“No,” Ailiss said. “There were a good many obvious reasons why it wasn’t
advisable.”
“Maybe it wasn’t then. It’s advisable now. I threw them the question-and
they break like paperboard spoons.”
Ailiss was silent for what seemed like many minutes, though in actuality
she made a quick recovery. “Then, granted that the nomenclature should be
changedand that we’ll have to jettison those men. But what moved you to
such an extreme test in the first place, Director?”
Again that peculiar writhing shrug, which seemed to involve the Director’s
whole upper torso. If it still
52 James Blish
aroused the same revulsion in Ailiss, her expression this time didnot betray
it.
“The fact,” Ertak said grimly, “that we are going to need to use both
crews-at a minimum. Time we got down to business. Dr. Kamblin, please take
the floor.”
“Certainly,” Kamblin said. He stood, quite unruffled. He was really quite
a big man compared to Ertak, but he was older, and there did not seem to be
much drive to him. Despite his eminence in his field, many decades of
subjection to women had made him non-committal about anything that mattered
to him, a man determined only to avoid becoming involved. “The situation,
as briefly as possible, is this:
“As you~re all too well aware, the solar pulsation cycles have been getting
increasingly out of phase in the last century or so, and the solar constant
has risen by as much as a thousandth of a percentage point. Thus far, these
things haven’t much more than inconvenienced us. For example, they’ve given