The man beside him shifted as if he were trying to get up courage to speak again to the professional beside him. After some nervous coughs, he said, 'Sigmen help me, I hope I ain't offended you. But I was wondering...'

Hal Yarrow felt offended because the man was presuming too much. Then, he reminded himself of what the Forerunner had said. All men are brothers, though some are more favored by the father than others. And it was not this man's fault that the first-class cabin had been filled with people with higher priorities and Hal had been forced to choose between taking a later coach or sitting with the lower echelon.

'It's shib with me,' said Yarrow. He explained.

The man said, 'Ah!' as if he were relieved. 'Then, you won't perhaps mind one more question? Don't call me Nosy Sam for nothing, like I said. Ha! Ha!'

'No, I don't mind,' said Hal Yarrow. 'A joat, though a jack-of-all trades, does not make all sciences his field. He is confined to one particular discipline, but he tries to understand as much of all the specialized branches of it as he can. For instance, I am a linguistic joat. Instead of restricting myself to one of the many areas of linguistics, I have a good general knowledge of that science. This ability enables me to correlate what is going on in all its fields, to search out things in one specialty which might be of interest to a man in another specialty, and to notify him of this item. Otherwise, the specialist, who doesn't have the time to read the hundreds of journals in his field alone, might be missing something that would aid him.

'All the professional studies have their own joats doing this. Actually, I'm very lucky to be in this branch of science. If I were, for example, a medical joat, I'd be overwhelmed.