Ribbon in the sky

by Murray Leinster

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RIBBON IN THE SKY

BY MURRAY LEINSTER

Illustrated by van Dongen

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Astounding Science Fiction June 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

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I

"An error is a denial of reality, but mistakes are mere mental malfunctionings. In an emergency, a mistake may be made because of the need for precipitate action. There is no time to choose the best course: something must be done at once. Most mistakes, however, are made without any such exterior pressure. One accepts the first-imagined solution to a problem without examining it, either out of an urgent desire to avoid the labor of thinking, or out of impassioned reluctance to think about the matter at hand when prettier and more pleasurable other things can be contemplated...."

The Practice of Thinking
Fitzgerald

It turned out afterward that somebody had punched the wrong button in a computer. It was in a matter in which mistakes are not permissible, but just as nothing can be manufactured without an ordinary hammer figuring somewhere in the making or the making-ready-to-make, so nothing can be done without a fallible human operating at some stage of the proceedings. And humans make mistakes casually, off-handedly, with impartial lack of malice, and unpredictability. So....