The general manager was in the breach instantly and fluently, "So here's the situation, chief. If we take the deal, we can put it through like this. The Brain will tell us which unit of information involves the dilemma. From there, we can figure why the dilemma. Isn't that right, Dr. Bogert? There you are, chief, and Dr. Bogert is the best mathematician you'll find anywhere. We give Consolidated a 'No Solution' answer, with the reason, and collect a hundred thousand. They're left with a broken machine; we're left with a whole one. In a year, two maybe, we'll have a space-warp engine or a hyper-atomic motor some people call it. Whatever you name it, it will be the biggest thing in the world."

Robertson chuckled and reached out, "Let's see the contract. I'll sign it."

When Susan Calvin entered the fantastically guarded vault that held The Brain, one of the current shift of technicians had just asked it: "If one and a half chickens lay one and a half eggs in one and a half days, how many eggs will nine chickens lay in nine days?"

The Brain had just answered, "Fifty-four."

And the technician had just said to another, "See, you dope!"

Dr. Calvin coughed and there was a sudden impossible flurry of directionless energy. The psychologist motioned briefly, and she was alone with The Brain.

The Brain was a two-foot globe merely – one which contained within it a thoroughly conditioned helium atmosphere, a volume of space completely vibration-absent and radiation-free – and within that was that unheard-of complexity of positronic brain-paths that was The Brain. The rest of the room was crowded with the attachments that were the intermediaries between The Brain and the outside world – its voice, its arms, its sense organs.

Dr. Calvin said softly, "How are you, Brain?"

The Brain's voice was high-pitched and enthusiastic, "Swell, Miss Susan. You're going to ask me something. I can tell. You always have a book in your hand when you're going to ask me something."

Dr. Calvin smiled mildly, "Well, you're right, but not just yet. This is going to be a question. It will be so complicated we're going to give it to you in writing. But not just yet; I think I'll talk to you first."

"All right. I don't mind talking."

"Now, Brain, in a little while, Dr. Lanning and Dr. Bogert will be here with this complicated question. We'll give it to you a very little at a time and very slowly, because we want you to be careful. We're going to ask you to build something, if you can, out of the information, but I'm going to warn you now that the solution might involve… uh… damage to human beings."

"Gosh!" The exclamation was hushed, drawn-out.

"Now you watch for that. When we come to a sheet which means damage, even maybe death, don't get excited. You see, Brain, in this case, we don't mind – not even about death; we don't mind at all. So when you come to that sheet, just stop, give it back – and that'll be all. You understand?"

"Oh, sure. By golly, the death of humans! Oh, my!"

"Now, Brain, I hear Dr. Lanning and Dr. Bogert coming. They'll tell you what the problem is all about and then we'll start. Be a good boy, now-"

Slowly the sheets were fed in. After each one came the interval of the queerly whispery chuckling noise that was The Brain in action. Then the silence that meant readiness for another sheet. It was a matter of hours – during which the equivalent of something like seventeen fat volumes of mathematical physics were fed into The Brain.

As the process went on, frowns appeared and deepened. Lanning muttered ferociously under his breath. Bogert first gazed speculatively at his fingernails, and then bit at them in abstracted fashion. It was when the last of the thick pile of sheets disappeared that Calvin, white-faced, said:

"Something's wrong."

Lanning barely got the words out, "It can't be. Is it – dead?"

"Brain?" Susan Calvin was trembling. "Do you hear me, Brain?"

"Huh?" came the abstracted rejoinder. "Do you want me?"

"The solution-"

"Oh, that! I can do it. I'll build you a whole ship, just as easy – if you let me have the robots. A nice ship, it'll take two months maybe."

"There was – no difficulty?"

"It took long to figure," said The Brain.

Dr. Calvin backed away. The color had not returned to her thin cheeks. She motioned the others away.

In her office, she said, "I can't understand it. The information, as given, must involve a dilemma – probably involves death. If something has gone wrong-"

Bogert said quietly, "The machine talks and makes sense. It can't be a dilemma."

But the psychologist replied urgently, "There are dilemmas and dilemmas. There are different forms of escape. Suppose The Brain is only mildly caught; just badly enough, say, to be suffering from the delusion that he can solve the problem, when he can't. Or suppose it's teetering on the brink of something really bad, so that any small push shoves it over."

"Suppose," said Lanning, "there is no dilemma. Suppose Consolidated's machine broke down over a different question, or broke down for purely mechanical reasons."

"But even so," insisted Calvin, "we couldn't take chances. Listen, from now on, no one is to as much as breathe to The Brain. I'm taking over."

"All right," sighed Lanning, "take over, then. And meanwhile we'll let The Brain build its ship. And if it does build it, we'll have to test it."

He was ruminating, "We'll need our top field men for that."

Michael Donovan brushed down his red hair with a violent motion of his hand and a total indifference to the fact that the unruly mass sprang to attention again immediately.

He said, "Call the turn now, Greg. They say the ship is finished. They don't know what it is, but it's finished. Let's go, Greg. Let's grab the controls right now."

Powell said wearily, "Cut it, Mike. There's a peculiar overripe flavor to your humor at its freshest, and the confined atmosphere here isn't helping it."

"Well, listen," Donovan took another ineffectual swipe at his hair, "I'm not worried so much about our cast-iron genius and his tin ship. There's the matter of my lost leave. And the monotony! There's nothing here but whiskers and figures – the wrong kind of figures. Oh, why do they give us these jobs?"

"Because," replied Powell, gently, "we're no loss, if they lose us. O.K., relax! – Doc Lanning's coming this way."

Lanning was coming, his gray eyebrows as lavish as ever, his aged figure unbent as yet and full of life. He walked silently up the ramp with the two men and out into the open field, where, obeying no human master, silent robots were building a ship.

Wrong tense. Had built a ship!

For Lanning said, "The robots have stopped. Not one has moved today."

"It's completed then? Definitely?" asked Powell.

"Now how can I tell?" Lanning was peevish, and his eyebrows curled down in an eye-hiding frown. "It seems done. There are no spare pieces about, and the interior is down to a gleaming finish."

"You've been inside?"

"Just in, then out. I'm no space-pilot. Either of you two know much about engine theory?"

Donovan looked at Powell, who looked at Donovan.

Donovan said, "I've got my license, sir, but at last reading it didn't say anything about hyper-engines or warp-navigation. Just the usual child's play in three dimensions."

Alfred Lanning looked up with sharp disapproval and snorted the length of his prominent nose.

He said frigidly, "Well, we have our engine men."

Powell caught at his elbow as he walked away, "Sir, is the ship still restricted ground?"

The old director hesitated, then rubbed the bridge of his nose, "I suppose not. For you two anyway."

Donovan looked after him as he left and muttered a short, expressive phrase at his back. He turned to Powell, "I'd like to give him a literary description of himself, Greg."