Barby gave what might be described as a lady-like sneer.
Rick shook his head. "It's terrible the way people in this house have no faith in genius. Just terrible." He sighed heavily.
Scotty watched him suspiciously. "All right, Doctor Brant. Give with the great idea."
"Okay." Rick waved at the encircling shelves of books. "Pick a subject. Any subject, so long as it is contained in a very few references. Like the life of the bee, or the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, or the Life of Dickens."
Barby said obligingly, "All right. I pick Ben Franklin. Now what?"
"We get the major books on old Ben, plus the copy of the encyclopedia we need. Then we set up an index, and we put principal categories of information on file cards. For Ben, we'd need the Sayings of Poor Richard, and the dates they appeared, and where. And we'd need a list of his inventions, plus dates. And so on. Generally, we fix things so we can find any answer in a few seconds."
Barby shook her head. "That would be awfully hard. It would take weeks, and whoever operated the file would have to know it nearly by heart."
Rick agreed. "But isn't a million bucks worth a few weeks of effort?"
Rick's famous father, Hartson Brant, walked into the library in time to hear the last comment. His eyebrows went up. "What's all this megabuck talk?"
That was a new word to Barby. "What talk?"