"Would you like to have things different?"

"Maybe. But being an inventor, I'm classified as a potentially unstable
character anyhow."

* * * * *

(_Citizen Barn Threnten, age 41, occupation atomics engineer
specializing in spacecraft design. A nervous, intelligent-looking man
with sad brown eyes._)

"You want to know what I do in my job? I'm sorry you asked that,
Citizen, because I don't do a thing except walk around the factory.
Union rules require one stand-by human for every robot or robotized
operation. That's what I do. I just stand by."

"You sound dissatisfied, Citizen Threnten."

"I am. I wanted to be an atomics engineer. I trained for it. Then when I
graduated, I found out my knowledge was fifty years out of date. Even if
I learned what was going on now, I'd have no place to use it."

"Why not?"

"Because everything in atomics is automatized. I don't know if the
majority of the population knows that, but it's true. From raw material
to finished product, it's all completely automatic. The only human
participation in the program is quantity-control in terms of population
indexes. And even that is minimal."

"What happens if a part of an automatic factory breaks down?"

"It gets fixed by robot repair units."

"And if they break down?"

"The damned things are self-repairing. All I can do is stand by and
watch, and fill out a report. Which is a ridiculous position for a man
who considers himself an engineer."

"Why don't you turn to some other field?"

"No use. I've checked, and the rest of the engineers are in the same
position I'm in, watching automatic processes which they don't
understand. Name your field: food processing, automobile manufacture,
construction, biochem., it's all the same. Either stand-by engineers or
no engineers at all."

"This is true for spaceflight also?"

"Sure. No member of the spacepilot's union has been off Earth for close
to fifty years. They wouldn't know how to operate a ship."

"I see. All the ships are set for automatic."

"Exactly. Permanently and irrevocably automatic."

"What would happen if these ships ran into an unprecedented situation?"

"That's hard to say. The ships can't think, you know; they simply follow
pre-set programs. If the ships ran into a situation for which they were
not programmed, they'd be paralyzed, at least temporarily. I think they
have an optimum-choice selector which is supposed to take over
un