creative thinking. During a single day of ship time, Garrard
could get in more thinking than any philosopher of Earth
could have managed during an entire lifetime. Garrard could,
if he disciplined himself sufficiently, devote his mind for a
century to running down the consequences of a single
thought, down to the last detail, and still have millennia left
to go on to the next thought. What panoplies of pure reason
could he not have assembled by the time 6,000 years had
gone by? With sufficient concentration, he might come up
with the solution to the Problem of Evil between breakfast
and dinner of a single ship’s day, and in a ship’s month might
put his finger on the First Causel
Pock.
Not that Carrard was sanguine enough to expect that he
would remain logical or even sane throughout the trip. The
vista was still grim, in much of its detail. But the oppor-
tunities, too, were there. He felt a momentary regret that it
hadn’t been Haertel, rather than himself, who had been given
such an opportunity
Pock.
for the old man could certainly have made better use of
it than Garrard could. The situation demanded someone
trained in the- highest rigors of mathematics to be put to the
best conceivable use. Still and all Garrard began to feel
Pock.
that he would give a good account of himself, and it
tickled him to realize that (as long as be held onto his
essential sanity) he would return
Pock.
to Earth after ten Earth months with knowledge cen-
turies advanced beyond anything
Pock.
that Haertel knew, or that anyone could know