"Hold it, Boy. You've made enough electronic mistakes for one day. This takes some thinking over."
"We better think fast," said Mike. "The captain'll ask that question any second now, or a question like it."
"All right," said Ishie. "First we've got to withdraw your original order—and you'd better not trust your own memory as to what it was. You ask the Cow to tell you what order you gave her making certain information top secret. Then when she tells you exactly what you said, you tell her to cancel that order."
Mike did as he was told.
"Why," said Ishie, "did you give such an order in the first place? Never mind answering that question," he added, "but it's lucky she hasn't been refusing to give people the time of day, and referring them to you. As a matter of fact"—glancing up at the clock on the wall—"it looks like she has. That clock hasn't moved since I got here."
Even as he spoke, the clock whirred, jumped forty-five minutes, and settled down to its steady, second-by-second spin.
"Ishie," said Mike, "we figured out a space drive, and that was great. But if we can figure out how to communicate an idea to a computer, we're real geniuses."
Ishie turned on the vocoder. "Please supply us," he told the Cow, "with a complete recording of your latest conversation with Mike."
And as the computer started back over the dialogue that has just occurred between herself and Mike, Ishie interrupted. "Not that," he said, "I mean the last previous conversation."
Then he sat back as the Cow unreeled a fifteen minute monologue which repeated both sides of the conversation including the order to make everything top secret.