He really seemed to be trying; the effort made him sweat. All that happened, though, was that the big toe wriggled a little and the knee buckled. Dud Number Twenty-five. I was sore, of course, especially when I noticed that Kujack was more amused than ever.
"You seem to think something's pretty funny," I said.
"Don't get me wrong, Doc," he said, much too innocently. "It's just that I've been thinking. Maybe you'd have more luck if you thought of me as a bedbug."
"Where did you get that idea?"
"From Doc Ellsom. I was having some beers with him the other night. He's got a very high opinion of you, says you build the best bedbugs in the business."
I find it hard to believe that Len Ellsom would say anything really nice about me. Must be his guilt about Marilyn that makes him talk that way. I don't like his hanging around Kujack.
October 25, 1959
The boss came along on our woodcutting expedition this morning and volunteered to work the other end of my two-handled saw. He asked how things were coming in the Pro lab.
"As I see it," I said, "there are two sides to the problem, the kinesthetic and the neural. We're making definite progress on the K side—I've worked out a new solenoid system, with some miniature motors tied in, and I think it'll give us a leg that moves damned well. I don't know about the N side, though. It's pretty tough figuring out how to hook the thing up electrically with the central nervous system so that the brain can control it. Some sort of compromise system of operation, along mechanical rather than neural lines, would be a lot simpler."