He knew the theory of repairing the gizmo all right. He had that nicely taped. But there was the little matter of threading a wire through a too-small hole while under zero-g, and working in a spacesuit!
Sometimes an organizational setup grows, sets its ways, and becomes so traditional that once-necessary jobs become unnecessary. But it is sometimes quite hard to spot just which man is the unnecessary one. In this case. not the one you think!
It was, as usual, a decision on which the question of peace or atomic war depended. The Council of the Western Defense Alliance, as usual, had made the decision. And, as usual, the WDA Coordinator had to tell the Com Ambassador that the Coms had won again. The WDA would not risk atomic war over a minor boundary. Some hundreds of light-years away, the Survey ship Lotus floated in space over the third planet of the system, a planet exactly like Earth, only there was absolutely NO life on it.
A human brain-controlled spacecraft would mean mechanical perfection. This was accomplished, and something unforeseen: a strange entity called Mr. Spaceship