The green and yellow spirals reached the top. A few seconds of sheer Jabberwocky emerged from the loudspeaker, ending in a chorus of, "Illogic, illogic, illogic...." with the words overlapping.
Panic began to show itself. The president gasped and Maria suddenly shrieked. Frightened onlookers crowded toward the door. The president looked from the machine to Lindsay, bewildered.
Lindsay got up and strode toward the microphone by the stele. He shouted into it, "Turn off the computer—turn it off."
And, moments later, while the angry hot glow of the stele faded slowly, he said, "People of Earth, this is Lindsay of Mars. Please be calm while I explain. There is nothing wrong with Giac or any of your computers." He paused, added ruefully, "At least nothing that cannot be repaired in short order where Giac is concerned.
"I am going to ask to look once more at the question I submitted to this machine—and to the language tape fed into it by the Honorable Mr. du Fresne." He waited while they were brought to him, scanned them, smiled, said, "No the fault was not with Giac. Nor was it consciously with Mr. du Fresne. The question was loaded.
"You see, I happen to know that your Minister's belief in computers is such that he suffers an involuntary reaction when he hears them defamed. I defamed computers both in my preliminary address and in my question. And when he had to transfer to tape the phrase '—or, should the Governors of Mars permit their planet to suffer because of computer illogic in the name of a highly doubtful status quo on the parent planet?'—when he transferred that sentence to tape he was physically unable to write the phrase 'computer illogic'.
"Involuntarily he changed it to 'computer logic' with the result that the question was utterly meaningless and caused Giac's tubes to short circuit. None of the recent computer failures was the fault of the machines—it was the fault of the men who fed them material to digest.
"So I believe it is safe to say that you may rely upon your computers—as long as they do not deal with problems affecting yourselves and ourselves. For those you need human speculation, human debate, above all human judgment!"
President Giovannini, able politician that he was, had joined Lindsay at the microphone, put an arm across his shoulders, said, "I feel humble—yes, humble—in the great lesson this great envoy from our sister planet had taught us. What they can do on Mars we can do on Earth."
When at last they were clear of the vidar cameras Lindsay grinned and said, "Nice going, Johnny—you'll have more voters than ever come next election."