Bonner got Helmond Weiss on the mike to read the medical report. Telemetry again. More thorough than the post-mortem on the ship. Less printout. Four human beings hadn’t output as much in their last minutes as that struggling AI had. Depressing thought.
Then the psych lads took the mike. “Were Wilhelmsen’s last decisions rational?” the committee asked point-blank. And the psychs said, hauling up more charts and graphs, “Increasing indecision,” and talked about hyped senses, maintained that Wilhelmsen had gone on hyperfocus overload and lost track of actual time-flow—
… making decisions at such speed in such duration, it was pure misapprehension of the rate at which filings were happening. No, you couldn’t characterize it as panic….
“… evidence of physiological distress, shortness of breath, increase in REM and pulse rate activated a medical crisis warning with the AI—“
“The carrier’s AI didn’t have time to reach the rider?” a senator asked.
“And get the override query engaged and answered, no, there wasn’t time.”
Playback of the final moments on the tape. The co-pilot, Pete Fowler, the last words on the tape Fowler’s, saying, “Hold it, hold it~”
That overlay the whole reorientation and firing incident, at those speeds. The panel had trouble grasping that. They spent five minutes arguing it, and maybe, Graff thought, still didn’t realize the sequence of events, or that it was Fowler protesting the original reorientation.
You didn’t have time to talk. Couldn’t get a word out in some sequences, and not this one. Fowler shouldn’t have spoken. Part of it was his fault. Shouldn’t have spoken to a strange pilot, who didn’t know his contexts, who very well knew they didn’t altogether trust him.
The mike went to Tanzer. A few final questions, the committee said. And a senator asked the question:
“What was the name of the original pilot?”
“Dekker. Paul Dekker. TVainee.”
“What was the reason for removing him from the mission?”
“Seniority. He was showing a little stress. Wilhelmsen was the more experienced.”
Like hell.
“And the crew?”
“Senator, a crew should be capable of working with any officer. It was capable. There were no medical grounds there. The flaw is in the subordination of the neural net interface. It should be constant override with concurrent input from the pilot. The craft’s small cross-section, its minimum profile, the enormous power it has to carry in its engines to achieve docking at highest v—all add up to sensitive controls and a very powerful response….”
More minutiae. Keep my mouth shut or not? Graff asked himself. Trust Tanzer? Or follow orders?
Another senator: “Did the sims run the same duration as the actual mission?”
Not lately, Graff thought darkly, while Tanzer said, blithely, “Yes.”
Then a senator said: “May I interject a question to Lt. Graff.”
Bonner didn’t like that. Bonner frowned, and said, “Lt. Graff, I remind you you’re still under oath.”
“Yes, sir.”
The senator said, “Lt. Graff. You were at the controls of the carrier at the time of the accident. You were getting telemetry from the rider.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The medical officer on your bridge was recorded as saying Query out.”
“That’s correct.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means she’d just asked the co-pilot to assess the pilot’ s»condition and act. But the accident was already inevitable. Just not enough time.”
Blinks from the senator, attempt to think through the math, maybe. “Was the carrier too far back for safety?”
“It was in a correct position for operations. No, sir.”
“Was the target interval set too close? Was it an impossible shot?”
“No. It was a judgment shot. The armscomper doesn’t physically fire all the ordnance, understand. He sets the priorities at the start of the run and adjusts them as the situation changes. A computer does the firing, with the pilot following the sequence provided by his co-pilot and the longscanner and armscomper. The pilot can violate the aimscomper’s priorities. He might have to. There are unplotteds out there, rocks, for instance. Or mines.”
“Did Wilhelmsen violate the priorities?”
“Technically, yes. But he had that choice.”
“Choice. At those speeds.”
“Yes, sir. He was in control until that point. He knew it was wrong, he glitched, and he was out. Cold.”