xplai-ain."

"Oy!" said Ishie. "It even sounds like a cow!"

"Ye-es, si-ir," said the Cow. "A cow is an he-erbivorous ma-ammal,
usua-ally do-omesticated, and fou-ound in mo-ost of the cou-ountries
of Ea-arth. Wha-at specific da-ata did you-u wi-ish? The mi-ilk
su-upply--"

"Hold it," Mike said, forestalling a long dissertation on the dairy
industry.

Catching on quickly to the literal-mindedness of the placid computer,
Ishie fired a direct question.

"What is our current position in relation to the equatorial orbit that
we should be following?" he asked.

There was a sput from the speaker, very much as though someone had
been caught off guard and almost said something, and then the placid
reply came back.

"That information is top secret. Please identify yourself as Mike and
I will answer you."

Ishie groaned, depressed the cutoff switch and turned to Mike.

"You fixed it," he said. "If a simple question like that gets an
answer like that, how long do you think it will take the captain to
find out something's wrong with the Cow?"

Mike lunged for the switch, but Ishie held him back.

"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 starte