But, I Don't Think

by Randall Garrett

  Produced by Greg Weeks, Bruce Albrecht, Mary Meehan andthe Online Distributed Proofreading Team athttps://www.pgdp.net

  BUT, I DON'T THINK

  BY RANDALL GARRETT

  _As every thinking man knows, every slave always yearns for the freedomhis master denies him..._

  "_But, gentlemen," said the Physician, "I really don't think we canconsider any religion which has human sacrifice as an integral part as ahumane religion._"

  "_At least," added the Painter with a chuckle, "not as far as the victimis concerned._"

  _The Philosopher looked irritated. "Bosh! What if the victim likes itthat way?_"

  _--THE IDLE WORSHIPERS_ _by R. Phillip Dachboden_

  I

  The great merchantship _Naipor_ settled her tens of thousands of tons ofmass into her landing cradle on Viornis as gently as an egg beingsettled into an egg crate, and almost as silently. Then, as theantigravs were cut off, there was a vast, metallic sighing as thegigantic structure of the cradle itself took over the load of holdingthe ship in her hydraulic bath.

  At that point, the ship was officially groundside, and the _Naipor_ wasin the hands of the ground officers. Space Captain Humbolt Reed sighed,leaned back in his desk chair, reached out a hand, and casually toucheda trio of sensitized spots on the surface of his desk.

  "Have High Lieutenant Blyke bring The Guesser to my office immediately,"he said, in a voice that was obviously accustomed to giving orders thatwould be obeyed.

  Then he took his fingers off the spots without waiting for an answer.

  In another part of the ship, in his quarters near the Fire ControlSection, sat the man known as The Guesser. He had a name, of course, aregular name, like everyone else; it was down on the ship's books and inthe Main Registry. But he almost never used it; he hardly ever eventhought of it. For twenty of his thirty-five years of life, he had beena trained Guesser, and for fifteen of them he'd been The Guesser of_Naipor_.

  He was fairly imposing-looking for a Guesser; he had the tall,wide-shouldered build and the blocky face of an Executive, and hisfather had been worried that he wouldn't show the capabilities of aGuesser, while his mother had secretly hoped that he might actuallybecome an Executive. Fortunately for The Guesser, they had both beenwrong.

  He was not only a Guesser, but a first-class predictor, and he showedimpatience with those of his underlings who failed to use their abilityin any particular. At the moment of the ship's landing, he was engagedin verbally burning the ears off Kraybo, the young man who wouldpresumably take over The Guesser's job one day--if he ever learned howto handle it.

  "You're either a liar or an idiot," said The Guesser harshly, "and Iwish to eternity I knew which!"

  Kraybo, standing at attention, merely swallowed and said nothing. He hadfelt the back of The Guesser's hand too often before to expose himselfintentionally to its swing again.

  The Guesser narrowed his eyes and tried to see what was going on inKraybo's mind.

  "Look here, Kraybo," he said after a moment, "that one single Misfitship got close enough to do us some damage. It has endangered the lifeof the _Naipor_ and the lives of her crewmen. You were on the board inthat quadrant of the ship, and you let it get in too close. The recordsshow that you mis-aimed one of your blasts. Now, what I want to know isthis: were you really guessing or were you following the computer tooclosely?"

  "I was following the computer," said Kraybo, in a slightly waveringvoice. "I'm sorry for the error, sir; it won't happen again."

  The Guesser's voice almost became a snarl. "It hadn't better! You knowthat a computer is only to feed you data and estimate probabilities onthe courses of attacking ships; you're not supposed to think they canpredict!"

  "I know, sir; I just--"

  "You just near came getting us all killed!" snapped The Guesser. "Youclaim that you actually guessed where that ship was going to be, but youfollowed the computer's extrapolation instead?"

  "Yes, sir," said the tense-faced Kraybo. "I admit my error, and I'mwilling to take my punishment."

  The Guesser grinned wolfishly. "Well, isn't that big-hearted of you? I'mvery glad you're willing, because I just don't know what I'd do if yourefused."

  Kraybo's face burned crimson, but he said nothing.

  The Guesser's voice was sarcastically soft. "But I guess about the onlything I could do in that case would be to"--The Guesser's voice suddenlybecame a bellow--"_kick your thick head in_!"

  Kraybo's face drained of color suddenly.

  The Guesser became suddenly brusque. "Never mind. We'll let it go fornow. Report to the Discipline Master in Intensity Five for ten minutestotal application time. Dismissed."

  Kraybo, whose face had become even whiter, paused for a moment, asthough he were going to plead with The Guesser. But he saw the look inhis superior's eyes and thought better of it.

  "Yes, sir," he said in a weak voice. He saluted and left.

  * * * * *

  And The Guesser just sat there, waiting for what he knew would come.

  It did. High Lieutenant Blyke showed up within two minutes after Kraybohad left. He stood at the door of The Guesser's cubicle, accompanied bya sergeant-at-arms.

  "Master Guesser, you will come with us." His manner was bored andsomewhat flat.

  The Guesser bowed his head as he saluted. "As you command, great sir."And he followed the lieutenant into the corridor, the sergeant taggingalong behind.

  The Guesser wasn't thinking of his own forthcoming session with thecaptain; he was thinking of Kraybo.

  Kraybo was twenty-one, and had been in training as a Guesser ever sincehe was old enough to speak and understand. He showed occasional flashesof tremendous ability, but most of the time he seemed--well, _lazy_. Andthen, there was always the question of his actual ability.

  A battle in the weirdly distorted space of ultralight velocitiesrequires more than machines and more than merely ordinary humanabilities. No computer, however built, can possibly estimate the flightof a dodging spaceship with a canny human being at the controls. Eventhe superfast beams from a megadyne force gun require a finite time toreach their target, and it is necessary to fire at the place where theattacking ship will be, not at the position it is occupying at the timeof firing. That was a bit of knowledge as old as human warfare: you mustlead a moving target.

  For a target moving at a constant velocity, or a constant acceleration,or in any other kind of orbit which is mathematically predictable, acomputer was not only necessary, but sufficient. In such a case, theaccuracy was perfect, the hits one hundred per cent.

  But the evasive action taken by a human pilot, aided by a randomityselector, is not logical and therefore cannot be handled by a computer.Like the path of a microscopic particle in Brownian motion, its positioncan only be predicted statistically; estimating its probable location isthe best that can be done. And, in space warfare, probability of thatorder is simply not good enough.

  To compute such an orbit required a special type of human mind, andtherefore a special type of human. It required a Guesser.

  The way a Guesser's mind operated could only be explained _to_ a Guesser_by_ another Guesser. But, as far as anyone else was concerned, only theobjective results were important. A Guesser could "guess" the route of amoving ship, and that was all anyone cared about. And a Master Guesserprided himself on his ability to guess accurately 99.999% of the time.The ancient sport of baseball was merely a test of muscularco-ordination for a Guesser; as soon as a Guesser child learned tocontrol a bat, his batting average shot up to 1.000 and stayed thereuntil he got too old to swing the bat. A Master Guesser could make thesame score blindfolded.

  Hitting a ship in space at ultralight vel
ocities was something elseagain. Young Kraybo could play baseball blindfolded, but he wasn't yetcapable of making the master guesses that would protect a merchantshiplike the _Naipor_.

  But what was the matter with him? He had, of course, a fire-controlcomputer to help him swing and aim his guns, but he didn't seem to beable to depend on his guesswork. He had more than once fired at a spotwhere the computer said the ship would be instead of firing at the spotwhere it actually arrived a fraction of a second later.

  There were only two things that could be troubling him. Either he wasdoing exactly as he said--ignoring his guesses and following thecomputer--or else he was inherently incapable of controlling hisguesswork and was hoping that the computer would do the work for him.

  If the first were true, then