Hawks nodded.
No one said anything, and then Cobey broke out, “Well, are you willing to listen, Hawks?”
Hawks said, “Of course.” He looked around. “I’m sorry — I had no idea we were all waiting for me.” He looked at Reed. “Go ahead, please.”
“Well,” Reed said, looking down at his figures, “it occurs to me that a lot of this equipment is just more of the same. I mean by that, here’s an item for one hundred voltage dividers of a single type. And here’s another one for—”
“Yes. Well, a good deal of our equipment consists of one particular component or another, linked into a series of similar components.” Hawks’ head was cocked to one side, and his eyes were watchful. “We have to handle a great many basically similar operations simultaneously. There was no time to design components with the capacity to carry out these functions. We had to use existing electronic designs and make up for their comparatively low capacity by using a great many of them.” He paused for a moment. “It takes a thousand ants to carry away a cupful of sugar,” he said at last.
“That’s very apt, Hawks,” Cobey said.
“I was trying to explain—”
“Go ahead, Reed.”
“Well—” Reed leaned forward earnestly. “I don’t want you to think I’m some kind of ogre, Dr. Hawks. But, let’s face it, there’s a lot of money tied up in that equipment, and as far as I can see, there’s no reason why, if we’ve got a duplicating machine in the first place, we can’t just—” he shrugged — “run off as many copies as we need. I can’t see why they have to be built in our manufacturing division, or purchased from outside suppliers. Now, we’ve got a situation here where I can’t even calculate a fixed operating cost. And—”
“Mr. Reed,” Hawks said.
Reed stopped. “Yes?”
Hawks rubbed his face. “I appreciate your position. And I can see that what you’ve just proposed is completely reasonable, from that point of view. However—”
“All right, Hawks,” Cobey said drily. “Get to the ‘however.’ “
“Well,” Hawks said to Reed, “do you know the principles on which the scanner works — the duplicator?”
“Pretty roughly, I’m afraid,” Reed said patiently.
“Well, pretty roughly, the duplicator takes a piece of matter and reduces it to a systematic series of electron flows. Electricity. A signal, like the signal that comes out of a radio sending set. Now, that signal is fed into these components — the same way, you might say, that it came in from the antenna of a radio receiver and was passed into the circuit inside it. When it comes out the other end of the circuit, it doesn’t go into a loudspeaker but is retransmitted to the Moon, having meanwhile been cross-checked for its accuracy. Now that’s essentially what these components do — they inspect the signal for consistency. Now, the point is that the accuracy with which the original piece of matter is reconstructed — duplicated — depends on the consistency of the electron flows which arrive at the receiver. Therefore, if we were to use duplicated components to check the consistency of the signal with which we duplicate highly complicated objects, such as a living human being, we would be introducing an additional possibility for error which, in the case of a human being, works out higher than we can safely permit. Do you follow that?”
Reed frowned.
Cobey quirked his mouth up at one corner, looking down the table at Hawks.
Hedge picked up his cap and began adjusting the wire stiffening inside its white cover.
Finally, Reed said, “Is that all, Dr. Hawks?”
Hawks nodded.
Reed shrugged in embarrassment. “Well, look,” he said, “I’m afraid I still don’t see it. I can see that maybe your original equipment couldn’t be duplicated, because your scanner wouldn’t work without it, but—”
“Oh, it would work without it,” Hawks interjected. “As I said, it’s a control circuit. It’s not primary.”
Reed put his hands down sharply and looked at Cobey. He shook his head.
Cobey took a deep breath and let it out bitterly. “What do you say, Commander?”
Hedge put his cap down. “I think what Dr. Hawks means is that if you have an automatic lathe making automatic lathes, and you use these automatic lathes you’ve made to make more lathes, all it takes is for one part in any one of these lathes to slip, and pretty soon you’ve got a zillion lathes that’re just so much junk.”
“Well, God damn it, Hawks, why couldn’t you put it that way?” Cobey demanded.
The day the elapsed time reached nine minutes, thirty seconds, Hawks said to Barker, “I’m worried. If your elapsed time grows much longer, the contact between M and L will become too fragile. The navigating team tells me your reports are growing measurably less coherent.”
“Let ’em try going up there, then. See how much sense they can make out of it.” Barker licked his lips. His eyes were hollow.
“That’s not the point.”
“I know what the point is. There’s another point. You can stop worrying. I’m almost out the other side.”
“They didn’t tell me that,” Hawks said sharply.
“They don’t know. But I’ve got a feeling.”
“A feeling.”
“Doctor, all that chart shows is what I tell it after I’ve done a day’s work. It has no beginning and no end, except when I put the end to it.” He looked around the laboratory, his face bitter. “All this plumbing, Doctor, and in the end it comes down to all revolving around one man.” He looked at Hawks. “One man and what’s in his mind. Or maybe two of us. I don’t know. What’s in your mind, Hawks?”
Hawks looked at Barker. “I don’t pry into your mind, Barker. Don’t set foot in mine. I have a telephone call to make.”
He walked away across the laboratory, and dialed an outside number. He waited for the answer, and as he waited, he stared without focusing at the old, familiar blank wall. Suddenly he moved in a spasm of action and smashed the flat of his free hand violently against it. Then the buzz in the earpiece stopped with a click, and he said eagerly, “Hello? Elizabeth? This — this is Ed. Listen — Elizabeth — Oh, I’m all right. Busy. Listen — are you free tonight? It’s just that I’ve never taken you to dinner, or dancing, or anything Will you? I—” He smiled at the wall. “Thank you.” He hung up the telephone and walked away. He looked back over his shoulder, and saw that Barker had been watching him, and he started self-consciously.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Elizabeth—” he began, and then waved his arm in annoyance. “No. It was all going to come out in a rush. It does, so often.”
They were standing atop an arm of rock that thrust out seaward into the surf. Hawks’ collar was turned up, and he held his jacket together with one hand. Elizabeth was wearing a coat, her hands in its pockets, a kerchief over her hair. The Moon, setting on the horizon, reflected its light upon the traceries of clouds overhead. Elizabeth smiled up at him, her wide mouth stretching. “This is a very romantic spot you’ve brought us to, Edward.”
“I — I was just driving. I didn’t have any particular place in mind.” He looked around. “I’m not full of cunning, Elizabeth — I’m full of logic, and reasoning, and God knows what else.” He smiled self-consciously. “Though I suspect the worst — but that almost always comes afterward. I say to myself, ‘Now, what am I doing here?’ and then I have to know the answer. No, I have things—” He clutched at the air. “Things I want to say. Tonight. No later.” He took a step forward, turned, and stood facing her, staring rigidly over her shoulder at the empty beach, the rise of the highway with his car parked on its shoulder, and the eastern sky beyond. “I don’t know what shape they’ll take. But they have to come out. If you’ll listen.”