It replied: DATA INSUFFICIENT TO ARRIVE AT LOGICAL EXPLANATION.
He paused, pondering his next move. Time was speeding by and he was learning nothing of value. He would have to move the ship to some place in the warp where emergence into normal space would not put him under the blasters of the Slug cruisers. He could not know where to move the ship until he knew where the ship was at the present. He did not believe it was in the position given him by the computer, and its original space warp position had certainly not been the one given by the computer. The computer did not have the ability to use its knowledge to explain contradictory data. It had been ordered to compute their space warp position by triangulation of the receding sun and stars and was not at all disturbed by the contradicting shift of the sun into the ultraviolet. Suppose it had been ordered to calculate their position by computations based on the shift of the sun's and stars' spectrum into the ultraviolet?
He asked it: WHAT IS OUR POSITION, IGNORING THE TRIANGULATION AND BASING
YOUR COMPUTATIONS ON THE SHIFT OF THE SPECTRUMS OF THE SUN AND ORION
INTO THE ULTRAVIOLET?
It gave him the coordinates of a position almost two light-years toward Orion. The triangulation computations had shown the ship to be going backward at many times the speed of light; the spectrum-shift computations showed it to be going forward with approximately the same speed. THIS SHIP CANNOT SIMULTANEOUSLY BE IN TWO POSITIONS THREE LIGHT-YEARS
APART. NEITHER CAN IT SIMULTANEOUSLY BE GOING FORWARD AND BACKWARD. DATA ACKNOWLEDGED, it agreed.
USE THAT DATA TO EXPLAIN THE CONTRADICTIONS OF THE TWO POSITIONS YOU
COMPUTED.
DATA INSUFFICIENT TO ARRIVE AT LOGICAL EXPLANATION, it answered.
ARE YOU CERTAIN THERE WAS NO ERROR IN YOUR CALCULATIONS?
THERE WAS NO ERROR.
DO YOU KNOW THAT IF WE DROPPED BACK INTO NORMAL SPACE, IT WOULD BE AT
NEITHER OF THE POSITIONS YOU GAVE ME?
It replied with the characteristic single-mindedness: DATA SHOWS OUR TWO POSITIONS TO BE
THOSE GIVEN.
He paused again. He was still getting nowhere while time fled by. How swiftly less than a hundred minutes could pass when they were all a man had left to him . . .
The computer was a genius with the mental initiative of a moronic child. It could find the answer for him but first he would have to take it by the hand and lead it in the right direction. To do that he would have to know more about the warp.
He wrote: EXPLAIN THE NATURE OF THE SPACE WARP AS SIMPLY AS POSSIBLE AND
WITHOUT USING MATHEMATICS HIGHER THAN ALGEBRA.
It answered at once: THIS CANNOT BE DONE.
The chronometer read 12:30. He typed:
THIS SHIP WILL HAVE TO RETURN TO NORMAL SPACE NO LATER THAN 13:53. IT
MUST BE MOVED TO A DIFFERENT POSITION WHILE STILL IN THE WARP.
DATA ACKNOWLEDGED, it replied.
THIS SHIP CANNOT OCCUPY TWO POSITIONS AT THE SAME TIME. YOUR MEMORY
FILES SHOULD CONTAIN SUFFICIENT DATA TO ENABLE YOU TO FIND THE
EXPLANATION OF THIS TWO-POSITION PARADOX. FIND THAT EXPLANATION.
SUBMIT METHOD OF PROCEDURE, it answered.
