John said, "Stay here, kid, Doctor Hammerhead has an idea."

She came over and deliberately leaned up against him. He put his arm around her waist in what I tried to believe was a fraternal gesture.

"The name is Klinghammer," I said. "Don't antagonize me. I'm trying to help you."

Doctor Calicoo had recovered any selfcomposure she may have mislaid in the tunnel. She said sarcastically, "It couldn't be that you are trying to figure a way out of this for yourself, could it?"

"Quit patronizing, both of you," I snapped. "You both know this will be embarrassing to the Board. But all I face is a big blush and an international horse-laugh. I'll grant you, we probably can't confiscate the machines. But my testimony could easily damn you for unethical practices if nothing else. With luck I might get you for fraud, too."

A look of synthetic concern passed between them. I took another drink. "I would like to know what possible justification you have for retaining the right to call yourself a medical man, Cunningham."

"What's wrong with research?" he demanded.

"In your case," I cracked, "nothing that a few scruples wouldn't improve."

Dr. Calicoo stamped her small foot at me. "Don't you make fun of us. John has a wonderful idea. His big general diagnosing correlator has some of the finest memory and calculating control circuits in it that exist anywhere." She nodded to herself. "I built them myself."

Cunningham explained earnestly, "It will assimilate and coordinate over a thousand separate symptoms, including every known particle of clinical data on a patient. Why it will reduce physician error to practically zero."

"If it works," I said sourly.

"It will, it will!" he assured me. "Of course I have probably a year or more to spend in quantitative calibration of the input circuits, and maybe a couple or three years on the qualitative differentiations of the output."

"I see," I said. "And you want to calibrate and differentiate without the necessity of practicing on the side to provide funds. So you invented the one-armed bandit with the Johns Hopkins accent to tide you over. Right?"

"Right!"

"You have made one 

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