Manning shrugged. "Tell me what to do next and I'll do it," he said defensively.
Wilson exploded, "You know your job! Suppose you tell us all how three hundred ships could comb space and miss anything bigger than a hard-boiled egg."
Toby Manning started to open his mouth to say something. He was not at all sure what he should say, not at all sure what was wise to say, but he knew he was expected to say something. It was as well for Manning that he felt indecision, for if he had uttered a syllable it would have been blasted back down his throat.
"Space search!" roared Wilson angrily. "Integrated maneuvers! We might as well be a bunch of crying children, lost, and scrambling all over a department store trying to get ourselves located. Sure I know there are indeterminates. I know there's always trouble with space coordinates. Sure, it ain't like plowing a farm where you can follow the edge of where you've been last. But you, Manning, are supposed to be a computer, capable of plowing with the Law of Probabilities which, my math prof once told me, should include the probability that human beings will make errors and be generally sloppy. You set up the search grid and proposed the search pattern with what you called a factor of overlap-safety."
Wilson turned on Hugh Weston. "And you are supposed to have a bunch of the finest astrogators in the Universe! You and your collection of schoolboys, confidently walking behind the stereo and drawing pinpoints and hairlines to show where we've been! Nuts. You should have used a ten-inch kalsomine brush."
He paused for breath as he scorned them with his eyes, then picked Allison.
"That fancy doodad of yours, Allison—the famous infrawave detector and ranger! Did you ever get more than ten minutes of constant operation out of it?"
"Once," Allison snapped angrily, his face red and his hands opening and closing.
"Fine," sneered Wilson. "Oh, fine. Oh, hell!"
He looked at them all again. He saw them, this time.