"Not necessarily. We have considered the matter at length, however, and have decided that a Boskonian success at this time would not be for the good of Civilization."
"I'll say it wouldn't—that's a masterpiece of understatement if there ever was one! Also, a successful defense of Arisia would be about the best thing that the Patrol could possibly do for itself."
"Exactly so. Go, then, children, and work to that end."
"But how, Mentor—how?"
"Again I tell you that I do not know. You have powers—individually, collectively, and as the Unit—about which I know little or nothing. Use them!"
XXV.
The "Big Brass"—socially the Directrix, technically the Z9M9Z—floated through space at the center of a hollow sphere of maulers packed almost screen to screen. She carried the Brains. She had been built around the seventeen million cubic feet of unobstructed space which comprised her "tank"—the three-dimensional chart in which vari-colored lights, stationary and moving, represented the positions and motions of solar systems, ships, loose planets, negaspheres, and all other objects and items in which Grand Fleet Operations was, or might become, interested. Completely encircling the tank's more than two thousand feet of circumference was the Rigellian-manned, multimillion-plug board; a crew and a board capable of handling efficiently more than a million combat units.
In the "reducer," the comparatively tiny ten-foot tank set into an alcove, there were condensed the continuously-changing major features of the main chart, so that one man could comprehend and direct the broad strategy of the engagement.
Instead of Port Admiral Haynes, who had conned that reducer and issued general orders during the only previous experience of the Z9M9Z in serious warfare, Kimball Kinnison was now in supreme command. Instead of Kinnison and Worsel, who had formerly handled the big tank and the board, there were Clarrissa, Worsel, Tregonsee, and the Children of the Lens. There also, in a built-in, thoroughly competent refrigerator, was Nadreck. Port Admiral Raoul LaForge and Vice Co-ordinator Clifford Maitland were just coming aboard.
Might he need anybody else, Kinnison wondered. Couldn't think of anybody—he had just about the whole top echelon of Civilization. Cliff and Laf weren't L2's, of course, but they were mighty good men—besides, he liked them! Too bad that the fourth officer of their class couldn't be there, too—gallant Wiedel Holmberg, killed in action. At that, three out of four was a high average—mighty high.