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bad news; it back-dated them far beyond the year to which Amalfi had
tentatively assigned them.
"That it?" he said.
"That is the way," Heldon agreed. He twisted an inconspicuous handle.
Ancient fluorescents flickered into bluish life as the valve drew back, and
glinted upon the humped backs of machines. The air was quite dry
here-evidently the big chamber was kept sealed-and Amalfi could not repress a
fugitive pang of disappointment. He scanned the huge machines, looking for
control panels or homologues thereof.
"Well?" Heldon said harshly. He seemed to be under considerable strain. It
occurred to Amalfi that Heldon's strategy might well be a personal flyer, not
an official policy of the Great Nine; in which case it might go hard with
Heldon if his colleagues found him in this particular place of all places with
an Okie. "Aren't you going to make any tests?"
"Certainly," Amalfi said. "I was a little taken aback at their size, that's
all."
"They are old, as you know," said the Proctor. "Doubtless they are built much
larger nowadays."
That, of course, wasn't so. Modern spindizzies ran less than a tenth the size
of these. The comment cast new doubt upon Heldon's exact status. Amalfi had
assumed that the Proctor would not let him touch the spindizzies except to
inspect; that there would be plenty of men in IMT capable of making repairs
from detailed instructions; that Heldon himself, and any Proctor, would know
enough physics to comprehend whatever explanations Amalfi might proffer. Now
he was not so sure-and on this question hung the amount of tinkering Amalfi
would be able to do without being detected.
The mayor mounted a metal stair to a catwalk which ran along the tops of the
generators, then stopped and looked down at Karst. "Well, stupid, don't just
stand there," he said. "Come on up, and bring the stuff."
Obediently Karst shambled up the metal steps, Heldon at his heels. Amalfi
ignored them to search for an inspection port in the casing, found one, and
opened it. Beneath
was what appeared to be a massive rectifying circuit, plus the amplifier for
some kind of monitor-probably a digital computer. The amplifier involved more
vacuum tubes than Amalfi had ever before seen gathered into one circuit, and
there was % separate power supply to deliver DC to their heaters. Twd of the
tubes were each as big as his fist.
Karst bent over and slung the pack to the deck. Amalfi drew out of it a length
of slender black cable and thrust its double prongs into a nearby socket. A
tiny bulb on the other end glowed neon-red.
"Your computer's still running," he reported. "Whether it's still sane or not
is another matter. May I turn the main banks on, Heldon?"
"I'll turn them on," the Proctor said. He went down the stairs again and
across the chamber.
instantly Amalfi was murmuring through motionless lips into the inspection
port. The result to Karst's ears must have been rather weird. The technique of
speaking without moving one's lips is simply a matter of substituting
consonants which do not involve lip movement, such as y, for those which do,
such as w. If the resulting sound is picked up from inside the resonating
chamber, as it is with a throat mike, it is not too different from ordinary
speech, only a bit more blurred. Heard from outside the speaker's
nasopharyngeal cavity, however, it has a tendency to sound like Japanese
Pidgin.
"Yatch Heldon, Karst. See yhich syitch he kulls, an' nenorize its location.
Got it? Good."
The tubes lit. Karst nodded once, very slightly. The Proctor watched from
below while Amalfi inspected the lines.
"Will they work?" he called. His voice was muffled, as though he were afraid
to raise it as high as he thought necessary.
"I think so. One of these tubes is gassing, and there may have been some
failures here and there. Better check the whole lot before you try anything
ambitious. You do have facilities for testing tubes, don't you?"
Relief spread visibly over Heldon's face, despite his obvious effort to betray
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