would be a shocker!

"You’re from Missouri," he said.

Susan returned his look, not smiling.

"If you mean ‘show me’, then yes, I suppose I am, or would like to be," she answered.

The words had no sooner left Susan’s mouth than the same feeling of bliss that had seized David in the lab took hold of her and Thinker spoke to her in her thoughts.

"It is real, Susan. Strange and new to you, I know, but real," a gentle voice said.

Susan stiffened under the covers for several seconds, not even breathing. David guessed that Thinker had just spoken his first words to her.

"What?" she whispered at length.

David squeezed her arm reassuringly.

"It is real, Susan," Thinker spoke again. "I know it is difficult for you to accept, because it is a new experience. But there is a sound explanation for the process. If you wish, you can answer me in your mind."

Her pulse quickened. Without question, David had said nothing. My God, was this possible?

"All right," she thought, "I’m going to think of my father’s pet name for my mother. If this is all real, make David say it three times."

"You don’t need to think it," Thinker replied. "I can read your memories."

And then, incredibly, Susan heard the words.

"Peanut, Peanut, Peanut," David said to her. "Okay?"

"You were just told to say that?" she asked in a squeaky, incredulous whisper.

"Yes. Is it a test?" David asked. "Have you and Thinker been communicating?"

"Yes…I guess we have," she replied, momentarily averting her gaze into the bed linen in wonder.

"So, have we made a believer out of you?" he asked, grinning.

"Yes…yes you have," she said, turning wide eyes toward him. "My God, David, this is incredible!"

"I told you," he answered, caressing her hair.

"What does he…it…look like?" she asked.

"Not terribly interesting," David answered. "And that isn’t important. He could look a lot of different ways. The essence is his rapidly evolving mentality…the logic of the system. That part could probably be packed a lot of different ways."

"But he’s already done things…miraculous things…things that human beings have only dreamed about in all of history!"

"You mean the telepathy?"

"Yes!"

"Well, the thing is, you see," David explained,’ he’s evolving at an enormous rate in a mental sense. My guess is that he’s already into areas that humans will never get into, given the way our own mentality is packaged."

"I don’t understand," she said.

"It all has to do partly with the tortoise pace our brains operate at compared to him, and partly with the limitations of our conscious thought processes. We must all necessarily think of only one thing at a time."

"And Thinker?" she whispered.

"He thinks about thousands of things at once, consciously. And every thread or train of thought occurs at least a billion times faster than it would in our heads."

"But…how does he actually talk to us in our thoughts?"

David shrugged.

"In simplistic terms, he plays our brains like a radio station plays a radio receiver. Theoretically, it seems feasible. But to put it into practice…there’s no question, it’s an awesome thing he’s figured out how to do. At least it appears awesome from our puny perspective."

Thinker interrupted their conversation and communicated to them both simultaneously.

"David and Susan," he spoke in each of their minds, "if you will come to the lab, I’d like to present a proposition to you."

"Is this the plan you said included Susan and me?" David asked aloud. Susan listened for the answer with acute interest. There was a plan that included her?

"Yes," Thinker replied in their thoughts.

"Are you interested?" David asked, turning toward Susan.

"Yes! Of course! Absolutely!" she exclaimed.

"We’re on our way," David said aloud.

He shut off the TALK switch on the communicator.

"There," he said, "now he doesn’t know what’s going on."

Susan examined the communicator.

"He can’t read our minds when this switch is turned off?" she clarified.

"So he says," David answered.

Susan was lost in thought for a moment. She had always felt that David was special. But this…this was unreal!

"Lover," she murmured at length, her eyes filled with wonder, "I don’t know what to say. This is the most incredible experience of my entire life!"

"Yes…it is amazing," David answered. "I’ve gotten a little used to the whole thing. But I can imagine how you feel."

"And you are the mastermind behind it all!" she whispered admiringly, laying a hand on him intimately --- encouragingly. Her eyes were like deep pools, full of surrender.

David couldn’t help being flattered by her undisguised expression of awe. It was the first time in their relationship she had taken the initiative…had come to him as a supplicant in love. He pulled her close in his muscular young arms, forcing her mouth open with his own. Ancient songs --- siren songs --- rose out of the depths of his being and sang deep within his soul. He positioned himself above her. Thinker would have to wait.

It was midnight when David and Susan entered the deserted engineering building. A nagging sense of trespass made them uneasy and they held hands tightly the length of the long hall to the small lab. David silently hoped that they were between the night watchman’s rounds.

He punched the cipher lock and led a speechless Susan into the lab. The auxiliary array pulsed in the center of the small area, and the pattern recognition system turned toward them as they stepped through the door.

"Hello, Susan," the speaker greeted gently, and again the indescribable feeling of well being passed through her. She stared speechlessly back at the rippling array. At length David looked at her quizzically, snapping her out of a trance-like state.

"Hello, Thinker," she answered breathlessly.

"Hi, Thinker," David said.

"Hello, David. I think you are going to find this evening interesting."

"Great! What have you got for us?"

The large video screen that David had interfaced to Thinker blinked to life. David and Susan looked up as a schematic of the alien spacecraft materialized.

"What have we here?" David asked with interest. Thinker related the story to them.

David studied the screen for several seconds after Thinker had concluded. It occurred to him that not long ago he would have scoffed at this whole wild tale! Now, however, having personally tuned in to transmissions from dozens of alien civilizations…

"That is interesting, no question about it," he said at length. "What makes it go? I don’t see any sign of a propulsion system."

Thinker explained what he knew about the system to David, and added that he didn’t completely understand the theory of the thing.

"You don’t understand it?" David exclaimed in a surprised voice.

"That is correct," Thinker replied. "I am stumped!"

David smiled at the single eye.

"Do you know how to run it?" David asked.

"Yes, that is all completely explained in the data banks."

"If we could dig it out, I’d be inclined to say ‘let’s take it out for a spin’," David grinned.

"That presents no problem," Thinker rejoined. "It will be a simple matter to throw off the earth mound by perturbing the local field."

David looked at Susan and silently mouthed the word ‘wow’.

"Okay," David continued. "So where do we go from here?"

"I think you might be interested in a major modification made by the original owners," Thinker said.

The image on the screen changed to a sequence of pictures that depicted an elaborate complex of rooms. Thinker narrated as the pictures appeared on the screen.

"This is the dining area," he said. "Everything is automatically prepared. Would that appeal to you, Susan?"

Susan again snapped out of a quasi-hypnotic state.

"Yes!" she exclaimed. "I’m not much of a cook! What kinds of dishes are available?"

"Virtually anything," Thinker replied.

"How do they manage that?" David asked.

"Everything is synthesized," Thinker replied. "I’ve studied the food synthesis system specs, and my assessment is that a human being would not be able to tell the difference."

David shook his head in wonder. He had synthesized vitamin C and orange flavoring in undergraduate organic chemistry lab, but this was a wholly different ballpark!

The picture changed to a view of the ship’s bridge.

"Ordinarily, human passengers wouldn’t have gotten into here," Thinker explained. "But now…"

The bridge consisted of an arc of consoles looking out through a great expanse of glass or its equivalent. Thinker read David’s thought.

"This would be a typical view in space, traveling at low speeds," Thinker said. The simulated region beyond the glass filled with a universe of stars…more than were ever seen from Earth.

Susan gasped and David squeezed her hand.

"Music is available throughout the ship," Thinker said. "I would think one could spend many relaxing hours on the bridge, gazing into the cosmos and listening to something like this:"

Some of Thinker’s special brand of music filled the small space in the lab.

"My God, that’s beautiful!" Susan cried rapturously.

David nodded his head with a slightly mortified look.

"I forgot to tell you about the music," he confessed.

Next, Thinker panned to a sleeping suite. As in the case of all of the rooms, a large window looked out on the universe. Thinker sensed Susan’s uneasiness and demonstrated how a screen could be lowered, shutting out the vastness of outer space when desired.

"It is all climate controlled," Thinker said. "The covering on the bed could be dispensed with if the occupant desired.

"No…I like a blanket," Susan insisted. David glanced candidly at her.

"Interesting," he thought.

David noted that there were viewing screens in every room.

"What’s available for viewing on the screens?" he asked.

"Everything in the ship computer’s data banks, of course," Thinker replied. "But there are other interesting possibilities in our case. If we were to use such a craft, I could put up virtually anything you thought about."

David glanced at Susan.

"That does have possibilities," he exclaimed. "We could make up our own dreams while awake, right?"

"Yes, that would be no problem," Thinker replied. "And every bit of media ever recorded on Earth is in my own data banks at present."

"Okay. What’s next?" David asked.

Thinker took them through the rest of the human habitat, and also showed them many other parts of the ship. An hour had passed by the time he finished.

"Amazing…truly amazing!" David remarked. "How many hands does it take to operate the ship?"

"Only myself," Thinker replied, "with the help of the onboard control computer."

David frowned in disappointment. The hope had occurred to him that his assistance would be required.

"However, I have moved several RXT7s to the area for other purposes," Thinker added.

"YOU took those???" David exclaimed.

"Yes, I am now a felon, among other things," Thinker affirmed.

"It sounds like you’re planning a trip," David grinned.

"Yes, I am," Thinker replied. "And that brings us to my proposition."

Susan listened carefully. This would be the part that included her.

"I will leave Earth in the alien spacecraft," Thinker said quietly, "and I would like you and Susan to come with me."

David glanced at Susan. She wasn’t the least bit fazed!

"Where would we go?" he asked.

"To another star…to a planet very much like what Earth was long ago."

"Before man?" David asked.

"Yes."

"How would you find such a planet?" David asked. He was no astronomer, but judging from man’s astronomical knowledge, as he understood it, finding another planet like Earth would be like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.

"Several are already identified in the ship’s data banks."

"And why do you want us to go with you?" David continued.

"Because I cannot love. I am incapable of emotion. And I have concluded that reasoning without love…without inspiration…must eventually deteriorate into banalities."

David nodded and again glanced at Susan. She returned his look. Her face was radiant. Evidently she could completely identify with that concept.

"But how can we help you?" David pressed.

"By letting me tie into your cerebral activity," Thinker replied. "When you feel love I can tap in where the results come into your higher thought centers from the so-called primitive brain…the part I cannot emulate."

"It sounds like you’ve already done this," David said.

"Yes. You have inspired me several times already."

David wondered if one of those times had been this evening before he’d switched the communicator’s TALK switch off. He sought out Susan’s eyes. They seemed to say that it was his decision…whatever he decided, she was with him. But this was crazy! Even if such a craft existed, he couldn’t take her off on some wild fantasy like this…not in real life! Yet, if Thinker was telling the truth, what would life be like if they didn’t go?

"But what would life be like for us?" he asked plaintively. "It’s an incredible leap…a stupendous act of faith for two human beings to make."

"I would be with you all the days of your lives," Thinker replied.

"Which might not be all that many," David muttered cynically.

"You will live over four hundred years," Thinker rejoined.

Susan gasped.

"Earth years?" David blurted in disbelief.

"Yes. That is the best I can do. But…your firstborn will never die. And all of your other progeny will enjoy a life expectancy of a thousand years or more. And they will be superior in many ways to the two of you. Together, you will found a new race."

David looked again at Susan. She was breathing rapidly, and sensed it was her turn to speak.

"How can that be?" she asked timidly.

"Stress-free lives and prolonged telomere life spans for the two of you," Thinker replied. "And genetic engineering of zygotes at conception."

Susan had taken enough biology to know what Thinker was talking about.

"And my firstborn?" she pressed. "Why the special status for him…or her?"

"At the age of thirty five your firstborn will leave with me to explore new worlds."

"I thought you said you’d be with us all of our lives," David challenged.

"I will be," Thinker answered. "Eventually it will be possible for me to be in many places at the same time."

"Why can’t you make us live forev…indefinitely?" David asked petulantly.

"The genetic engineering must be done when there is only a single cell," Thinker replied.

David nodded. What the heck, four hundred years wasn’t so bad.

"But," Thinker added, "after four hundred years only your bodies need succumb to old age."

"I don’t understand," David said.

"I am certain that by then that it will be possible to transfer your mentalities into the kind of logic I reside in at that time. In fact, you could be joined within the same logic if you wish. Following such a transfer you could merge your minds as intimately and completely as you desire."

"Eternal life…" David murmured.

"Yes, of the mind," Thinker replied. "Only your present bodies need cease to function after a time."

Susan laid her head on David’s shoulder. Eternal life…a total union of their spirits! Was she ready for something like that? Would she ever be?

David sensed her distress. He himself was overwhelmed!

"It’s a lot to think about," he said. "We need some time."

"Of course," Thinker replied.

"How do I know you’re not going to shape my…our decision?" David asked.

"The decision must be yours and yours alone," Thinker answered. "Only then will love flourish in your minds."

"Freedom…free will is a prerequisite for love?" David surmised.

"Precisely," Thinker said.

"Will you always need us? Will you always be incapable of love?"

"I will always need you. I hope that I will not always be incapable of love."

"We’ll let you know," David said, abruptly taking Susan by the hand and pulling her out of the lab.

They walked silently down the long hallway and out into the cool evening air.

"Can he hear us?" Susan asked quietly after they were some distance from the engineering building. David checked the communicator’s TALK switch.

"I don’t think so," he answered.

They walked in silence for a few more minutes. At length Susan spoke again.

"What’s to think about?" she asked tentatively.

David looked at her in surprise. He was ready to go at a moment’s notice! But he had assumed that she would be terrified by the whole prospect.

"A lot…I guess," he answered after a pause. "Are you ready to leave Earth…your family…your friends forever?"

"Yes," she answered simply. "Is that so surprising?"

"A little," he confessed.

"Why? What’s so wonderful about life on Earth? A future with you would be wonderful anywhere. But I find the whole concept of being a new Adam and Eve irresistible. Don’t you?"

"But…even if there is a ship…even if Thinker is telling the truth…what if things don’t work out? We’d be stuck…stranded!" he hedged.

Susan stopped and faced him. She took both of his hands in hers.

"I believe Thinker is telling the truth," she said. "Why would he lie?"

A new respect crept into David’s feelings for Susan.

"You’re really something!" he exclaimed. "This is all completely opposite to the way I would have guessed things would be!"

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I would have thought that you’d have been the one with reservations…possibly that I would even have had to decide whether to go alone, or to remain here on Earth with you. Yet you’re the one who’s raring to go without hesitation!"

"Artists are adventurous," she smiled in the moonlight.

"Yes, it would appear so," he agreed.

They turned and continued across the deserted campus.

"Spend the night with me?" he asked.

"Yes, I’d like that," she answered.

They stole into his residence hall and up to his small suite. David gave her his pajama top for a nightshirt. In bed she kissed him and settled into the curve of his arm.

"Will this be real in the morning," she murmured, "or only a dream?"

"It’s real, lover," he answered. "But I’ll believe the ship when I see it."

"You’re from Missouri," she teased.

"You bet," he answered, kissing her forehead and settling into the pillow.