“Extreme caution, yeah,” he said, thinking one more time of the extreme prejudice clause in his second nondisclosure agreement.

“We will proceed with caution, yes, and in accordance with the highest authority’s directives,” Dale said. That plainly satisfied Dave and Jack. It might even have satisfied Steve; not as if RAND didn’t feed from the government trough. What if the highest authority’s directives don’t match caution? Jerry wondered. He didn’t ask out loud. He knew useless when he saw it.

Back in the cabin later, though, he did ask Steve. He wasn’t close to sure that was safe, but he had to talk to somebody. He piercingly missed Anna, though he’d never be able to tell her about any of this unless he wanted to learn more about “extreme prejudice” than he’d ever wanted to know.

Stephen Dole listened patiently. He did most of the time—and he’d gone into Humpty Dumpty, too. “It’s a problem, no question,” he said when Jerry ran dry. “They don’t seem to understand that this is as much a you-only-get-one-chance situation as raising the starship was. If they make a mistake, chances are they can’t go back and fix it.”

“Bingo!” Jerry said admiringly. “I couldn’t have put it that well myself. You oughta be a writer or something.”

“Or something.” Steve’s smile was wry. “We’ve tried to tell them every way we know how. If they won’t listen, what else can we do?”

“‘You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think,’” Jerry said.

Steve gave him a curious look. “Aren’t you too young to be quoting Dorothy Parker?”

“It’s my fiancée’s fault,” Jerry said. “She’s into that whole radio-celebrity thing. Dorothy Parker, Oscar Levant, all those crazy people. Oscar, he was a piece of work and then some.”

“You’ve got that right. Up till a few years ago, he’d still show up on The Merv Griffin Show, places like that.”

“Uh-huh.” Jerry’d watched The Merv Griffin Show while he still lived at home because his father liked it. He didn’t think he’d seen it once since he got his own place. “Anna gave me his autobiography. It’s … interesting. ‘I’m gonna memorize your name and throw away my head,’ he told somebody. Hard to beat that.”

“Isn’t it?” Steve paused, then sighed. “If they won’t listen to us, we can’t make them, you know.”