Sitting in complacent control of these overall complexities that must be met with automatic accuracy was the Starrett Analogue/Digital Computer, Optical Wave type 44-63, irreverently referred to by the acronymically-minded as Sad Cow, though more frequently as the Sacred Cow, or simply Cow. Most of the computer's intricate circuits were hidden behind the bulkhead in a large compartment between the control center and the south polar lock; but it was from this console in the control center that her operation was keyed. From this position, every function of the wheel was ordered. This was the bridge. Spaced equally around its thirty-two-foot ring-shaped floor were the computer's console where Bessie presided; the com center in charge of Communications Officer Clark; and the command console where Captain Naylor Andersen, commanding officer of Space Lab One had his formal, though seldom-occupied post. At the moment, Nails Andersen was present, black cigar clamped firmly between his teeth; hamlike Norwegian hands maneuvering a pencil, he was making illegible notes on a scrap of paper--illegible to others because they were in his own form of shorthand that he had worked out over the years as he tried to make penciled notes as fast as his racing mind worked out their details. Whether Nails were politician or scientist would be hard to say. Certainly his rise through the ranks of U.N. Bureaus had been rapid; certainly in this rise he had been political, with the new brand of politics that men were learning--world, rather than national politics. Certainly, also, he was a scientist; and certainly he had used his political abilities on the behalf of science, pushing and slashing at red-tape barriers. Nails was more than most responsible for the very existence of U.N. Space Lab One, and Project Hot Rod besides. He was also a sponsor of many other projects, both those that had been done and those that were yet to be done. The justification of a space project in these times was difficult indeed; for no longer could nations claim military superiority as a main reason for pushing forward across the barriers of the inner marches of space; for spending billions in taxes in experimental research. For a project to achieve reality now, it must have benefits, visible benefit, for the majority of mankind. It must have a _raison d'etre_ that had nothing of a military flavor. And occasionally Nails had been hard put to explain why, to people who did not understand; to explain his feeling that men must expand or die; that from a crowded planet there could be only one frontier, and that an expansion outward into space. Of course there were, Nails admitted to himself, other frontiers. The huge basin of the Amazon had been by-passed and ignored by man, and quite possibly would be in the future as well. The oceans, covering seventy-five per cent of Earth's surfaces also presented a challenge to man, and the possibility of a new frontier of conquest.