"From Doc Ellsom. I was having some beers with him the other night. He's got a very high opinion of you, says you build the best bedbugs in the business." I find it hard to believe that Len Ellsom would say anything really nice about me. Must be his guilt about Marilyn that makes him talk that way. I don't like his hanging around Kujack. * * * * * _October 25, 1959_ The boss came along on our woodcutting expedition this morning and volunteered to work the other end of my two-handled saw. He asked how things were coming in the Pro lab. "As I see it," I said, "there are two sides to the problem, the kinesthetic and the neural. We're making definite progress on the K side--I've worked out a new solenoid system, with some miniature motors tied in, and I think it'll give us a leg that _moves_ damned well. I don't know about the N side, though. It's pretty tough figuring out how to hook the thing up electrically with the central nervous system so that the brain can control it. Some sort of compromise system of operation, along mechanical rather than neural lines, would be a lot simpler." "You mean," the boss said with a smile, "that it's stumping you." I was relieved to see him taking it so well because I know how anxious he is to get results from the Pro lab. Since Pro is one of the few things going on at IFACS that can be talked about, he's impatient for us to come up with something he can release to the press. As the public relations officer explained it to me at dinner the other night, people get worried when they know there's something like IFACS going, but don't get any real information about it, so the boss, naturally, wants to relieve the public's curiosity with a good, reassuring story about our work. I knew I was taking an awful chance spilling the whole K-N thing to him the way I did, but I had to lay the groundwork for a little plan I've just begun to work on. "By the way, sir," I said, "I ran into Len Ellsom the other day. I didn't know he was here." "Do you know him?" the boss said. "Good man. One of the best brains-and-games men you'll find anywhere." I explained that Len had gotten his degree at M.I.T. the year before I did. From what I'd heard, I added, he'd done some important work on the Remington-Rand ballistics computer. "He did indeed," the boss said, "but that's not the half of it. After that he made some major contributions to the robot chess player. As a matter of fact, that's why he's here." I said I hadn't heard about the chess player. "As soon as it began to play a really good game of chess, Washington put the whole thing under wraps for security reasons. Which is why you won't hear any more about it from me."