"Captain Zebbie, it's much closer now but on this side."
"I see. Or don't. Jake isn't transparent."
"Captain, the city-quite large-is about a forty-five-degree slant down to starboard, not in sight from your seat."
"If forty-five degrees is a close guess, a minimum transition on that bearing should place us over the city."
"Captain, I advise against it," Jake told me.
"Reasons, please."
"This is a large city that might be well defended. Their ornithopters look odd and ineffective but we must assume they have spaceships as good or better than ours or the Tsar could not have a colony here. This causes me to suspect that they may have smart missiles. Or weapons utterly strange. I would rather check for onion towers from a distance. And not stay long in one place-I think we've been here too long. I'm jumpy."
"I'm not"-my sixth sense was not jabbing me-"but set verniers for a minimum transition along L axis, then execute at will. No need to be a slow fat target."
"One minimum, L axis-set!"
Suddenly my guardian angel goosed me. "Execute!"
I noticed the transition principally because Gay was now live under my hand-air bite. Perhaps she had not been quite level. I turned her nose down
to gather maneuvering speed unpowered, then did a skew turn-and yelped, "Gay Bounce!" having seen all that I wanted to see: an expanding cloud. Atomic? I think not. Lethal? You test it; I'm satisfied.
I told Gay to bounce three more times, placing us a bit less than fifty klicks above ground. Then I spent a trifle of power to nose her over. "Jake, use the binox to see how far this valley runs, whether it is all cultivated, whether it has more settlements. We are not going to get close enough to look for onion spires; that last shot was unfriendly. Rude. Impetuous. Or am I prejudiced? Science Officer? Le mot juste, s'il vous plait."
"Nye kultoorni."
"I remember that one! Makes Russians turn green. What does it mean? How did you happen to know it, Sharpie?"
"Means what it sounds like: 'uncultured.' I didn't just 'happen,' Cap'n Zebbie; I know Russian."
I was flabbergasted. "Why didn't you say so?"
"You didn't ask me."
"Sharpie, if you handled the negotiations, we might not have had trouble."
"Zebbie, if you'll believe that, you'll believe anything. He was calling you a spy and insulting you while the palaver was still in French. I thought it might be advantageous if they thought none of us knew Russian. They might spill something."
"Did they?"
"No. The colonel was coaching his pilot in how to be arrogant. Then you told them to halt, in French, and no more Russian was spoken save for meaningless side remarks. Zebbie, when they tried to shoot us down just now, would they have refrained had they known that I had studied Russian?"
"Mmm- Sharpie, I should know better than to argue with you. I'm going to vote for you for captain."
"Oh, No!"
"Oh, Yes. Copilot, I'm going to assume that everything this side of the hills and involved with this watercourse-courses-twin canals-is New Russia and that honorary Englishmen-us!-aren't safe here. So I'm going to look for the British colony. It may turn out that they won't like us, either. But the British are strong on protocol; we'll have a chance to speak our piece. They may hang us but they'll give us a trial, with wigs and robes and rules of evidence and counsel who will fight for us." I hesitated. "One hitch. Colonel Snotsky said there was no such country as the United States of America and I had the impression that he believed it."
Sharpie said, "He did believe it, Cap'n Zebbie. I caught some side chatter. I think we must assume that, in this universe, there was no American Revolution."
"So I concluded. Should we all be from the East Coast? I have a hunch that the West Coast may be part Russian, part Spanish-but not British. Where are we from? Baltimore, maybe? Philadelphia? Suggestions?"
Sharpie said, "I have a suggestion, Cap'n Zebbie."
"Science Officer, I like your suggestions."
"You won't like this one. When all else fails, tell the truth."
-three seconds is a long time-
Deety:
Zebadiah is convinced that I can program anything. Usually I can, given a large and flexible computer-but my husband expects me to manage it with Gay Deceiver and Gay is not big. She started life as an autopilot and is one, mostly.
But Gay is sweet-tempered and we both want to please him.
While he and my father were looking over the area that we thought of as "Russian Valley" or "New Russia," he asked me to work up a program to locate
the British colony in minimum time, if it were in daylight. If not, then we would sleep near the sunrise line, and find it on the new daylight side.
I thought of bouncing out about a thousand kilometers and searching for probable areas by color. Then I realized that I didn't know that much about this planet. "Dead sea bottoms" from space looked like farm land.
At last I recalled something Zebadiah had suggested yesterday-no, today! less than two hours ago. (So much had happened that my sense of time played tricks. It was still accurate-but I had to think instead of just knowing.)
Random numbers- Gay had plenty of them. Random numbers are to a computer what free will is to a human being.
I defined a locus for Gay: nothing east of where we were, nothing in "Russian Valley," nothing on the dark side, nothing north of 450, nothing south of 450 south. Yesterday I could not have told her the latter; but Mars has a good spin, one a gyrocompass can read. While we slept, Gay had noted that her gyrocompass did not have its axis parallel to that of this strange planet and had precessed it until it did.
Inside that locus I told Gay to take a Drunkard's Walk, any jumps that suited her, a three-second pause at each vertex, and, if one of us yelled "Bingo!" display latitude, longitude, and Greenwich, and log all three, so we could find it again.
Oh, yes-she was to pause that three seconds exactly one minimum Habove-G at each vertex.
I told her to run the program for one hour....ut that any of us could yell "Stop!" and then say "Continue" and that would be time-out, not part of the hour. But I warned my shipmates that yelling "Stop!" not only slowed things but also gave Russians (or British or anybody) a chance to shoot at us. I emphasized that three seconds is a long time (most people don't know it).
One hour- Three seconds for each check- Twelve hundred random spot checks- This is not a "space-filling" curve. But it should locate where the British were most thickly settled. If one hour did not do it, ten hours certainly would. Without Gay, without her ability to do a Drunkard's Walk, we could have searched that planet for a lifetime, and never found either colony. It took the entire human race (of our universe) thirty centuries to search Terra... and many spots were missing until they could be photographed from space.
My husband said, "Let's get this straight." He bounced us four minima. "These subprograms-~ Gay, are you listening?"
"Of course. Are you'?"
"Gay, go to sleep."
"Roger and out, Boss."
"Deety, I want to make sure of these subprograms but couldn't use code words while she was awake. I-"
"Excuse me, Zebadiah, but you can. She will ignore code words for subprograms except while the general program is running. The code for the general program is unusual and requires the execution command, so it can't be started by accident. You can wake Gay. We need her on some points."
"You're a smart girl, Deety."
"I'll bet you tell that to all adequate cooks, Boss."
"Ouch!"
"Captain, it is not difficult to program a computer to supervise cooking machines. The software sold under the trademark 'Cordon Bicu' is reputed to be excellent, Reforo you wake Gay, would you answer a hypothetical question concerning computers and cooking?
'Captain
"Copilot?"
'1 advise against permitting the Astrogator to discuss side issues--such as cooking-while we have this problem facing us."
"Thank you, Copilot. Astrogator, what was your hypothetical question?"
Pop had been careful not to interfere between Zebadiah and me, But his advice from copilot to captain was intended for my ears-he was telling me to shut up, and I suddenly heard Jane saying, "Deety, anytime a wife thinks she has won an argument, she has lost it."
I'm not Jane, I'm Deety. I get my temper from my father. I'm not as quick to flare up as he is, but I do have his tendency to nurse a grievance. Zebadiah is sometimes a tease and knows how to get my goat.
But Pop was telling me: "Drop it, Deety!"
Maybe Zebadiah was right-too much argument, too much discussion, too much "sewing circle & debating society." We were all intensely interested as we were all in the same peril... but how much tougher is it to be captain rather than one of the crew? Twice? Ten times?
I didn't know, Was my husband cracking under the pressure? "Getting ulcers"?
Was I adding to his burden?
I didn't have to stop to think this through; it was preprogrammed below the conscious level; Pop pushed the "execute" button and the answers spilled out. I answered my husband at once,
"What hypocritical question, sir?"
"You said, 'hypothetical.' Something about computers and cooking."
"Captain, my mind has gone blank. Perhaps we had better get on with the job before I forget how it works."
"Deety, you wouldn't fib to your pool' old broken-down husband?"
when my husband is pow' and old 'md broken-down, I will 'not fib to him."
"Hmm- If I hadn't already promised my support to Hilda, I would vote for you for captain."
Aunt Hilda cut in: "Zebbie, I release you! I'm not a candidate."
"No, Sharpie, once having promised political support an honorable man never welches. So it's all right for Gay to listen in?"
"Certainly, sir. For display I must have her. Hello, Gay."
"Hi, Deety."
"Display dayside, globe." At once Gay's largest screen showed the western hemisphere of Earth, our Earth in our universe-Terra. Early afternoon at Snug Harbor? Yes, the clock in my head said so and GMT on the instrument board read 20:23:07. Good heavens, it had been only twenty hours since my husband and my father had killed the fake "ranger." How can a lifetime be crowded into less than a day? Despite the clock in my head it seemed years since I had walked down to our pool, a touch tiddly and hanging onto my bridegroom for support.
"Display meridians parallels. Subtract geographical features," Gay did so. "From program coded A Tramp Abroad' display locus.'
Gay used orthographic projection, so the 45' parallels were straight lines. ace I had told her to display davside, these two bright lines ran to the left edge of the display, that being the sunrise line. But the right edge of the locus was an irregular line running southwest. "Add display Russian Valley."
To the right of the locus and touching it, Gay displayed as solid brightness a very long and quite wide blotch. "Subtract Russian Valley." The area we had sketchily explored disappeared.
"Deety," my husband asked, "how is Gay doing this? Her perms have no reference points for Mars-not even Mars of our own universe."
"Oh. Gay, display 'Touchdown."
"Null program."
"Mmm, yes, that's right; the Sun has just set where we were parked. Zebadiah, shall I have her rotate the globe enough to show it? All she would show would be a bright spot almost on the equator. I have defined the spot where we grounded as zero meridian-Greenwich for Mars. This Mars."
"And zero parallel? An arbitrary equator?"
"Oh, no, no! While we slept Gay adjusted her gyrocompass to match this planet. Which gave her true north and latitude. She already knows the radius and curvature of Mars-I started to tell her and found she had retrieved it from her perms. Aerospace Almanac?"
"I suppose so. But we discussed Mars' diameter last night while Gay was awake. Both you and Hilda knew it; Jake and I did not."
As I remembered it, Aunt Hilda spoke up-then Pop kept quiet. If Pop wanted to sit back and be proud of Aunt Hilda's encyclopedic memory that was all right with me. If my husband has a flaw, it is that he has trouble believing that females have brains... probably because he is so intensely interested in the other end. I went on with my lecture:
"Once I start Gay, she will say and record nothing unless ordered. She will make random transitions inside that locus until someone yells 'Bingo!' She won't slow down even then. She will place a bright point on the map at that latitude and longitude, record both latitude and longitude, and the exact time. She will display the Bingo time, too, for one second. If you want to retrieve that Bingo, you had better jot down that time-to the second. Because she'll be doing twenty jumps each minute. Don't worry about the hour, just the minute and the second. Oh, you could still retrieve it if you had the minute right, as I can ask her to run through all Bingoes in a given minute. Can't be more than twenty and your Bingo might be the only one.
"When we've done one hour of this, that map could, at most, have twelve hundred dots on it-but may have only a few-or none. If they are clustered, I'll reduce the locus and we'll run it again. If not, we can sleep and eat and do it for the other day side, the one twelve hours away. Either way, Gay will find the British-and we'll be safe."
"I hope you're right. Ever heard of the Opium Wars, Deety?"
"Yes, Captain. Sir, every nation is capable of atrocities, including our own. But the British have a tradition of decent behavior no matter what blemishes there are."
"Sorry. Why a one-hour program?"
"We may have to shorten it. A decision every three seconds for sixty minutes may be too tiring. If we start showing a marked hot spot sooner than that, we can shorten the first run and reduce the locus. We'll have to try it and see.
But I feel certain that a one-hour run, a short rest, then another one-hour run, will locate the British if they are now on the day side."
"Deety, what do you define as 'Bingo'?"
"Anything that suggests human settlement. Buildings. Roads. Cultivated fields. Walls, fences, dams, aircraft, vehicles- But it is not 'Bingo'just because it looks interesting. Although it might be 'Stop!"
"What's the difference?"
"Stop' does not tell Gay to record or to display. For that you must add 'Bingo.' 'Stop' is for anything you want to look at more than three seconds. Maybe it looks promising and a few seconds more will let you decide. But please, everyone! There should not be more than a dozen calls for 'Stop!' in the hour. Any more questions?"
We started. Hilda gave the first Bingo. I saw it, too-farm buildings. Aunt Hilda is faster than I. I almost broke my own injunction; I had to bite down on "Stop!" The temptation to take a longer look was almost overpowering.
All of us made mistakes-but none serious. Hilda racked up the most Bingoes and Zebadiah the fewest-but I'm fairly certain that my husband was "cheating" by waiting to give Pop or me first crack at it. (He would not be competing with Aunt Hilda; port-forward and starboard-after seats have little overlapping coverage.)
I thought it would be tedious; instead it was exciting-but dreadfully tiring. Slowly, less than one a minute, bright dots appeared on the display. I saw with disappointment that most Bingoes were clustered adjacent to the irregular margin marking Russian territory. It seemed probable that these marked Russian territory, so very probable that it hardly seemed worthwhile to check for onion spires.