“So were the other computers,” said the expendable, not seeming at all perturbed at being contradicted. Or, for that matter, at being “slaved” to the ship’s computer.

“Well, he does have a powerful computer in him,” said Ram Odin to Noxon. “But it wasn’t involved in the calculations of the jump.”

“That’s true,” said the expendable. “So I spent my time calculating how to get back to Earth.”

Ram Odin burst out laughing. “Did you click your heels together three times and say, ‘There’s no place like home’?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Noxon.

The expendable answered. “Ram Odin is alluding to the film version of a fiction by L. Frank Baum called The Wizard of Oz.”

“It never came up in my studies,” said Noxon, “but I guess I couldn’t absorb all of Earth culture in a couple of years of spare-time reading.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Ram Odin. “What matters to me is this: It took me seven years to get from launch to the jump site. I was afraid that if I went into stasis during the trip, the ship might not waken me in time to make the decisions. So I stayed awake the whole time. Now there’s no such worry because the ship can’t do anything about our predicament. Do we really have to spend all those endless days? You’re charming company, but we’ll start boring each other very quickly.”

“I know that we’re moving into your past,” said Noxon, “and that’s the direction I normally jump. But the direction we’re going in makes that the future to us.”

“I was actually proposing that we go into stasis here in the ship. Like the colonists. Then the ship wakes us up when we’re close to Earth.”

Noxon knew at once that he would never consent to this. It required too much trust of the ship and the expendable. And it would leave the mice free to manipulate things as they wanted. But he didn’t want to discuss the danger of the mice to Ram Odin, because the man might decide to eradicate the whole problem and Noxon wasn’t sure how to stop him.

Still, instead of simply refusing to consider it, Noxon made a show of letting Ram Odin demonstrate the whole process of going into stasis and then reviving out of it.

“Is there any loss of function? After you wake up?” asked Noxon.

“I assume not,” said Ram Odin. “Didn’t you say that Old Ram did it all the time, in order to skim through the centuries so he’s still alive after eleven thousand years?”

“I can’t vouch for his not having lost mental function,” said Noxon.