_I was in a grey-walled room, facing a towering surface of ribbed metal. I reached out, placed my hands over the proper perforations. The housings opened. For apparent malfunction in the quaternary field amplifiers, I knew, auto-inspection circuit override was necessary before activation--_ I blinked, looked around at the rod in my hand. "I was in some kind of power-house," I said. "There was something wrong with--with...." "The Quaternary field amplifiers," Foster said. "I seemed to be right there," I said. "I understood exactly what it was all about." "These are technical manuals," Foster said. "They'll tell us everything we need to know about the ship." "I was thinking about what I was getting ready to do," I said, "the way you do when you're starting into a job; I was trouble-shooting the Quaternary whatzits--and I knew how...." Foster got to his feet and moved toward the doorway. "We'll have to start at one end of the library and work our way through," he said. "It will take us awhile, but we'll get the facts we need. Then we can plan." * * * * * Foster picked a handful of briefing rods from the racks in the comfortably furnished library and started in. The first thing we needed was a clue as to where to look for food and beds, or for operating instructions for the ship itself. I hoped we might find the equivalent of a library card-catalog; then we could put our hands on what we wanted in a hurry. I went to the far end of the first rack and spotted a short row of red rods that stood out vividly among the black ones. I took one out, thought it over, decided it was unlikely that it was any more dangerous than the others, and put it against my temple.... _As the bells rang, I applied neuro-vascular tension, suppressed cortical areas upsilon, zeta and iota, and stood by for--_ I jerked the rod from my head, my ears still ringing with the shrill alarm. The effect of the rods was like reality itself, but intensified, all attention focussed single-mindedly on the experience at hand. I thought of the entertainment potentialities of the idea. You could kill a tiger, ride an airplane down in flames, face the heavyweight champion--I wondered about the stronger sensations, like pain and fear. Would they seem as real as the impulse to check the whatchamacallits or tighten up your cortical thingamajigs? I tried another rod. _At the sound of the apex-tone, I racked instruments, walked, not ran, to the nearest transfer-channel--_ Another: _Having assumed duty as Alert Officer, I reported first to coordination Control via short-line, and confirmed rapport--_ These were routine SOP's covering simple situations aboard ship. I skipped a few, tried again: _Needing a xivometer, I keyed instruction-complex One, followed with the code--_ * * * * * Three rods further along, I got this: