The Star by Arthur C. Clarke Page A

tapes disappeared into the capacious memory units: patterns of lights flickered and flashed across the registers; mysterious things happened in all directions.
    ‘“This problem,” said Captain Winkler primly, “will take about five minutes to evaluate.”
    ‘As if in deliberate contradiction, one of the typewriters promptly started to chatter. A strip of paper shot out of the feed, and Captain Winkler, looking rather puzzled at Karl’s unexpected alacrity, read the message. His lower jaw immediately dropped six inches, and he stood staring at the paper as if unable to believe his eyes.
    ‘“What is it, man?” barked the General.
    ‘Captain Winkler swallowed hard, but appeared to have lost the power of speech. With a snort of impatience, the General snatched the paper from him. Then it was his turn to stand paralysed, but unlike his subordinate he also turned a most beautiful red. For a moment he looked like some tropical fish strangling out of water: then, not without a slight scuffle, the enigmatic message was captured by the five-star general who out-ranked everybody in the room.
    ‘His reaction was totally different. He promptly doubled up with laughter.
    ‘The minor officers were left in a state of infuriating suspense for quite ten minutes. But finally the news filtered down through colonels to captains to lieutenants, until at last there wasn’t a G.I. in the establishment who did not know the wonderful news.
    ‘Karl had told General Smith that he was a pompous baboon. That was all.
    ‘Even though everybody agreed with Karl, the matter could hardly be allowed to rest there. Something, obviously, had gone wrong. Something—or someone—had diverted Karl’s attention from the Battle of Gettysburg.
    ‘“Where,” roared General Smith, finally recovering his voice, “is Dr Milquetoast?”
    ‘He was no longer present. He had slipped quietly out of the room, having witnessed his great moment. Retribution would come later, of course, but it was worth it.
    ‘The frantic technicians cleared the circuits and started running tests. They gave Karl an elaborate series of multiplications and divisions to perform—the computer’s equivalent of “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Everything seemed to be functioning perfectly. So they put in a very simple tactical problem, which a lieutenant, j.g. could solve in his sleep.
    ‘Said Karl: “Go jump in a lake, General.”
    ‘It was then that General Smith realised that he was confronted with something outside the scope of Standard Operating Procedure. He was faced with mechanical mutiny, no less.
    ‘It took several hours of tests to discover exactly what had happened. Somewhere tucked away in Karl’s capacious memory units was a superb collection of insults, lovingly assembled by Dr Milquetoast. He had punched on tape, or recorded in patterns of electrical impulses, everything he would like to have said to the General himself. But that was not all he had done: that would have been too easy, not worthy of his genius. He had also installed what could only be called a censor circuit—he had given Karl the power of discrimination. Before solving it, Karl examined every problem fed to him. If it was concerned with pure mathematics, he co-operated and dealt with it properly. But if it was a military problem—out came one of the insults. After twenty minutes, he had not repeated himself once, and the WACs had already had to be sent out of the room.
    ‘It must be confessed that after a while the technicians were almost as interested in discovering what indignity Karl would next heap upon General Smith as they were in finding the fault in the circuits. He had begun with mere insults and surprising genealogical surmises, but had swiftly passed on to detailed instructions the mildest of which would have been highly prejudicial to the General’s dignity, while the more imaginative would have seriously imperiled his physical integrity. The fact that all