Explore "The Knights of Arthur" by Frederik Pohl on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I have to tell you about Vern Engdahl. We were all from the _Sea Sprite_, of course -- me and Vern and even Arthur. The thing about Vern is that he was the lowest-ranking one of us all -- only an electricians' mate third, I mean when anybody paid any attention to things like that -- and yet he was pretty much doing the thinking for the rest of us. Coming to New York was his idea -- he told us that was the only place we could get what we wanted.
Well, as long as we were carrying Arthur along with us, we pretty much needed Vern, because he was the one who knew how to keep the lash-up going. You've got no idea what kind of pumps and plumbing go into a prosthetic tank until you've seen one opened up. And, naturally, Arthur didn't want any breakdowns without somebody around to fix things up.