Randall Garrett

“ The Guesser wasn't thinking of his own forthcoming session with the captain; he was thinking of Kraybo.
Kraybo was twenty-one, and had been in training as a Guesser ever since he was old enough to speak and understand. He showed occasional flashes of tremendous ability, but most of the time he seemed—well, lazy. And then, there was always the question of his actual ability.
A battle in the weirdly distorted space of ultralight velocities requires more than machines and more than merely ordinary human abilities. ”

“ She nodded. "You get plenty sleep, all right. Like dead, except when you talk to yourself."
Then he had spoken in delirium. "How ... how long was I out?"
"Three days," she said flatly. "Almost four." She paused. "You ship leave."
"Leave?" The Guesser said blankly. "The Naipor? Gone?" It seemed as if the world had dropped away from his feet, leaving him to fall endlessly through nothingness. It was true, of course. It didn't take more than twenty-four hours to unload the ship's holds, and, since there had been no intention of reloading, there was no need to stay. ”

“ He was not only a Guesser, but a first-class predictor, and he showed impatience with those of his underlings who failed to use their ability in any particular. At the moment of the ship's landing, he was engaged in verbally burning the ears off Kraybo, the young man who would presumably take over The Guesser's job one day—if he ever learned how to handle it.
"You're either a liar or an idiot," said The Guesser harshly, "and I wish to eternity I knew which!" ”

“ They didn't call themselves Misfits, of course; that was a derogatory name used by the Aristarchy. But the Guesser couldn't remember off hand just what they did call themselves. Their form of government was a near-anarchic form of ochlocracy, he knew—mob rule of some sort, as might be expected among such people. They were the outgrowth of an ancient policy that had been used centuries ago for populating the planets of the galaxy.
There are some people who simply do not, will not, and can not fit in with any kind of social organization—except the very flimsiest, perhaps. ”

“ If the first were true, then Kraybo was a fool; if the second, then he was a liar, and was no more capable of handling the fire control of the Naipor than the captain was.
The Guesser hated to have Kraybo punished, really, but that was the only way to make a youngster keep his mind on his business.
After all, thought The Guesser, that's the way I learned; Kraybo can learn the same way. A little nerve-burning never hurt anyone. ”

“ Because of the numerical superiority of the Aristarchy, and because it operated in the open instead of skulking in the darkness of space, the Misfits knew where Aristarchy planets were located, while the Aristarchy was unable to search out every planet in the multimyriads of star systems that formed the galaxy.
Thus the Misfits had become pirates, preying on the merchantships of the Aristarchy. Why? No one knew. (Or, at least, The Guesser corrected himself, he didn't know.) Such a non-sane culture would have non-sane reasons. ”

“ The Guesser's knowledge of history was close to nonexistent, but he had heard that the expansion to the stars from Earth—a planet he had never been within a thousand parsecs of—had been accomplished by the expedient of combining volunteers with condemned criminals and shipping them off to newly-found Earth-type planets. After a generation had passed, others came in—the civilizing types—and settled the planets, making them part of the Aristarchy proper. ”

“ Even here, at the spaceport, the busiest and largest town on the planet, the population was less than a million. It was a "new" world, with a history that didn't stretch back more than two centuries. With the careful population control exercised by the ruling Execs, it would probably remain small and provincial for another half millennium.
The Guesser moseyed down one of the streets of Bellinberg probably named after the first Prime Executive of the planet—looking for a decent place for a spaceman to have a drink. ”

“ The ancient sport of baseball was merely a test of muscular co-ordination for a Guesser; as soon as a Guesser child learned to control a bat, his batting average shot up to 1.000 and stayed there until he got too old to swing the bat. A Master Guesser could make the same score blindfolded.
Hitting a ship in space at ultralight velocities was something else again. Young Kraybo could play baseball blindfolded, but he wasn't yet capable of making the master guesses that would protect a merchantship like the Naipor. ”

“ He could almost feel himself dropping into the routine that he used in the orientation courses for young Guessers who had been assigned to him for protection and instruction.
"Accurate predicting of this type is not capable of being taught to all men; unless a man has within him the innate ability to be a Guesser, he is as incapable of learning Guessing as a blind man is incapable of being taught to read." (It occurred to him at that moment to wonder how the Class Six woman had managed to read the Breach of Contract notice. He would have to ask her later.) ”

“ You don't build a machine to do a job when a human being is cheaper. Your fanciful Misfit nation would have dissolved long ago if it had tried to operate on the principle that a lower-class human is worth more than a machine. ”

“ But in the early days there had not been the organization that existed in the present Aristarchy; planets had become lost for generations at a time. (The Guesser vaguely remembered that there had been wars of some kind during that time, and that the wars had contributed to those losses.) Some planets had civilized themselves without the intervention of the Earth government, and, when the Earth government had come along, they had fought integration with everything they could summon to help them. ”

“ Even the superfast beams from a megadyne force gun require a finite time to reach their target, and it is necessary to fire at the place where the attacking ship will be, not at the position it is occupying at the time of firing. That was a bit of knowledge as old as human warfare: you must lead a moving target.
For a target moving at a constant velocity, or a constant acceleration, or in any other kind of orbit which is mathematically predictable, a computer was not only necessary, but sufficient. ”

“ Perhaps it had been the prototype of the Aristarchy, for certainly the present system of society had existed for four or five centuries—perhaps more. The Guesser realized that his knowledge of ancient history was as confused as anyone's; after all, it wasn't his specialty. He remembered that when he was a boy, he'd heard a Teacher Exec talk about the Geological Ages of Earth and the Teacher had said that "cave men were not contemporary with the dinosaur." ”

“ The streets were fairly crowded with strollers—most of them Class Four or Five citizens who stepped deferentially aside as soon as they saw his uniform, and kept their eyes averted from him. Now and then, the power car of a Class Three rolled swiftly by, and The Guesser felt a slight twinge of envy. Technically, his own rank was the equivalent of Class Three, but he had never owned a groundcar. What need had a spaceman of a groundcar? Still, it would be nice to drive one just once, he thought ”

“ The Aristarchy occupied nearly all the planets of the galaxy that could be inhabited by Man; that much The Guesser had been told. Just why Earth-type planets should occur only within five thousand light-years of the Galactic Center was a mystery to him, but, then, he was no astrophysicist. ”

“ On the other hand, just as the mere possession of functioning eyes does not automatically give one the ability to read, neither does the genetic inheritance of Guesser potentialities enable one to make accurate, useful Guesses. To make this potentiality into an ability requires years of hard work and practice. ”

“ Occasionally, an Exec's aircar would drift rapidly overhead with a soft rush of air, and, in the distance, he could see the shimmering towers of the Executive section rising high above the eight- or ten-storyed buildings that made up the majority of Bellinberg. ”

“ It was a very effective method of making a man learn almost any lesson you wanted to teach him.
After a while, The Guesser shuddered once more, took a deep breath, held it for fifteen seconds, and then released it. A little later, he lifted himself up and swung his legs over the edge of his bed. He sat on the edge of the bed for a few minutes, then got up and got dressed in his best uniform.
After all, the captain hadn't said anything about restricting him to the ship, and he had never been to Viornis before. Besides, a couple of drinks might make him feel better. ”

“ Trouble is, spacemen aren't used to walking, especially on a planet where they weigh twenty per cent more than they're used to. The Guesser decided he'd take the tubeway; at the Class Three bar, he might be able to talk someone into driving him to the spaceport later.
But five minutes later, he was walking in the direction the bartender had told him to take for finding Mallard's on foot. ”

“ A thousand things. All wrong, as The Guesser knew. But she was firmly convinced that if anyone could get to a Misfit planet, they would be welcomed. There were no Classes among the Misfits, she said. (The Guesser dismissed that completely; a Classless society was ridiculous on the face of it.)
The Guesser had asked the woman why—if her statements were true—the Misfits had not conquered the Aristarchy long ago. After all, if they held the galaxy clear out to the Periphery, they had the Aristarchy surrounded, didn't they? ”

“ VIORNIS EXPORT CORPORATION
But the front entrance was no place for a Sixer. He went on past it, stepping aside regularly for citizens of higher class than his own assumed Six. He made his way around to the narrow alley that ran past the rear of the building.
There was a Class Five guard armed with a heavy truncheon, standing by the door that led into the workers entrance. The Guesser, as he had been instructed by Deyla, had his card out as he neared the doorway. The guard hardly even glanced at it before wagging a finger indicating that The Guesser was to pass. He didn't bother to speak. ”

“ The burner did no actual physical damage; it wasn't good economics for an Executive to allow his men to be hurt in any physical manner. It took a very little actual amount of energy applied to the nerve endings to make them undergo the complex electrochemical reaction that made them send those screaming messages to the brain and spine. There was less total damage done to the nerves than a good all-night binge would do to a normal human being. ”

“ What was it? If it was a mechano-electronic misfunction of the computer, say so; we'll speak to the engineer."
The Guesser knew that the captain was giving him what looked like an out—but The Guesser also knew it was a test, a trap.
The Guesser bowed his head very low and saluted. "No, great sir; the fault was mine."
Grand Captain Reed nodded his head in satisfaction. "Very well. Intensity Five, two minutes. Dismissed."
The Guesser bowed his head and saluted, then he turned and walked out the door. The sergeant-at-arms didn't need to follow him; he had been let off very lightly. ”

“ But the evasive action taken by a human pilot, aided by a randomity selector, is not logical and therefore cannot be handled by a computer. Like the path of a microscopic particle in Brownian motion, its position can only be predicted statistically ”

“ The captain nodded gravely. "Thank you, great sir. You've been most helpful. The making of decisions is too important to permit of its being considered lightly."
The Guesser could take it no longer. "It was a pleasure to be of assistance," he said as he stood up, "but there are certain of my own papers to be gone over before we reach D'Graski's Planet. I trust I shall be able to finish them."
The captain stood up quickly. "Oh, certainly, great sir. ”

“ Only one way to find out. Again he pushed himself to his hands and knees, and it seemed easier this time. Then, bracing himself against the curving wall of the sewer, he got to his feet. His knees were weak and wobbly, but they'd hold. They had to hold. ”