He went to the control room, there to brush his fingers across the useless control buttons and look into the viewscreen that revealed only black and limitless Nothing. What was the warp? Surely it must have definite physical laws of some kind. It was difficult to imagine any kind of existence--even the black nothing of the warp--as being utterly without rule or reason. If he knew the laws of the warp he might find some means of survival hitherto hidden from him. There was only one way he could learn about the warp. He would have to question the computer and continue questioning it until he learned or until his time was up. He returned to the computer and considered his next question. The computer had calculated their positions from observations of the sun and other stars in front of the ship--what would similar calculations based on observations of the stars behind the ship reveal? He typed: USE FIRST THE TRIANGULATION METHOD AND THEN THE SPECTRUM-SHIFT METHOD TO DETERMINE OUR POSITION FROM OBSERVATIONS MADE OF THE STARS OF OPHIUCHUS. The answers appeared. They showed the ship to be simultaneously speeding away from Ophiuchus and toward it. He asked: DO THESE TWO POSITIONS COINCIDE WITH THOSE RESULTING FROM THE OBSERVATIONS OF ORION? YES, it answered. Was the paradox limited to the line of flight? He asked the computer: WHAT IS OUR POSITION, COURSE AND SPEED AS INDICATED BY THE STARS AT RIGHT-ANGLES TO OUR FORWARD-BACKWARD COURSE; BY THE STARS OF URSA MINOR AND CRUX? The answer appeared on the panel: the ship was racing sideward through the warp in two diametrically opposed directions, but at only one-third the speed with which it was racing forward and backward. So now the ship had four impossible positions and two different speeds. He frowned at the computer, trying to find some clue in the new data. He noticed, absently, that the hand of one of the dials was near zero in the red section of the dial. He had not noticed any of the dials registering in the danger zone before.... He jerked out of his preoccupation with apprehension and typed: TELL ME IN NON-TECHNICAL LANGUAGE THE MEANING OF THE HAND NEAR ZERO ON THE DIAL LABELED _MAX. ET. REF_. It answered: ONE OF MY CIRCUITS WAS DAMAGED BY THE SUDDEN RELEASE OF AIR PRESSURE. I WILL CEASE FUNCTIONING AT THE END OF FOUR MORE MINUTES OF OPERATION. He slammed the master switch to OFF. The lights on the board went out, the various needles swung to zero, leaving the computer a mindless structure more than ever resembling an overgrown refrigerator.