E-text prepared by Greg Weeks, Pat A. Benoy, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 21988-h.htm or 21988-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/1/9/8/21988/21988-h/21988-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/1/9/8/21988/21988-h.zip) +------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Transcriber's note: | | | | Illustration captions were added by transcriber. | | | | Three obvious typographical errors were corrected: | | undertsood//understood, detectible//detectable, | | and loosend//loosened. | | | | This etext was produced from Space Science Fiction, | | March, 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any | | evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication | | was renewed. | | | +------------------------------------------------------------+ BREAKING POINT by JAMES E. GUNN Illustrated by Ebel [Illustration: Frontispiece: spaceman studying a chess board.] [Illustration: Spider and rat in outer space surrounded by planets.] The ship was proof against any test, but the men inside her could be strained and warped, individually and horribly. Unfortunately, while the men knew that, they couldn't really believe it. The Aliens could--and did. _They sent the advance unit out to scout the new planet in the _Ambassador_, homing down on the secret beeping of a featureless box dropped by an earlier survey party. Then they sat back at GHQ and began the same old pattern of worry that followed every advance unit._ _Not about the ship. The _Ambassador_ was a perfect machine, automatic, self-adjusting, self-regulating. It was built to last and do its job without failure under any and all conditions, as long as there was a universe around it. And it could not fail. There was no question about that._ _But an advance unit is composed of men. The factors of safety are indeterminable; the duplications of their internal mechanisms are conjectural, variable. The strength of the unit is the sum of the strengths of its members. The weakness of the unit can be a single small failing in a single man._ _Beep ... boop ..._