"The trouble with you, Fatso," Garlock said dispassionately, as he opened a drawer and took out a pair of cutting pliers, "is that all your strength is in your glands and none in your alleged brain. There are a lot of things—including a lot of tests—you know nothing about. How much will you see after I've cut one wire?"
"You wouldn't dare!" the fat man shouted. "I'd fire you—blacklist you all over the sys...."
Voice and images died away and Garlock turned to the two women in the Main. He began to smile, but his mental shield did not weaken.
"You've got a point there, Lola," he said, going on as though Ferber's interruption had not occurred. "Not that I blame either Belle or myself. If anything was ever calculated to drive a man nuts, this farce was. As the only female Prime in the system, Belle should have been in automatically—she had no competition. And to anybody with three brain cells working the other place lay between you, Lola, and the other three female Ops in the age group.
"But no. Ferber and the rest of the Board—stupidity uber alles!—think all us Ops and Primes are psycho and that the ship will never even lift. So they made a Grand Circus of it. But they succeeded in one thing—with such abysmal stupidity so rampant I'm getting more and more reconciled to the idea of our not getting back—at least, for a long, long time."
"Why, they said we had a very good chance...." Lola began.
"Yeah, and they said a lot of even bigger damn lies than that one. Have you read any of my papers?"
"I'm sorry. I'm not a mathematician."
"Our motion will be purely at random. If it isn't, I'll eat this whole ship. We won't get back until Jim and I work out something to steer us with. But they must be wondering no end, outside, what the score is, so I'm willing to call it a draw—temporarily—and let 'em in again. How about it, Belle?"
"A draw it is—temporarily." Neither, however, even offered to shake hands.