"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."