The Best of Hal Clement

by Hal Clement

  “I take it,” whispered Vainser in his reedy tones, “that if we fail to set up such a circuit, nothing will have been proved; but if we succeed, your science will be able to avoid for a few generations at least the sad fate of metaphysics. Your analogy of an electric circuit is probably the best possible, by the way, and we might as well continue to use it in thinking about this matter—provided we are careful to remember that it is only an analogy. It occurs to me also that, even if we do not succeed completely with Dr. Wren’s problem, we are almost certain to gain many helpful ideas in the matter of the computer itself. It works, Doctor, on a principle rather similar to the ‘connectionism’ you mentioned first, though the ‘nerves’ are electron streams rather than material connections.”

  “I agree,” stated Rudd. “The study appears to be both intrinsically worthwhile, and promising in the way of by-products. I hope you won’t mind my giving what help I can, at such times as my regular job spares me.”

  “Not at all. The more people present who understand the computer, the better. I freely admit that I have no idea of the steps that must be taken to prepare my data for use. Perhaps if we went to examine it now—” Wren’s voice trailed off into an interrogative silence. Vainser took up the conversation.

  “I imagine your materials will not yet be in the office; the men have a good deal to do after a supply rocket arrives. I suggest we eat now—I do eat, in spite of appearances, Dr. Wren—and I am sure that all will be ready by the time we have finished.”

  * * *

  This suggestion met with approval, and after Wren’s first weightless meal, the three scientists betook themselves to the “office” in which the psychologist’s data had been placed. Vainser’s word was somewhat misleading; the place was more like a cross between a drafting room, a physical laboratory, and a photographic darkroom. The cases in which Wren’s material had been packed were moored to one wall and their airtight seals broken, though the lids were still latched to keep the contents from drifting too wildly. Wren, who had by now acquired considerable proficiency in weightless maneuvering, propelled himself over to the containers and began extracting numerous notebooks, sheafs of photographs, and not a few detached pieces of paper bearing what appeared to be hastily scribbled thoughts. These he transferred to the numerous tables, anchoring them with the spring clips which here replaced the magnetic paperweights to be found in most gravity-free desks. The other two made no attempt to assist, realizing that the material was being arranged in some order with which they were unfamiliar; but when the cases were empty, they accompanied Wren to one of the tables, where they were promptly delivered a surprisingly clear and well-illustrated lecture on general psychology. The illustrative material consisted partly of tabulated experimental data, partly of the schematic “circuit diagrams” with which psychologists like to illustrate things like conditioned and unconditioned reflexes, and very largely of some excellent drawings and micro-photographs of nerve and brain structure. The initial explanatory lecture finished, Vainser took the initiative, and all three plunged into the task of so redesigning all these items that they could be presented to the “sense organs” of the giant computer.

  These were varied in nature. Strictly numerical problems could be presented on punched tape or cards, as in many of the mid-twentieth-century machines—though a shell-trajectory problem such as had taken those devices several hours could have been solved and the same answer-data tabulated in seconds by perhaps a dozen of the enormously complicated tubes of this installation.

  In addition, the machine possessed eyes—lenses which focused on precisely divided sensitive grids, to which such items as graphs and wiring diagrams could be presented directly—if they were first drawn most carefully to the proper scale. Last, and least in the eyes of Vainser and his assistants in spite of its uniqueness, was the “ear” which permitted the actual dictation of data. The machine had a vocabulary of some six thousand words, which was constantly being increased by the spare-time labor of the technician who had developed the attachment. Ten tubes were able to integrate these words into the sentences of the English language; the machine could both hear and answer. Since this method did not permit the precision results of the others, the crew of the station considered it more an amusement than anything else; the work had been done quite unofficially, and on his own time, by a junior member of the staff. Whether or not it had practical value, it reflected on the entire device an aura of uncanniness that affected even Wren, when the attachment was demonstrated to him.

  It was possible, he felt, that some use might later be made of this faculty, but Vainser and Rudd stated positively that the photoelectric analyzers were definitely needed for most of his data. This would entail the redrawing of all diagrams to an exact scale, in variously colored inks. Vainser promptly withdrew Rudd from his regular duties, in order to perform this task. Rudd shivered at the prospect, but set manfully to work. He comforted himself by remarking that the present diagrams were nothing to the ones they would get in the solutions, and they would be Wren’s headache. Vainser agreed, his toneless whisper suggesting amusement, as they worked.

  * * *

  The initial problem was more of a test than anything else. The data from an early conditioning experiment were diagrammed and fed to one of the eyes. The answer film bore a standard conditioned-reflex diagram. Wren was vastly pleased; Vainser and Rudd were satisfied, and promptly went to work on the records of a more complicated experiment. Only two of the thirty thousand-odd tubes in the computer had contributed to the first solution, and one of those acted solely in a “memory” capacity; so it looked as though a great deal more could be done before any mechanical limits were reached.

  The sun of success continued to shine throughout the first week. The three men worked, ate, slept, and periodically presented an accumulation of data to the eyes of the electronic entity that lay hidden in the walls about them. Conditioned reflexes and everything about them—inhibition, extinction, reconditioning; all that Wren considered important in that most elementary form of learning was fed to the machine, which in every case effortlessly designed a “circuit” capable of displaying the desired characteristics; and while some of the circuits were complicated enough, none approached in complexity even a minor ganglion of the human nervous system—not even the monstrosity that resulted when all the earlier answers were given to ten “eyes” simultaneously, for integration into a master “conditioning” diagram.

  “I’ve given a good many courses in psychology,” remarked Wren at one point, “but I’ve never before had a machine for a pupil. I must admit that it’s the best one I ever had—maybe it’s because I’m preparing my lectures more carefully than ever before!”

  “Who’s preparing them?” queried Rudd, with marked accent on the interrogative.

  “Well, I have a couple of very good lab assistants. If they will kindly resume assisting, we will now consider the problem of memorization, beginning with the experiments of Ebbinghaus.”

  * * *

  Work was continued. Most of the actual drafting of diagrams was done by Rudd, since Wren lacked the skill and Vainser the strength to handle the necessary tools. Ebbinghaus’ data were finished; with his work and that of his successors the field of memorization was gradually covered; and by bringing chemical as well as electromechanical reactions into consideration, a system was developed which, according to the computer, would account for the observed phenomena of human memory. 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.

  “I’m beginning to get an idea about all this, but it will take a while to work it out. You gentlemen may as well go and relax; you can’t help me, and it will certainly take some time. I’ll call you if and when I get what I think is the answer.”

  Rudd and Wren looked at each other, and then at the old technician; and being able to think of nothing better, they followed his suggestion. There were recreation facilities in the station, of course, and they made use of them for some hours. They ate, and slept—or at least retired, though neither got much sleep—ate again, and finally settled down to a routine of three-dimensional billiards alternated with periods of unrestrained speculation on the nature of Vainser’s inspiration. Beyond the obvious fact that it had to do with the problem which he had taken from the table, they got nowhere.

  * * *

  It was fully twenty hours before Rudd’s personal call came clanging on the corridor bells. The two wasted no time in transferring themselves to the presence of Vainser. He greeted them rather absently, and for several moments did not speak in response to the inquiring expression on their faces. At last, however, frowning at the
papers before him, he began his explanation.

  “I am far from sure that this is correct,” were his opening words, “for I cannot be absolutely certain that the computer would behave this way under the circumstances I have outlined here; but it seems at least reasonable.” He looked up. “Rudd, have you ever considered the problem of building a machine that could repair itself? How would you go about it?” The big technician frowned.

  “It would be—complicated. Aside from your primary-purpose machine—let’s say that’s an electric motor, for purposes of illustration—you’d need an attachment which could weld, and wind wire on cores, replace brushes, and do all a repairman can. It would also need some sort of guide, such as sets of blueprints and photoelectric scanners, of templates, so that it could do the right thing when something in the motor went wrong. As I say, it would be complicated.”

  “And what would it do when one of its scanners, or welders, or some other part of the repair mechanism broke down?”

  “You’d need a second similar attachment—”

  “With templates for the first. And in order to take care of matters if the second went out, the first would have to have templates for the second. And that would solve matters perfectly, except that each set of templates would have to include everything in the other repair gadget—including its templates. I imagine you see the slight practical difficulty.”

  Rudd pulled an earlobe in meditative fashion, and nodded slowly. “I see your point. It is the old picture-within-a-picture problem, worked backward. But what has that to do with the present situation?” Vainser smiled wryly, and indicated the problem-graphs on which he had been working.

  “I spent quite a while on these, trying to work out an answer without the aid of the machine. I already had an inkling of what had happened, so I was quicker than I might otherwise have been. Really, I don’t know why it didn’t occur to us sooner. The trouble is, the ‘circuit’ having the characteristics demanded by this set of data—a problem-solving circuit, in other words—is identical with the electronic setup in one of the tubes of this machine. Obviously! After all, that’s what the machine’s for, and whether the human brain really works that way or not, it’s certainly a possible solution. The thing is really a vicious circle; if the machine is capable of solving that problem at all, it will get that answer—one identical with its own setup. If it isn’t, we simply get nothing.