Eighty Minute Hour

The occupants numbered ten humans, plus a very efficient computer. The ship was built by the Dissident Nations – those who could not or would not enter the World Government umbrella offered by the Cap-Comm Treaty. Most of the structure was Japanese-made, except the computer, which was a Danish model, an IMRA40, and the engines, which were Yugo-Hungarian.

Most of the crew were American. Four of them were conscious, while the rest lay in semi-deep, just three degrees Kelvin above BAZ (Biochemical Activity Zero), conserving air, nutrients, and power.

Of the four who retained, to varying degrees, that peculiar state called by its possessors ‘full consciousness’, we have met one before – Dr Glamis Fevertrees, last seen with Zoomer arranged tastefully about her feet. She still wore his pendant round her neck.

Also conscious was the cool, dapper, and scholarly Professor Jules de l’Isle-Evens, once a high-ranking scientific adviser to the EEC in Brussels before the EEC signed on with Cap-Comm, whereupon de l’Isle-Evens, an independent man, had joined the D.N.

The other two aware crew-members were Guy Gisbone, who, like many other technical men, had been involved with the massive Operation Sex-Trigger under the aegis of Auden Chaplain, before WWIII; and the perky and spotty Dimittis, who was referred to – not always behind his back – as ‘the cabin-boy’.

All four were busy. None was happy.

Doomwitch was the first D.N. spy-bell to be launched, whereas the Cap-Comm powers had virtually the free run of space. Its appointed task was to maintain constant watch and chart of all Cap-Comm space-going operations and feed them back to Tokyo, the new D.N. capital. But it had been detected by enemy posts near Jupiter almost before taking up position.

The enmity between Cap-Comm and D.N. was not yet formalised by anything so crass as a war-footing – indeed, nations still remained embarrassed at finding themselves on the opposing side to nations with whom they had been allied in WWIII, only three years before. But a state of tension existed, which the unscrupulous para-combine of Smix-Smith took full advantage of.

Guy Gisbone and the glamorous Dr Glamis lay on couches on their stomachs – not the most comfortable of positions for Gisbone, a well-fleshed man with plenty of belly – surveying the trajectories of shipping in the region of Mars. They had six monitors to watch, most of them filled with blank space most of the time, any one of which could have its contents switched to one of two larger screens if the contents proved important enough.

The profusion of screens caused a certain amount of headache. In addition, Jupiter, as omnipresent to Doomwitch as a hunch on a hunchback’s shoulder, was causing a static storm – Jupiter IV being in transit – and distorting images.

In the lab behind the observation bay in which Glamis and Gisbone were working, Jules de l’Isle-Evens sat with lightbrush and screen, working on an arachnoid-like polygraph, the coordinates of which he was plotting from a notebook.

Dimittis was cooking flapjacks.

All four joined in their computer-song.

GLAMIS

The inter-reactions of the biosphere

Proceeding at their statutory pace

Produced an ocean-vat of amino-acid.

From there the stages, difficult but placid,

That led us upwards to the human race

Are now deterministically clear.

JULES

The next step onwards has an equal clarity.

Like ripples on a lake-face interlocking,

Each stage becomes more complex than the last,

Governed by mathematic law. Thus, fast,

We recognise the new scheme time is clocking;

Computers have with mankind now gained parity.

QUARTET

Yes, this is the riddle that peasants and commuters

Put to each other in Nineteen Nine Nine

As they dig up their fields or they drive in a line –

As they slump by their holocubes or go to dine out –

Yes, this is the riddle that peasants and commuters

Put to themselves in that terrible moment of doubt –

‘Are we compos mentis enough for computers?’

GISBONE

The biochemic interweaving force

That we call Nature, aeons back devised,

From cell and jell, computers light enough

To work effectively and fast, be tough,

And utilize a power-source micro-sized –

Computers called the human brain, of course.

DIMITTIS

Their brains began to take the world and mark it

For conquest by platoons of eager tools.

The latest tool – how clever can you get?! –

Thinks clearer, faster, than the brains do yet.

In truth, it makes them all look floundering fools:

They gone and priced themselves out of the market!

QUARTET