“Are you a psychiatrist, lieutenant?”
“No, sir, but I suggest you ask the medical officer. There was no panic until he heard his crew’s alarm. That spooked him. Their telemetry reads alarm—first, sir. His move startled them and he dropped out of hype.”
“The lieutenant is speculating,” Bonner said. “Lt. Graff, kindly keep to observed fact.”
“As a pilot, sir, I observed these plain facts in the medical testimony.”
“You’re out of order, lieutenant.”
“One more question,” the senator said. “You’re saying, lieutenant, that the tetralogic has faults. Would it have made this mistake?”
“No, but it has other flaws.”
“Specifically?”
“Even a tetralogic is recognizable, to similar systems. Machine can counter machine. Human beings can make decisions these systems don’t expect. Longscan works entirely on that principle.”
“Are you a computer tech?”
“I know the systems. I personally would not go into combat with a computer totally in charge.”
The senator leaned back, frowning. “Thank you, lieutenant.”
“May I make an observation?” Tanzer asked, and got an indulgence and a nod from Bonner.
Tanzer said: “Let me say this is an example of the kind of mystical nonsense I’ve heard all too much of from this service. Whatever your religious preferences, divine intervention didn’t happen here, Wilhelmsen didn’t stay conscious long enough to apply the human advantage. Human beings can’t defy physics; and the lieutenant sitting behind his carrier’s effect shields can maintain mat spacers are somehow evolved beyond earthly limitations and make their decisions by mysterious instincts that let them outperform a tetralogic, but in my studied and not unexpert opinion, there’s been altogether too much emphasis in recruitment based on entry-level skills and certain kinds of experience— meaning a practical exclusion of anyone but Belters. The lieutenant talks about some mysterious unquantifiable mentality that can work at these velocities. But I’d like to say, and Dr. Weiss will back me on this, that there’s more than button-pushing ability and reflexes that make a reliable military. There is, very importantly, attitude. There’s been no background check into volunteers on this project…”
Dammit, he’s going to do it—
“…in spite of the well-known unrest and the recent violence in the Belt. We have a service completely outside the authority of the UDC trying to exclude the majority of Sol System natives from holding a post on weapons platforms of enormous destructive potential, insisting we take their word—“ Tanzer’s knuckles rapped the table. “—mat the policies and decisions of the UN, the world governments, and even Company policy will be respected and observed outside this system. It’s imperative that these ships not remain under the control of a cadre selected by one man’s opinion of their fitness for command, a man not in any way native to Earth or educated to Earth’s values. The Fleet is pushing qualifications arbitrarily selected to exclude our own military in command positions, for what motive leaves me entirely uneasy, sirs.”
Some things a man couldn’t hear and keep his mouth shut. “General,” Graff said. “I’d like to make my own statement in answer to that.”
“This isn’t a court of law, lieutenant. But you’ll have your say. In the meantime, the colonel has his. —Go on, colonel.”
Graff let go a breath and thought, I could walk out, now. But to what good? To what living good? I’m in it. The Captains can disavow what I say. They can still do that. But Tanzer wanted to cut a deal. Tanzer wanted me to agree on the redesign and what good is my agreement to them, what could it possibly influence if this committee’s already in their pocket?
Tanzer said, “There are two reasons why I favor a tetralogic system. This ship is too important and too hazardous to civilian targets to turn over to personnel in whose selection our values have never been a criterion. I’ve been asked privately the reason for the substitution—“
My God, here it goes.
“In the recess I’ve also been asked the reason for the morale difficulties in this old and time-tried institution. Gentlemen, it lies in the assumption that these machines are flyable only by super-humans personally selected by Conrad Mazian and his hand-picked officers. Earth is being sold a complete bill of goods. Conrad Mazian wants absolute control of an armada Earth is sacrificing considerably to build. What’s the difference—control of the human race by a remote group of dissidents—or by a merchanter cartel with a powerful lobby in the halls of the Earth Company administration? These ships and the carriers should be under UDC command and responsible to the citizens of the governments that fund them, not to a self-appointed committee of merchantmen with their own interests and their own priorities.”