"A confession of ignorance is a hell of a lot more revealing than a solid error," I snapped. "The honest answer that I get out of the telemetry data is that something in that gate broke the circuit and the switching operation failed. I think there are about seven thousand components in the gate. I don't know which one failed. A few I can rule out, because they would only cause part of the gate to fail. But a hundred different breaks could account for the data. So I don't know." He lit his pipe and blew smoke around the curved stem before he made reply. "So we got a philosopher for our money," he said. "A confession of ignorance, eh? What are you going to do about it?" "You tell me, Mr. Cleary. You're the old head around here." "So I am," he said evenly. "So I am. Well, my advice to young pups is that they should not be ashamed when they don't know. They should say so. But they should have something else to say along with it." "For example," I suggested grumpily. "They should say, 'I don't know, but I know where to find out,'" he said. "Tell me, Dr. Seaman, do you know where to find out?" He puffed at me for the two or three minutes I thought about it. Really, that's a very long time to think. Most ideas come to you the moment you identify the problem, which is the really hard part of thinking. But this problem took some thought, and I wanted him to think I was thinking. "Yes," I said at last. "I know where to find out." "Where?" "Out in space." * * * * * This called for a lot more smoke. "You mean, go out there and look at the satellite, in space?" "Yes, I can't imagine any other way really to figure it out." He nodded. "You may be right, Mike. But do you know how much it costs to send a manned satellite aloft?" "Oh," I agreed. "There are cheaper ways. We can beef up every part in that gate, test it much tougher than we already have, and when we get the gate to where all seven thousand components can stand any imaginable strain, we can rebuild the twelve Telstars we haven't launched yet and be pretty sure they won't have switching failures. But that isn't what you asked me." "We'd have to fix eighteen of them," he said. "The first six are about sixty per cent useless. They'd have to be replaced." "I still think you should consider sending a man to examine the Telstars in orbit," I suggested. "Science demands it, eh" he growled. "No, I was thinking that perhaps a simple repair could be made in space, and that you wouldn't have to launch six extra birds." He got out of the chair and went to the clothes tree to put on his coat. The elbows were shiny from leaning on his desk. "It might be cheaper at that," he said. "The first six are launched in only two orbits. Three telstars in each orbit, separated by one hundred and twenty degrees. Two launches of a repair man might do it, with careful handling. Is that what you had in mind?" "Something like that."