"But for how I personally canceled the idea of your magneto-ionic effect from the flare—it just happens that last night I was curious while everybody was asleep. When Bessie first came on duty this morning, I offered to relieve her while she had a cup of coffee, and I got a half-hour all by myself with the Cow. The captain wasn't up yet. Her console's so simple anyone with a basic knowledge of computers and cybernetics could figure her out.
"Practically the first question I asked—something about our orbit—the Cow told me that the information was top secret, and to get it I must go to the proper channel and identify myself as Mike. I started to intercom you, Mike, to tell you that your machinations were showing, but Bessie came back about then. I hung around to see what would happen, and pretty soon Bessie asked the Cow about the same question—but instead of getting the same answer, the Cow told her that an external magneto-ionic field was pulling us out of line.
"So I went up to your engineering place. I rather thought you'd like to know what the Cow had told me—but Dr. Ishie was there, and so instead I went about my own business until I could figure things out.
"Now I couldn't figure things out. But I could figure there's a monkey wrench somewhere—and since the two of you have been sticking together like Siamese twins, I know it will be perfectly all right to ask you in front of Ishie.
"Now," she finished, "do I get my girlish curiosity satisfied? You don't have to tell me. I'll just keep on being puzzled quietly and without indicating the slightest magneto-ionic dubiousness, if you'd rather. But I might be helpful; and I would like to know."
"Confusion say," Ishie declared through the side of his mouth, "that he who inadvertently puts big foot in mouth is apt to get teeth kicked loose. We are very lucky, Mike, that it was Millie who asked the question of the Cow at that time. Besides, we've got to tell somebody sooner or later. We can't just run off by ourselves.
"Yes, Millie, I think you have a job," he said. "Your help here will be appreciated, of course. But what we really need is a way of bridging the gap between ourselves and the rest of the personnel before it gets too wide. How's your P.R. these days?"
"That's something I learned in a hard school, public relations," she answered nonchalantly. "De-segregation was just beginning when I was a girl back in Georgia. But maybe I'd better know what the gap is."
The two began to talk, interrupting each other, incoherently outlining the Confusor and the various forces it exerted, and the—what Mike kept calling the inertial fish hook.