"You can tell me the motions; you can tell me what to do. You can coach me at the job, and with training--hell, fellers, you don't have to know organic chemistry to mix a cake and men have performed operations with a jackknife at sea, with directions by radio. I'm checked out in a B-108, and any man who can keep his eyes on seventy meters, a hundred and twelve switches, forty levers, sixty-seven pushbuttons, and drive the damned thing with his free hand at the same time ought to be able to learn whatever this job requires." He looked around him. "And in the meantime, we'll let that crystal sit there and simmer, waiting for a nice, ripe physicist to come and get stuck!" "It will take days," said Jane thoughtfully. "Better days than lives," said Dave sharply. "Okay," said DeLieb. "You certainly can do no harm. You may do some good. We'll try it your way." For the next ninety-six hours, Dave Crandall got a total of nine hours of sleep. He worked in another replica of the remote lab, using similar instruments. He had not the foggiest notion of what he was doing, but he learned the manual dexterity necessary to do it. He didn't know what the meters meant, but he learned how to read them. He couldn't understand why he must do thus and so when such and such a meter read to a certain value, but he learned that, too. He became a trained human primate, an animal who knew that four raps plus four raps equalled eight raps; a chimpanzee trained to drive an automobile. Not that Dave was ignorant, unintelligent, or untutored. Dave was college, postgrad, and a writer. Dave knew as much present-day science as any layman. He wrote science articles for his paper, was constantly exposed to science, and a lot of it took. But this science was as far beyond the kind he knew as the jet plane is beyond the Wright Brothers' original model. Then DeLieb told him, "Dave, you're ready." "Let's go." "Not tonight." "Why waste time?" "You're tired. I'm tired. We're all tired, if you want to finish the conjugation. Tonight we loaf and rest and get a full night's sleep. Tomorrow we work. This is the royal edict." "I vote yea," laughed Jane Nolan. "Come, ambitious one. On nine hours' sleep in four days, you should be easy to handle." Dave shrugged. DeLieb looked askance. "Jane, if you take him dancing, we'll all kill you." "You wouldn't have to," she said. "I'd be dead already. No, I'm taking Dave out to the farm where he can see stars and breathe fresh air, and loaf on long grass." * * * * * Jane's mother, forewarned, piled the dinner table high, and Dave was fed to the bursting point. They walked under the stars, afterwards, and then sprawled on the long grass, looking at the sky. "You're quite a guy, Dave," said Jane. "Probably the only one of my kind in existence," he said solemnly. "Most men have eight eyes, you know. I've only got two." "Blue, aren't they?" "Brown," he corrected. "All two of them." "They're blue."