nology to all the rest of our
society, and bind Man in an iron mold that will not be broken for
generations. While we have been hired and will ostensibly work at the
task of developing an errorless man, our basic purpose must be to
validate the humanity of Man!"

He waited for their reaction. Outside, far across the open desert at the
station, a rocket screamed into the air. They waited until the sound
died away.

Professor Barker stood up. "There is scarcely a human being who has not
by now read or heard the words of Captain West's appeal. They will be
looking for the day when there will come marching from our laboratories,
like a robot, the errorless man he asked for.

"Do you mean we have to fight the stated objectives of this Project? Can
we not discover sufficient understanding to establish some method of
training which will accomplish, in another way, the things the Space
Command needs?"

"We are not fighting the Space Command's desire for more adequate men
for its ships," said Paul. "We are fighting only against the false
conclusions they have already formed concerning the nature of such men.

"We must solve the problem of human error. We know its purpose in the
learning process. We must discover the reason for its existence in a
_learned_ process. We have to find out what training actually means.

"We have to ask how we know when an error has been made. It is obvious,
of course, when a spaceship rams a fixed orbit station. But what of the
subtler situations, where results are less dramatic, or are postponed
for a long time--?

"The primary thing to remember at this point is that our basic goal is
to prevent any false confirmation of the dogma that Man is no more than
a badly functioning machine, which will gain value when he has been
tinkered with sufficiently so that he can slip in beside the gears and
vacuum tubes and be indistinguishable from them. And to reach this goal
we must discover his true nature."

* * * * *

It was two weeks later that General Oglethorpe made his first visit
since Superman got under way. The soldier's face seemed more deeply
lined and his eyes more tired than Paul remembered seeing them before.

"You seem to have things well in hand," he said. "How soon can you give
us some tangible results?"

"Results! We've just started housekeeping. In a year, maybe two, we'll
have an idea where to begin a concentrated search for what you want to
know."