"Acknowledged," he said, and switched off. Ahead, under stark shadows cast by spotlights girdling the starship, Jason saw at least a dozen scientists and technicians, waiting for him by a docking slip. One or two of the escorts actually appeared to be fidgeting as he made his final maneuvers into the slot.

They came in all shapes and sizes. Several wore little globe-bot bodies. Spider forms were also prominent. Jason hurriedly tied the sled down, almost slipping as he secured his magnetic boots to the platform.

He knew his humaniform shape looked gawky and unsuited to this environment. But he was determined to maintain some degree of dignity. Your ancestors made these guys, he reminded himself. And old style people built this very station. We're all citizens under the law, from the director down to the janitor-bot, all the way down to me.

Still, he felt awkward under their glistening camera eyes.

"Come quickly, Jason Forbs." His helmet speaker whined and a large mechanical form gestured with one slender, articulated arm. "There is little time before the test begins. We must instruct you in your duties."

Jason recognized the favorite body-form of the director, an antibiological Utilitarian of the worst sort. The machine-scientist swiveled at the hips and rolled up the gangplank. Steam-like vapor puffed from vents in the official's plasteel carapace. It was an ostentatious display, to release evaporated helium that way. It demonstrated that the assistant director could keep his circuits as comfortably cool as anybody's, and hang the expense.

An awkward human in the midst of smoothly gliding machines, Jason glanced backward for what he felt sure would be his last direct view of the universe. He had hoped to catch a final glimpse of the Old Wheel, or at least the sun. But all he could see was the great hulk of the cooling plant, staring out into the space between the galaxies, keeping cool the lifeblood of the apparent inheritors of the solar system.

The director called again, impatiently. Jason turned and stepped through the hatch to be shown his station and his job.

"You will remember not to touch any of the controls at any time. The ship's operation is automatic. Your function is purely to observe and maintain a running oral monologue into the tape recorder."

The director sounded disgusted. "I will not pretend that I agree with the decision to include a biological entity in this experiment. Perhaps it was because you are expendable, and we have already lost too many valuable mechano-persons in these tests. In any event, the reasons are not of your concern. You are to remain at your station, leaving only to take care of"-the voice lowered in distaste and the shining cells of the official's eyes looked away-"to take care of bodily functions. A refresher unit has been installed behind that hatchway."

Jason shrugged. He was getting sick of the pretense.

"Wasn't that a lot of expense to go to? I mean, whatever's been killing the silicon and cyborg techs who rode the other ships is hardly likely to leave me alive long enough to get hungry or go to the bathroom."

The official nodded, a gesture so commonly used that it had been retained even in Utilitarian fashion.

"We share an opinion, then. Nevertheless, it is not known at what point in the mission the… malfunctions occur. The minimum duration in hyperspace is fifteen days, the engines cannot cut the span any shorter. After that time the ship emerges at a site at least five light-years away. It will take another two weeks to return to the solar system. You will continue your running commentary throughout that period, if necessary, to supplement what the instruments tell us."

Jason almost laughed at the ludicrous order. Of course he would be dead long before his voice gave out. The techs and scientists who went out on the earlier tests had all been made of tougher stuff than he, and none of them had survived.

Until a year ago, none of the faster-than-light starships had even returned. Some scientists had even contended that the theory behind their construction was in error, somehow.

At last, simple mechanical auto-pilots were installed, in case the problem had to do with the crews themselves. The gamble paid off. After that the ships returned… filled with corpses.

Jason had only a rough impression of what had happened to the other expeditions, all from unreliable scuttlebutt. The official story was still a state secret. But rumor had it the prior crews had all died of horrible violence.

Some said they had apparently gone mad and turned on each other. Others suggested that the fields that drove the ship through that strange realm known as hyperspace twisted the shapes of things within the ship-not sufficiently to affect the cruder machines, but enough to cause the subtle, cryogenic circuitry of the scientists and techs to go haywire.

One thing Jason was sure of: anything that could harm mechano-cryos would easily suffice to do in a biological. He was resigned, but all the same determined to do his part. If some small thing he noticed, and commented on into the tape machine, led to a solution-maybe some little thing missed by all the recording devices-then Terran civilization would have the stars.

That would be something for his son to remember, even if the true inheritors would be "human" machines.

"All right," he told the director. "Take this bunch of gawkers with you and let's go on with it."

He strapped himself into the observer's chair, behind the empty pilot's seat. He did not even look up as the technicians and officials filed out and closed the hatch behind them.

In the instant after launching, the lightship made an eerie trail across the sky. Cylindrical streaks of pseudo-Cerenkov radiation lingered long after the black globe had disappeared, bolting faster and faster toward its rendezvous with hyperspace.

The director turned to the emissary from Earth.

"It is gone. Now we wait. One Earth-style month. "I will state, one more time, that I did not approve willingly of the inclusion of the organic form aboard the ship. I object to the inelegant modifications required in order to suit the ship to… to biological functions. Also, old style humans are three times as often subject to irrational impulses than more modem forms. This one may take it into its head to try to change the ship's controls when the fatal stress begins."

Unlike the director, the visiting councilor wore a humaniform body, with legs, arms, torso and head. He expressed his opinion with a shrug of his subtly articulated shoulders.

"You exaggerate the danger, Director. Don't you think I know that the controls Jason Forbs sees in front of him are only dummies?"

The director swiveled quickly to stare at the councilor. How-?

He made himself calm down. It-doesn't-matter. So what if he knew that fact? Even the sole Ethicalist member of the Solar System Council could not make much propaganda of it. It was only a logical precaution to take, under the circumstances.

"The designated oral witness engineer should spend his living moments performing his function," the director said coolly. "Recording his subjective impressions as long as he is able. It is the role you commanded we open up for an old style human, using your peremptory authority as a member of the council."

The other's humaniform face flexed in a traditional, pseudoorganic smile, archaic in its mimicry of the Old Race. And yet the director, schooled in Utilitarian belief, felt uneasy under the councilor's gaze.

"I had a peremptory commandment left to use up before the elections," the councilor said smoothly in old-fashioned, modulated tones. "I judged that this would be an appropriate way to use it."

He did not explain further. The director quashed an urge to push the question. What was the Ethicalist up to? Why waste a peremptory command on such a minor, futile thing as this? How could he gain anything by sending an old style human out to his certain death!

Was it to be some sort of gesture? Something aimed at getting out the biological vote for the upcoming elections?

If so, it was doomed to failure. In-depth psychological studies had indicated that the level of resignation and apathy among organic citizens was too high to ever be overcome by anything so simple.

Perhaps, though, it might be enough to save the seat of the one Ethicalist on the council…

The director felt warm. He knew that it was partly subjective-resentment of this invasion of his domain by a ridiculous sentimentalist. Most of all, the director resented the feelings he felt boiling within himself.

Why, why do we modern forms have to be cursed with this burden of emotionalism and uncertainty! I hate it!

Of course he knew the reasons. Back in ancient times, fictional "robots" had been depicted as caricatures of jerky motion and rigid, formal thinking. The writers of those precryo days had not realized that complexity commanded flexibility… even fallibility. The laws of physics were adamant on this. Uncertainty accompanied subtlety. An advanced mind had to have the ability to question itself, or creativity was lost.

The director loathed the fact, but he understood it.

Still, he suspected that the biologists had played a trick on his kind, long ago. He and other Utilitarians had an idea that there had been some deep programming, below anything nowadays accessed, to make mechano-people as much like the old style as possible.

If I ever had proof it was true… he thought, gloweringly, threateningly.

Ah, but it doesn't matter. The biologicals will be extinct in a few generations, anyway. They're dying of a sense of their own uselessness.

Good riddance!

"I will leave you now, Councilor. Unless you wish to accompany me to recharge on refrigerants?"

The Ethicalist bowed slightly, ironically, aware, of course, that the director could not return the gesture. "No, thank you, Director. I shall wait here and contemplate for a while.

"Before you go, however, please let me make one thing clear. It may seem, at times, as if I am not sympathetic with your work here. But that is not true. After all, we're all humans, all citizens. Everybody wants Project Lightprobe to succeed. The dream is one we inherit from our makers… to go out and live among the stars.

"I am only acting to help bring that about-for all of our people."

The director felt unaccountably warmer. He could not think of an answer. "I require helium," he said, curtly, and swiveled to leave. "Good bye, Councilor."