"Do you mean we have to fight the stated objectives of this Project? Can we not discover sufficient understanding to establish some method of training which will accomplish, in another way, the things the Space Command needs?" "We are not fighting the Space Command's desire for more adequate men for its ships," said Paul. "We are fighting only against the false conclusions they have already formed concerning the nature of such men. "We must solve the problem of human error. We know its purpose in the learning process. We must discover the reason for its existence in a _learned_ process. We have to find out what training actually means. "We have to ask how we know when an error has been made. It is obvious, of course, when a spaceship rams a fixed orbit station. But what of the subtler situations, where results are less dramatic, or are postponed for a long time--? "The primary thing to remember at this point is that our basic goal is to prevent any false confirmation of the dogma that Man is no more than a badly functioning machine, which will gain value when he has been tinkered with sufficiently so that he can slip in beside the gears and vacuum tubes and be indistinguishable from them. And to reach this goal we must discover his true nature." * * * * * It was two weeks later that General Oglethorpe made his first visit since Superman got under way. The soldier's face seemed more deeply lined and his eyes more tired than Paul remembered seeing them before. "You seem to have things well in hand," he said. "How soon can you give us some tangible results?" "Results! We've just started housekeeping. In a year, maybe two, we'll have an idea where to begin a concentrated search for what you want to know." The General shook his head slowly, his eyes remaining on Paul's face. "You aren't going to have anything like a year. You haven't got time to run down one line of research and then another. Run them all at once--a thousand of them if you want to. Why do you think you've got the budget you have!" "Some things," said Paul, "like threading a needle--or analysing a human being--don't go much faster when a thousand men work at it than when there's only one." "They do when there're a thousand needles to thread--or brains to pick. And that's what we're up against here. We need a volume of the kind of men we've been talking about, and we need them quick!" "We have to find out how to get the first one." "And you haven't got as much time now as we thought you had when Superman began. They're trying to close us up. "We hadn't planned to build another Wheel right away, not until some refinements of design had been worked out, and we had some results from Superman. "Now, all that's been scrapped. We've received orders from Washington that erection of a second Wheel is to begin at once, using the plans of the first one. Fabrication of structures is already under way." "I don't understand," said Paul.