A ferris wheel spinning in the background reflects the spinning within Willie""s head.To recover before he is due to give his canned talk, Willie sits in a playground swing where other children are playing, where Burden urges him to drink coffee (and a generous amount of bourbon)...computers rule the world today.And the fellow that can fool the computer can rule the world himself." Webster demanded: "I want coffee" - his objective was to monopolize the world""s coffee crop.He clarified about how he wanted to employ Gorman to help destroy the economy of one Latin American country, Colombia, that wouldn""t "play ball" (conduct business) with him: "We""re gonna teach them a lesson, aren""t we?.We are all doing penance.Sentenced to an outcast ship manned by outcasts, and named after the greatest outcast of them all.Ensign Keith vs.Captain DeVriess:Captain DeVriess brought up the awkward topic of his receipt of a special request from Admiral Ward to have Ensign Keith ransferred to his ship - a clear example of his mother "pulling strings" to get him onto a more modern warship.In its first firing, part of the weapon was destroyed when it back-fired.Miles donned a second single jet-pack gyro-copter onto his back and vainly attempted o fly away, and complained when it failed: "Fly, God damn it, fly! God damn cheap Japanese flying packs!" He became caught in tall tree branches, jumped down to the ground, and ran to a road where a commercial "Domesticon" van was parked.His stoic, unflappable reactions to fateful calamities, his ingenious and resourceful uses of machines and various objects (water tanks, a large piece of timber, a cowcatcher, a rolling artillery cannon on wheels, and unattached railroad cars), and the unpredictable forces of Nature, provide much of the plot.