Cities in Flight

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 a separate power supply to deliver DC to their heaters. Two 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 nothing. Probably he could have fooled any of his own people without effort, but for Amalfi, who, like any Okie mayor, could follow the parataxic “speech” of muscle interplay and posture as readily as he could spoken dialogue, Heldon’s expression was as clear as a signed confession.

“Certainly,” the Proctor said. “Is that all?”

“By no means. I think you ought to rip out about half of these circuits, and install transistors wherever they can be used; we can sell you the necessary germanium at the legal rate. You’ve got two or three hundred tubes to a unit here, by my estimate, and if you have a tube failure in flight—well, the only word that fits what would happen then is blooey!”

“Will you be able to show us how?”

“Probably,” the mayor said. “If you’ll allow me to inspect the whole system, I can give you an exact answer.”

“All right,” Heldon said. “But don’t delay. I can’t count on more than another half-day at most.”

This was better than Amalfi had expected—miles better. Given that much time, he could trace at least enough of the leads to locate the master control. That Heldon’s expression failed totally to match the content of his speech disturbed Amalfi profoundly, but there was nothing that he could do that would alter that now. He pulled paper and stylus out of Karst’s pack and began to make rapid sketches of the wiring before him.

After he had a fairly clear idea of the first generator’s setup, it was easier to block in the main features of the second. It took time, but Heldon did not seem to tire.