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I didn’t hear the reply, because it suddenly occurred to me that Daniel Oak was the man on the couch, and that I was Daniel Oak.

My head was throbbing with every beat of my heart, and it felt as if my blood pressure was varying between zero and fifteen hundred pounds per square inch in the veins and arteries and capillaries that fed my brain.

I sat up, and the pain began to lessen. The blood seemed to drain away from my aching head and go elsewhere.

I soon figured out the reason for that; I could tell by the feel that the gravity pull was somewhere between one point five and two gees. I wasn’t at all used to it, but my head felt less painful and rather more hazy. If possible.

I concentrated, and the girl’s voice came back again.

“… I knew you when you were McGuire One, and Two, and Three, and Four, and Five, and Six. And you were always good to me and understanding. Don’t you remember?”

And then McGuire’s voice–human, masculine, and not distorted at all by the reproduction system, but sounding rather stilted and terribly logical: “I remember, Jack. The memory banks of my previous activations are available.”

“All of them? Can you remember everything?”

“I can remember everything that is in my memory banks.”

The girl’s voice rose to a wail. “But you don’t remember! You always forgot things! They took things out each time you were reactivated, don’t you remember?”

“I cannot remember that which is not contained in my memory banks, Jack. That is a contradiction in terms.”

“But I was always able to fix it before!” The tears in her eyes were audible in her voice. “I’d tell you to remember, and I’d tell you what to remember, and you’d remember it! Tell me what’s happened to you this time!”

“I cannot tell you. The information is not in my data banks.”

Slowly, I got to my feet. Two gees isn’t much, once you get used to it. The headache had subsided to a dull, bearable throb.

I was on a couch in a room just below the control chamber, and Jack Ravenhurst’s voice was coming down from above. McGuire’s voice was all around me, coming from the hidden speakers that were everywhere in the ship.

“But why won’t you obey me any more, McGuire?” she asked.

“I’ll answer that, McGuire,” I said.

Jack’s voice came weakly from the room above. “Mr. Oak? Dan? Thank heaven you’re all right!”

“No thanks to you, though,” I said. I was trying to climb the ladder to the control room, and my voice sounded strained.

“You’ve got to do something!” she said with a touch of hysteria. “McGuire is taking us straight toward Cygnus at two gees and won’t stop.”

My thinking circuits began to take over again. “Cut the thrust to half a gee, McGuire. Ease it down. Take a minute to do it.”

“Yes, sir.”

The gravity pull of acceleration let up slowly as I clung to the ladder. After a minute, I climbed on up to the control room.

Jack Ravenhurst was lying on the acceleration couch, looking swollen-faced and ill. I sat down on the other couch.

“I’m sorry I hit you,” she said. “Really.”

“I believe you. How long have we been moving, McGuire?”

“Three hours, twelve minutes, seven seconds, sir,” said McGuire.

“I didn’t want anyone to know,” Jack said. “Not anyone. That’s why I hit you. I didn’t know McGuire was going to go crazy.”

“He’s not crazy, Jack,” I said carefully. “This time, he has a good chance of remaining sane.”

“But he’s not McGuire any more!” she wailed. “He’s different! Terrible!”

“Sure he’s different. You should be thankful.”

“But what happened?”

I leaned back on the couch. “Listen to me, Jack, and listen carefully. You think you’re pretty grown up, and, in a lot of ways you are. But no human being, no matter how intelligent, can store enough experience into seventeen years to make him or her wise. A wise choice requires data, and gathering enough data requires time.” That wasn’t exactly accurate, but I had to convince her.