surface, to see?" the
supervisor grumbled. "I want to see an echo. I want to see for myself
that you haven't let your equipment go sour. Or maybe there's a space
hurricane between here and there. Or maybe a booster has blown. Or maybe
some star has exploded and warped things. Maybe ... Well, bounce it,
man. Bounce it! What are you waiting for?"

"Okay, okay!" the operator grumbled back. "I was waiting for you to give
the order." He grimaced at the operator behind the supervisor. "I can't
just go bouncing beams on planets if I happen to be in the mood."

"Now, now. Now, now. No insubordination, if you please," the supervisor
cautioned.

Together they waited, in growing dread, for the automatic relays strung
out through space to take hold, automatically calculating the route, set
up the required space-jump bands. It was called instantaneous
communication, but that was only relative. It took time.

The supervisor was frowning deeply now. He hated to report to the sector
chief that an emergency had come up which he couldn't handle. He hated
the thought of Extrapolators poking around in his department, upsetting
the routines, asking questions he'd already asked. He hated the
forethought of the admiration he'd see in the eyes of his operators when
an E walked into the room, the eagerness with which they'd respond to
questions, the thrill of merely being in the same room.

He hated the operators, in advance, for giving freely of admiration to
an E that they withheld from him. He allowed himself the momentary
secret luxury of hating all Extrapolators. Once upon a time, when he was
a kid, he had dreamed of becoming an E. What kid hadn't? He'd gone
farther than the wish. He'd tried. And had been rebuffed.

"Clinging to established scientific beliefs," the tester had told him
with the inherent, inescapable superiority of a man trying to be kind to
a lesser intelligence, "is like being afraid to jump off a precipice in
full confidence that you'll think of something to save yourself before
you hit bottom."

It might or might not have been figurative, but he had allowed himself
the pleasure of wishing the tester would try it.

"To accept what Eminent Authority says as true," the tester had
continued kindly, "wouldn't even qualify you for being a scientist.
Although," he added hopefully, "this would not bar you from an excellent
career in engineering."

It was a bitter memory of failure. For if you disbelieved what science