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. Ordnancemen armed A-bomb target seekers, caressed their sleek sides and muttered charms; the Chief Engineer unlocked the suicide switch which could let the power plant become a hydrogen bomb of monstrous size and prayed that, in final extremity, he would have the courage to deliver his people into the shelter of death; the Captain sounded the clangor calling the ship from watch-and-watch to General Quarters. Cooks switched off fires; auxiliary engineers closed down air circulation; farmers said good-by to their green growing things and hurried to fighting stations; mothers with babies mustered, then strapped down and held those babies tightly.
Then the waiting started.
But not for Thorby -- not for those assigned to fire-control computers. Sweating into their straps, for the next minutes or hours the life of Sisu is in their hands. The fire-control computer machines, chewing with millisecond meditation data from the analog, decide whether or not torpedoes can reach the target, then offer four answers: ballistic "possible" or "impossible" for projected condition, yes or no for condition changed by one ship, or the other, or both, through cutting power. These answers automatic circuits could handle alone, but machines do not think. Half of each computer is designed to allow the operator to ask what the situation might be in the far future of five minutes or so from now if variables change
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