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“You just near came getting us all killed!” snapped The Guesser. “You claim that you actually guessed where that ship was going to be, but you followed the computer’s extrapolation instead?”

“Yes, sir,” said the tense-faced Kraybo. “I admit my error, and I’m willing to take my punishment.”

The Guesser grinned wolfishly. “Well, isn’t that big-hearted of you? I’m very glad you’re willing, because I just don’t know what I’d do if you refused.”

Kraybo’s face burned crimson, but he said nothing.

The Guesser’s voice was sarcastically soft. “But I guess about the only thing I could do in that case would be to”–The Guesser’s voice suddenly became a bellow–“kick your thick head in!”

Kraybo’s face drained of color suddenly.

The Guesser became suddenly brusque. “Never mind. We’ll let it go for now. Report to the Discipline Master in Intensity Five for ten minutes total application time. Dismissed.”

Kraybo, whose face had become even whiter, paused for a moment, as though he were going to plead with The Guesser. But he saw the look in his superior’s eyes and thought better of it.

“Yes, sir,” he said in a weak voice. He saluted and left.

* * * * *

And The Guesser just sat there, waiting for what he knew would come.

It did. High Lieutenant Blyke showed up within two minutes after Kraybo had left. He stood at the door of The Guesser’s cubicle, accompanied by a sergeant-at-arms.

“Master Guesser, you will come with us.” His manner was bored and somewhat flat.

The Guesser bowed his head as he saluted. “As you command, great sir.” And he followed the lieutenant into the corridor, the sergeant tagging along behind.

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. No computer, however built, can possibly estimate the flight of a dodging spaceship with a canny human being at the controls. 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. In such a case, the accuracy was perfect, the hits one hundred per cent.

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; estimating its probable location is the best that can be done. And, in space warfare, probability of that order is simply not good enough.

To compute such an orbit required a special type of human mind, and therefore a special type of human. It required a Guesser.

The way a Guesser’s mind operated could only be explained to a Guesser by another Guesser. But, as far as anyone else was concerned, only the objective results were important. A Guesser could “guess” the route of a moving ship, and that was all anyone cared about. And a Master Guesser prided himself on his ability to guess accurately 99.999% of the time. 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.