Hal Clement: Answer

Wren was tempted to try immediate integration of this solution with that from the conditioning data, but was persuaded to wait until other fields had been covered; so they went on to the phenomena of foresight, imagination, and problem-solving thinking.

And here they met difficulties — heartbreaking ones. Some investigators might have stopped right there, and published the work so far completed, for as it stood it represented an enormous contribution to physiological psychology; but that simply never occurred to the three. The experimental data, while copious, were for the most part in forms which did not lend themselves to tabular or graphic representation. Even Vainser, most of whose long life had been spent reducing problems to just such form, made only the slowest of headway.

Two weeks were spent slogging through these difficulties, and in that time only three problems were run on the machine. None of these was set up as completely as Wren had hoped, and while solutions for all were forthcoming, he was rather doubtful of the value of these answers. However, at the end of the second week, the three men felt ready to attempt an integration of the experimental material dealing with problem-solving thinking. And it was here that an even more serious misfortune befell the work.

The preliminary hookups had been made. A dozen graphs had been placed under the single eye that was in use at the moment; the sensitized answer sheet had been placed in its receptacle, and a green light indicated that no part of the huge system was being used for other problems — a frequent cause of delay, since while only a very few tubes might actually deal with the matter in hand, special steps had to be taken to prevent two simultaneously run problems from influencing each other. Rudd had covered the room lights, leaving only the fluorescent spiral that illuminated the problem sheet in operation. Vainser touched the button that sensitized the eye.

For fully a second — longer than any previous solution had taken — nothing happened. Vainser actually had time to look in surprise at the fluorescent faces of some of the machine’s status indicators, before the light went out.

Went out. No light was ever extinguished at the station. If darkness was required, the tubes were shuttered; covered with ingenious baffles which blocked the light, but permitted the generating tube to cool sufficiently. Turning off a light meant breaking an electronic circuit, and hurling into the surrounding ether electromagnetic waves carrying energy enough to alter sharply the electronic paths in computer tubes hundreds of feet from the wires actually involved. There were no electric call bells, telephones or televisors; an efficient but amazingly archaic system of mechanical bells and speaking tubes formed the only system of room-to-room communication. The radios in the spacesuits were used only in the gravest emergencies; at other times a system of hand signals was made to suffice. The designers of the great computer had gone to too much trouble leaving behind the electrostatic and electromagnetic disturbances of the Earth, to feel any desire to bring such troubles along with them.

Yet the lights had gone out — even the problem light and the status indicators. Rudd, at the lever controlling the room light shutters, opened them; and found the tubes black. All three were wearing watches with luminous dials; and those dials were the only visible objects in the neighborhood. They served only to make the surrounding darkness even blacker, if that were possible.

Before any of the men could speak, the call bell sounded from the corridor beyond the door. It emitted three double clangs in an apologetic, halfhearted manner, paused, and then repeated the call again and again.

“My call,” Vainser’s whisper cut eerily through the blackness. “This business must have affected the whole station. Come along; even if the call isn’t coming from the center, everyone will head for there in an emergency. Rudd, you can travel faster than I; go on ahead and I’ll bring Wren with me. I suppose there might be a flashlight or a match or something in the place, but I couldn’t say where it might be. Find anything you can — preferably a remedy for all this.”

One of the three vague green glows moved, and vanished abruptly as the edge of the doorway occulted it. The other two drifted together, and followed the path of the first more slowly into the corridor and along it. Wren knew the way to the center; he had been there several times, and by himself might have kept up with Rudd; but Vainser’s feebleness slowed them even in gravity-free travel, since the old man could not have stood the impacts with walls and ceiling that the others accepted as a matter of course.

Wren, with one arm linked with one of Vainser’s, pushed off gently from the door edge in what he knew to be the proper direction. He made no attempt to retain contact with a wall; and that, he knew immediately, was a mistake.

He was spinning. He didn’t know which way. Neither his sight, his semicircular canals nor his kinesthetic sense could help him. He was spinning. . no, he was falling. . no, he was He was drifting down the corridor, as he should have been, his arm linked in Vainser’s. He was panting as though he had just undergone the limit of physical exertion, and his face was dewed with sweat; but the lights were on, and he was sane again. They had been off for less than a minute; looking back, he realized that he must have kicked off from the door jamb only two or three seconds ago.

He looked at the old man beside him. Vainser’s expression resembled his own; but the fellow managed a weak grin, and spoke.

“My heart must be in better shape than I had been assuming; but I hope it never has to take another jolt like that.”

Wren nodded. “I’ve been hearing about claustrophobia and space sickness and acrophobia, and I don’t know how many phobias ever since my formal education began, and I thought I knew a lot about them; but from now on I’ll really sympathize with their victims. Total darkness, weightlessness, and no contact with a fixed object make a horrible combination. I realize now that those phobias were simply verbalisms to me before.”

“That’s your department. I’ll have to find out what went wrong in this place. Let’s go on to the center.” They went, slowly recovering their composure on the way.

The entire complement of the station seemed to be there, and a buzz of voices indicated that speculation was rife. No one seemed to know exactly what had happened; and there was good reason for the general ignorance, for after an hour’s careful investigation, neither Vainser nor Rudd nor any of the other members of the maintenance and operation staffs could find a single clue to the source of the recent trouble. For all the information that the various indicators could give, the station had been in normal operation for the last seventy years.

The group broke up slowly. Rudd, Vainser, and Wren returned to the room they had been using, wrapped in silent thought. Here, a careful examination was made of the apparatus that had been in use at the time of the breakdown; and here, too, all seemed to be in order — until Vainser remembered something.

“The eye — it’s off!” he exclaimed. “I’m sure we sensitized it just before all this happened — didn’t we?”

“We did,” replied Rudd, “but I turned it off before leaving. I was at the shutters, and I automatically desensitized it before I opened them.”

“I see.” Vainser nodded in understanding, and drifted over to the controls. He extended a hand to the sensitizer contact, as though to start the uncompleted problem; but before he touched it, another thought appeared to strike him. He removed the sheets from the problem table, instead, and peered at them closely for some time. Finally he spoke again.