Astounding Science Fiction (British Edition) — page 29: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE GULF BETWEEN trolling the ship from the ground- control station?” ‘The control from the ground over- rides all forms of control from within the ship. As I said, we’re convinced the ship has no bugs, but no man has ever gone into space before. It might possibly be that a man would crack from the experience, and if he did he might give any kind of orders to the robot drive control—even such one as ordering the disintegrators turned on Earth. We don’t expect anything like that to happen, you understand— Miles and. Vickson were selected for their mental stability—but we like to play safe.” “Will the crew include a doctor?’ “The very best, so far as technical skill goes. But circumstances might arise where more than technical skill would be needed, so that’s why we have the auxiliary control station.” General Gordon tentatively touched a red knob on the observer’s panel. “Does this turn the disintegrators on?’’ he asked. Knight nodded. “It turns them on, and also controls the maximum range. The Computer gave us that safety gadget I spoke of when you were here a year ago, sO now we don’t have to worry about them being turned on accidentally and destroying the ship.” He spun the red knob to the right and the generals exchanged nervous glances. “It’s on full intensity, right now. This safety gadget prevents the closing of the circuit so long as the ship is within an atmosphere dense enough to produce a feedback of the rays.” He turned it off again and General Marker remarked, “You certainly go all the way in trusting your gadgets here.”’ “A soundly built gadget can be trusted.” “Then why your five-word slogan —the same as you have on the Master 27 Computer—in big letters here on the observer’s panel?” “It’s different when a gadget has an intelligence. The observer, in an emer- gency, would have to control the ship through a robotic brain. That five- word sentence, which is actually a sound philosophy to keep in mind when dealing with machines, is to re- mind the observer that he is not giving orders to a human pilot.” “Although it’s six hours until take- off, I suppose the ship is ready to go right now?” General Gordon asked. “Ready to go, and Miles and Vick- son are now getting their last hours of sleep—the last hour, to be exact. They'll be back down here in less than two hours, together with myself, Dr. Clarke, and about a platoon of tech- nicians to make the last-minute check of all the other checking. We have something too big in space flight to chance any errors on the first attempt.” “I’m glad this ship’s first flight will not be as a weapon of war,” General Marker said, “‘but I trust it’s weil guarded—just to play safe, as you said of your ground-control station.” “You saw the guards outside,” Knight answered. “And there are guards outside the door of the ground- contro! station—this ship can’t lift while enclosed in this steel building and the controls that lower the roof and walls into recesses in the ground are inside that station. We still have the machine-gun towers that we erected seven years ago when war seemed just around the corner. The antiaircraft artillery is still stationed in a wide circle around Computer Center—no one ever got around to ordering their removal and the guns were still manned twenty-four hours a day, the last I heard.” “Well, if Russo-Asia has any plans for this ship, they’ve certainly kept them well concealed,’’ General Marker said. “Our Intelligence reports no Conn Elonoolks.<o im