"I know what you mean," said Hoskins. "I saw it myself, but I don't believe it." He pushed the button again.
"I believe it," said Paresi.
Ives went to his desk, clicked the transmitter and receiver switches on and off, moved a rheostat or two. He reached up to a wall toggle, turned a small air-circulating fan on and off. "Everything else seems to work," he said absently.
"This is ridiculous!" exploded the Captain. "It's like having your keys home, or arriving at the theater without your tickets. It isn't dangerous—it's just stupid!"
"It's dangerous," said Paresi.
"Dangerous how?" Ives demanded.
"For one thing—" Paresi nodded toward Johnny, who lay tensely, his face hidden. "For another, the simple calculation that if nothing inside this ship made that control fail, something outside this ship did it. And that I don't like."
"That couldn't happen," said the Captain reasonably.
Paresi snorted impatiently. "Which of two mutually exclusive facts are you going to reason from? That the ship can't fail? Then this failure isn't a failure; it's an external control. Or are you going to reason that the ship can fail? Then you don't have to worry about an external force—but you can't trust anything about the ship. Do the trick that makes you happy. But do only one. You can't have both."