y use in trying to go beyond a certain point.
You got so damned tired you couldn't think straight. You might as well
go to bed and rest. Bob Mills had gone long before.

He poured over the blueprint again, striving to concentrate. Why in hell
had he not given up altogether? What possible contribution could an
engineer make toward the solution of such a problem?

_Construct this._

You simply made the thing according to a simple blueprint. You tried out
what you got, found out what it was good for, found out then what was
keeping it from doing that. You fixed it.

Well, the sword had been constructed. Fantastic effort had been directed
into producing a perfect model of the print. Every minute convolution
had been followed to an incredible point of perfection. Harrison was
willing to bet there was less than a ten thousandths error--even in the
handle, where the curves seemed to be more artistic than mechanical.

_It is defective._

What was defective about it? Nobody had actually tried the ancient
weapon, it was true. You didn't go around chopping people's heads off.
But experts on such things had examined the twelve-pound blade and had
pronounced it "well balanced"--whatever that meant. It would crack a
skull, sever arteries, kill or maim.

_Correct...._

What was there to correct? Could you make it maim or kill better? Could
you sharpen it so that it would go through thick clothing or fur? Yes.
Could you make it a bit heavier so that it might slice a metal shield?
Yes, perhaps. All of these things had been half-heartedly suggested. But
nobody had yet proposed any kind of qualitative change or been able to
suggest any kind of change that would meet the next admonition of the
alien:

Correct _that which renders it not useful_.

What actually could be done to a weapon to make it useful? Matter of
fact, what was there about the present weapon that made it _not_ useful.
Apparently it was useful as hell--useful enough to cut a man's throat,
pierce his heart, slice an arm off him....

What were the possible swords; what was the morphology of _concept
sword_?

Harrison picked up a dog-eared report.

There was the _rapier_, a thin, light, extremely flexible kind of sword
(if you considered the word "sword" generic, as the Semantics expert had
pointed out). It was good for duels, man-to-man combat, usually on what
the ancients had called the "field of honor."

There were all kinds of short swords, dirks, shivs,