THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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normal space-time, and then pulling her out again by her bootstraps at
some other place in the normal continuum, light-years away.

Roughly, it compared to shooting hummingbirds on the wing, blindfolded,
with a not particularly accurate pistol, from a mile-a-minute
merry-go-round.

That was something you could only do with a computer. A human, with a
slide rule, a pencil and pad, could figure it out, of course?if he had
fifty-odd thousand years to do it. A good computer did it in thirty
seconds. That was one difference between people and computers. The other
difference was that the desirability of making a hyperspace jump would
never occur to a computer, unless somebody pushed a button and taped in
instructions.

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