“I — I didn’t mean any harm, sir.”
“Of course not. You’re not in any trouble; you did us all a good turn this morning. Tell me, how did you know that the calculation was wrong? Had any mining experience?”
“No. sir. I just saw that he had worked it out wrong.”
“But how?”
Libby shuffled uneasily. “Well, sir, it just seemed wrong — it didn’t fit.”
“Just a second, Captain. May I ask this young man a couple of questions?” It was Commander “Blackie” Rhodes who spoke.
“Certainly. Go ahead.”
“Are you the lad they call ‘Pinkie’?”
Libby blushed. “Yes, sir.”
“I’ve heard some rumors about this boy.” Rhodes pushed his big frame out of his chair, went over to a bookshelf, and removed a thick volume. He thumbed through it, then with open book before him, started to question Libby.
“What’s the square root of ninety-five?”
“Nine and seven hundred forty-seven thousandths.”
“What’s the cube root?”
“Four and five hundred sixty-three thousandths.”
“What’s its logarithm?”
“Its what, sir?”
“Good Lord, can a boy get through school today without knowing?”
The boy’s discomfort became more intense. “I didn’t get much schooling, sir. My folks didn’t accept the Covenant until Pappy died, and we had to.”
“I see. A logarithm is a name for a power to which you raise a given number, called the base, to get the number whose logarithm it is. Is that clear?”
Libby thought hard. “I don’t quite get it, sir.”
“I’ll try again. If you raise ten to the second power — square it — it gives one hundred. Therefore the logarithm of a hundred to the base ten is two. In the same fashion the logarithm of a thousand to the base ten is three. Now what is the logarithm of ninety-five?’
Libby puzzled for a moment. “I can’t make it come out even. It’s a fraction.”
“That’s O.K.”
“Then it’s one and nine hundred seventy-eight thousandths — just about.”
Rhodes turned to the Captain. “I guess that about proves it, sir.”
Doyle nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, the lad seems to have intuitive knowledge of arithmetical relationships. But let’s see what else he has.”
“I am afraid we’ll have to send him back to Earth to find out properly.”
Libby caught the gist of this last remark. “Please, sir, you aren’t going to send me home? Maw ‘ud be awful vexed with me.”
“No, no, nothing of the sort. When your time is up, I want you to be checked over in the psychometrical laboratories. In the meantime I wouldn’t part with you for a quarter’s pay. I’d give up smoking first. But let’s see what else you can do.”
In the ensuing hour the Captain and the Navigator heard Libby: one, deduce the Pythagorean proposition; two, derive Newton’s laws of motion and Kepler’s laws of ballistics from a statement of the conditions in which they obtained; three, judge length, area, and volume by eye with no measurable error. He had jumped into the idea of relativity and nonrectilinear space-time continua, and was beginning to pour forth ideas faster than he could talk, when Doyle held up a hand.
“That’s enough, son. You’ll be getting a fever. You run along to bed now, and come see me in the morning. I’m taking you off field work.”
“Yes, sir.”
“By the way, what is your full name?”
“Andrew Jackson Libby, sir.”
“No, your folks wouldn’t have signed the Covenant. Good night.”
“Good night, sir.”
After he had gone, the two older men discussed their discovery.
“How do you size it up, Captain?”
“Well, he’s a genius, of course — one of those wild talents that will show up once in a blue moon. I’ll turn him loose among my books and see how he shapes up. Shouldn’t wonder if he were a page-at-a-glance reader, too.”
“It beats me what we turn up among these boys — and not a one of ’em any account back on Earth.”
Doyle nodded. “That was the trouble with these kids. They didn’t feel needed.”
Eighty-eight swung some millions of miles further around the sun. The pock-marks on her face grew deeper, and were lined with durite, that strange close-packed laboratory product which (usually) would confine even atomic disintegration. Then Eighty-eight received a series of gentle pats, always on the side headed along her course. In a few weeks’ time the rocket blasts had their effect and Eighty-eight was plunging in an orbit toward the sun.