“The computer wasn’t glutted; it glutted itself. It overloaded through the escalation—it had to, even with ten times the storage capacity. In mathematical terms, it reduced its capacity exponentially, as a result of which the ‘cerebellum’—the narrower channel—was the first to malfunction. Delays were registered by the ‘cerebellum,’ then jumped to the computer. As it entered a state of input overload, when it ceased to be a real-time machine, the computer jammed and had to make a critical decision. It decided to abort the landing; that is, it interpreted the interference as a sign of imminent disaster.”
“A meteorite alert, then. How do you explain that?” asked Seyn.
“How it switched from a primary to a secondary procedure, I don’t know. I’m not sufficiently at home with the computer’s circuitry to say. Why a meteorite alert? Search me. But this much I do know: it was to blame.”
Now it was Earth’s turn. Pirx was sure Van der Voyt would attack him, and he was right. The flabby, fleshy face, simultaneously distant and close up, viewed him through the cigar haze. Van der Voyt spoke in a polite bass, his eyes smiling, benignly, with the all-knowing indulgence of a professor addressing a promising student.
“So, Commander Pirx rules out sabotage, does he? But on what grounds? What do you mean, ‘it was to blame’? Who is it? The computer? But the computer, as Commander Pirx said himself, remained fully functional. The software? But this is the very same program that has seen Commander Pirx through hundreds of landings. Do you suspect someone of having monkeyed with the program?”
“I’ll withhold comment on the sabotage theory,” said Pirx. “It doesn’t interest me right now. If the computer and the software had worked, the Ariel would still be in one piece, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. What I’m saying is that, going by the tapes, the computer was executing the proper procedure, but in the manner of a perfectionist. It kept demanding, at a faster and faster clip, input on the reactor’s status, ignoring both its own limitations and the capacity of the output channels. Why it did this, I couldn’t say. But that’s what it did. I have nothing more to add.”
Not a word came from the “Martians.” Pirx, poker-faced, registered the gleam of satisfaction in Seyn’s eye and the mute contentment with which Romani straightened himself in his chair. After an eight-minute interval, Van der Voyt’s voice came on. This time his remarks were addressed neither to Pirx nor to the committee. He was eloquence personified. He traced the life history of every computer—from the assembly line to the cockpit. Its systems, he said, were the combined product of eight different companies, based in Japan, France, and the U.S. Still unequipped with a memory, still unprogrammed, as “ignorant” as newborn babies, computers traveled to Boston, where, at Syntronics Corp., they underwent programming. Each computer was then immersed in a “curriculum,” divided evenly between “experiments” and “exams.” This was the so-called General Fitness Test, followed by the “specialization phase,” when the computer evolved from a calculator to a guidance system of the type deployed by the Ariel. Last of all came the “debugging phase,” when it was hooked up to a simulator capable of imitating an infinite number of in-flight emergencies: mechanical breakdowns, systems malfunctions, emergency flight maneuvers, thrust deficiencies, near collisions… Each of these crisis situations was simulated in myriad variations—some with a full load, some without; some in deep space, some during reentry—increasing in complexity and eventually culminating in the most difficult of all: safely programming a ship’s course through a multibodied gravitational field.
The simulator, itself a computer, also played the role of “examiner,” and a perfidious one at that, subjecting the already programmed “pupil” to further endurance and efficiency tests, so that, although in actuality the electronic navigator had never piloted a ship, by the time it was finally installed aboard ship, it was more experienced, more flightworthy than the sum total of professional navigators. That is, the problems simulated during the bench-testing phase were too complex ever to occur in reality. And just to safeguard against the slightest imperfection, the pilot-simulator’s performance was monitored by a human, an experienced programmer with years of flight training behind him; Syntronics didn’t bother with pilots, only with astronauts at the rank of navigator or better, only with those, in other words, who had already logged a minimum of a thousand hours. With them rested the final decision as to which test, out of an inexhaustible range, the computer would be made to undergo next. The systems analyst specified the testing level and, by manipulating the simulator, further complicated the “exams” by simulating sudden—and potentially lethal—power blowouts, flare-outs, collision alerts, skin ruptures, communication breakdowns with ground telemetry … until the minimum standard of a hundred bench-testing hours had been achieved. Any model showing the slightest fallibility was sent back to the shop, like a flunked student who has to repeat a year.
Having in effect placed the shipyards beyond reproach, Van der Voyt, probably to counteract the impression of partiality, made an eloquent plea for an impartial inquiry. Next, a team of experts from Earth took the floor, thereupon unleashing a torrent of scientific parlance, flow charts, block diagrams, formulas, models, and statistical comparisons; and Pirx was chagrined to see that they were well on their way to turning the whole affair into an abstruse theoretical case study. The senior computer scientist was followed by Schmidt, the project’s systems engineer. Pirx very soon switched off, not bothering to stay alert for another round with Van der Voyt, which seemed progressively less likely. Not one reference was made to his own pronouncements, as if he had committed a faux pas—and the sooner it was forgotten, the better. By now they had reached the highest pinnacle of navigational theory. Pirx did not suspect them of malice; prudence dictated that they stay close to home. Throughout, Van der Voyt sat and listened indulgently. The strategy had worked: Earth was dominating the hearing. The “Martians” had been reduced to passive spectators; they had no surprise revelations up their sleeves. The Ariel’s computer was now electronic scrap, totally worthless as a source of clues. The tapes may have conveyed the what, more or less, but not the why. Not everything inside a computer can be monitored: one would need another, more powerful, computer, which, to be made foolproof, would again have to be monitored by yet another, and so on ad infinitum.
Thus were they cast adrift on a sea of abstraction. The profundity of the disquisitions only obscured the fact that the tragedy extended far beyond the shipwreck of the Ariel. Automatic sequencers had been around for so long that they had become the basis, indeed, the inviolable premise, of all landing operations, and now this was on the verge of being snatched away. If none of the simpler, less foolproof computers had ever malfunctioned, why should a perfected, more sophisticated one fail? If that was possible, anything was possible. If the computer’s fallibility was open to doubt, there was no stopping the erosion of faith; then everything became mired in skepticism.
Meanwhile, the Ares and Anabis were Mars-bound. Pirx felt alone, on the brink of despair. The inquest into the Ariel had given way to a classic argument between theoreticians, and it was leading them further and further afield. As he looked up at Van der Voyt’s bloated, overblown face benevolently patronizing the committee, Pirx was suddenly struck by its resemblance to Churchill’s: the same look of apparent distraction, belied by a slight twitching of the mouth, betraying an inner smile provoked by a thought lurking behind heavy eyelids. What yesterday seemed unthinkable was now a foregone conclusion: a move to shift the burden of blame onto some higher force, onto the unknown, perhaps, or onto some theoretical omission, one that would require more extensive, long-term research. Pirx knew of similar, though less sensational cases, and knew the sort of passions such a disaster could arouse. Intensive efforts were already under way to reach a face-saving compromise, especially since the project, with its very existence now at stake, was ready to make concessions in exchange for support of the sort the shipyards could provide, if only by supply
ing a fleet of smaller cargo ships on favorable terms. In view of the high stakes—namely, the project’s survival—the Ariel calamity was an obstacle to be removed, if it couldn’t be immediately solved. After all, bigger scandals had been hushed up. But Pirx had one trump card. Earth had consented to his being on the committee because, as a veteran pilot, he was more at home with astronautical crews than anyone else present. He had no illusions: they were moved neither by his reputation nor by his credentials. Quite simply, the committee had need of an astronaut, an active one, a professional, all the better if that astronaut had just stepped ashore.
Van der Voyt smoked his cigar in a silence that, because it was dictated by prudence, lent him an air of omniscience. He might have preferred someone else to Pirx, but they had no excuse to bump him. If they now brought in an inconclusive verdict, and Pirx were to cast a dissenting vote, the result would be a lot of bad publicity: the press, having a nose for scandals, would pounce on it. The Riots’ Union and the Truckers’ Club wielded little power, but pilots made credible witnesses—they were, after all, people who put their lives on the line. So Pirx wasn’t at all surprised to hear, during the break, that Van der Voyt wanted a word with him. This friend of powerful politicians led off with a joke, calling their meeting a summit conference—at the summit of two planets. Pirx at times was subject to impulses that took even him by surprise. While Van der Voyt puffed on his cigar and lubricated his throat with beer, Pirx ordered a few sandwiches from the snack bar. What better way to get on an equal footing than by munching on a snack as he listened to the shipyard director in the communications room.
Van der Voyt made as if there had never been a sparring match between them. He shared Pirx’s concern for the crews of the Anabis and Ares, and even cried on his shoulder. He was outraged by the press, by all the hype. He suggested that Pirx draft a short memo on future landings, on ways to increase their safety. He exuded such confidence that Pirx briefly excused himself, stuck his head out the door, and ordered some more potato salad. Van der Voyt was still playing the role of father, even fawning on him, when Pirx suddenly asked:
“You mentioned the people in charge of simulation. Their names?”
Eight minutes later, Van der Voyt’s face winced, but only slightly, for perhaps a fraction of a second.
“The names of the examiners?” he said, grinning broadly. “All colleagues of yours, Commander. Mint, Stoernhein, and Cornelius. Gentlemen of the old school. We recruited only the finest for Syntronics.”
They had to interrupt; the conference was back in session. Pirx jotted something down and handed the paper to Hoyster, saying, “A matter of the utmost urgency.” The chairman read it aloud: “Three questions for the shipyard staff: One, what are the shifts of the simulation supervisors Cornelius, Stoernhein, and Mint? Two, to what extent are the supervisors held responsible in the event of a malfunction or other defect in a computer? Three, which of the supervisors was in charge of bench-testing the systems aboard the Ariel, Anabis, and Ares?”
There was a commotion in the hall: Pirx was going after some of the most respected—hallowed—names in astronautics! The managing director acknowledged receipt of the questions and promised a reply within a few minutes.
Pirx felt a twinge of remorse. Making such official inquiries was a bad business. Hot only did he risk his colleagues’ enmity, but he also cast doubt on his own credibility in the final round—in case of a dissenting vote. His attempt to widen the investigation beyond the technical, to introduce the human factor, could be interpreted as bowing to pressure from Van der Voyt. The moment he deemed it in the shipyard’s interest, the director would immediately move to squelch him by dropping a few veiled hints to the press. He would toss them Pirx as a bumbling comrade-in-arms. It was a long shot, but it was the only thing he had left. There was no time to make discreet, indirect inquiries. Not that he entertained any actual suspicions. A hunch, maybe. Some vague notions about the dangers arising not from men or machines so much as from their collision, because the reasoning of men and computers was so awfully different. And something else, something he had sensed as he stood before the bookshelf, but which he couldn’t even begin to express in words.
Earth’s reply was immediate: The simulation supervisors monitored their computers from start to finish, and were held responsible for any malfunctions the moment they signed their “diplomas.” The Anabis’s computer had been tested by Stoernhein, the others by Cornelius. Pirx couldn’t wait to leave the room. Tension was already running high; he could feel it.
The session ended at eleven. Romani signaled to get Pirx’s attention, but he pretended not to notice and made a speedy getaway. Shutting himself up in his cubicle, he collapsed on the cot and took to staring up at the ceiling. Mint and Stoernhein didn’t count, only Cornelius. A rational, scientific mind would have started with the question: was there anything a supervisor might have overlooked? A negative answer would have barred any further inquiry. But Pirx wasn’t blessed with a scientific mind, so the question never occurred to him. Nor did he bother to analyze the testing procedure, as if intuiting the futility of such efforts. No, his thoughts were of Cornelius, of the man he once knew, fairly well in fact, though they had long since gone their separate ways. Their relationship had not been the merriest, which was hardly surprising, given that Cornelius had commanded the Gulliver when Pirx was still a rookie. On board, Cornelius was a Bastard of exactitude. He was called a brute, a nitpicker, a skinflint, and a fly-swatter (he had been known to mobilize half the crew to hunt down a stowaway fly).
Pirx smiled in recollection of the eighteen months he had spent under the stickler Cornelius. Now he could afford to smile; at the time, Cornelius had driven him nuts. What a by-the-book man! Even so, he was listed in the encyclopedia for his work on planetary exploration, especially Neptune. Short, pasty-looking, always mean-tempered, he suspected everybody of wanting to con him. When he threatened periodic body searches—to prevent flies from being smuggled aboard—nobody took him seriously, but Pirx knew it was not just an idle threat: Cornelius kept a big box of DDT in his desk drawer. Sometimes, in the middle of a conversation, he would stiffen, raise his finger (God help those who didn’t freeze), and strain his ears to pick up what sounded like a buzzing. A plumb line and a steel measuring tape always in his pocket, he made a cargo inspection more like an inquest at the site of an accident that, though not yet materialized, was imminent. Pirx could still hear them yelling, “Here comes Old Sliderule—everybody scram!,” thereby evacuating the mess hall while Cornelius’s eyes, seemingly blank, scoured the place for any irregularities.
Tics are quite common among veteran rocket jockeys, but Cornelius broke all records. He was allergic to having anyone stand behind his back; if he inadvertently sat down in a chair just vacated, he would jump up in mortal terror the moment he came into contact with the warm seat. He belonged to that species of man impossible to imagine as ever having been young. Visibly frustrated by the imperfection of everyone around him, he anguished over his inability to convert them to his own pedantry. He would tick off one column after another, and he wasn’t satisfied unless everything was checked and rechecked at least twenty—Pirx suddenly went numb and then sat down as if he were made of glass. His thoughts, stumbling through a maze of memories, had tripped an alarm.
Couldn’t stand anybody behind his back. Hassled the crew. So? But somehow… He felt like a little boy with his hand clasped around a bug, who holds his clenched fist up close, afraid to open it. Easy does it.
Cornelius was notorious for his rituals. (Was that it? he wondered.) At the slightest change in regulations, however minor, he would shut himself up in his cabin until the revised rule had been committed to memory. (It was becoming a game of hide-and-seek; let’s see, it was nine, no, ten years since they’d last seen each other.) Cornelius had somehow vanished from the public eye, at the height of his Neptune fame. There were rumors that the lecturing was only temporary, that he was going back aboard ship, but he n
ever did. (Another dead end.) An anonymous letter. (Where the hell…?) What anonymous letter? About his being sick and covering up? That he was a heart-attack risk? No. That was another Cornelius—Cornelius Craig—one, a first name; the other, a surname. (A simple mix-up of names.) But that anonymous letter wouldn’t go away, wouldn’t stop hounding him. The more emphatically he tried to dismiss it, the more adamantly it returned. He sat hunched over, his head in a muddle. An anonymous letter… He was almost sure of it now—a play on words, one of those cases of word substitution, a wrong signal, a stand-in for something else, impossible to shake loose or to fathom … ANONYMOUS.
He got up. On the bookshelf, he recalled, among all the books devoted to Mars, was a huge dictionary. He opened it at random to An. Ana. Anachronism. Anaclastic. Anaconda. Anacreontic. Anacrusis. Analects. (There were so many words he didn’t know…) Analysis. Ananke (Gk.): goddess of destiny (Was that the…? But what did a goddess have to do…?); also: compulsion.
The scales fell from his eyes. He could see the office, the doctor with his back to him, talking on the phone; an open window, sheets of paper on the desk, furling and unfurling in the breeze. A routine check-up. He hadn’t meant to read the typed document, but his eyes couldn’t resist the printed word—as a boy he had rigorously trained himself to read upside down. Warren Cornelius. Diagnosis: anankastic syndrome. He recalled how the psychiatrist, spotting the forms scattered haphazardly on the desk, had bunched them together and stuffed them into his briefcase. Pirx had often wondered about that diagnosis, but he sensed the impropriety of prying, and then he forgot about it. Let’s see, how many years ago was that? At least six.
More Tales of Pirx the Pilot Page 21