"You hit it though," she reminded him. "And you're going to hit it again out there in exactly five minutes." * * * * * Lindsay was extremely conscious of the eyes of the vidar cameras upon him as President Giovannini, having finished his introductory speech, led him to the alabaster stele in the center of Giac's great central chamber and turned him over to du Fresne, whose official robe hung unevenly from the hump of his harness. Lindsay handed the Minister of Computation the question he had prepared on paper, was brusquely told, "Read it please, Ambassador." He cleared his throat and began. "I am asking a question highly pertinent to the welfare and future amity of the United Worlds," he said slowly. "More specifically to the future amity of Earth and Mars. It is a simple question without involved mathematical qualifications--but one that no computer and no man has thus far been able to answer correctly. "It is this continued failure of computers to come up with a logical answer in the full frame of interplanetary conditions that has done much to make the people of my planet feel that no computer is trustworthy to make decisions involving human beings." He paused, looked covertly at du Fresne, repressed a smile. The Minister of Computation was already showing signs of distress. He was shaking his head, making little pawing motions toward his glasses. "Here it is," Lindsay said quickly. "Should the governors of Mars, whose responsibilities lie at least as much in the economic improvement of their own world as in inter-world harmony, permit their planet to receive goods which retard that economic development so that it becomes a race to maintain current unsatisfactory standards, merely because certain computers on Earth are fed false facts to permit continuation of some illogical form of government or social system--or should the governors of Mars permit their planet to suffer because of computer illogic in the name of a highly doubtful status quo on the parent planet?" He walked slowly back to his place and sat down, almost feeling the silence around him. Nina whispered, "What in hell does it mean?" Lindsay whispered back, "It's a bit of the iron dog and the whale, a bit of the Red Queen, a bit of the suicide idea--and something else. Let's see if it works." Lindsay watched du Fresne, whose moment of triumph was marred by his obvious discomfort. The twisted little man was very busy running the question into its various forms for submission to the feeder units, whose mouths gaped like hungry nestlings along part of one side wall. If du Fresne failed him.... It was a long nervous wait. Lights flickered in meaningless succession on subsidiary instrument boards and du Fresne darted about like a bespectacled buzzard, studying first this set of symbols, then that one.