"They speed up their picture signal during transmission," Linder said, "and slow it down at the receiving end." He stopped, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "No, that can't be it. In the Reception Center Building and at their Central, too, they were looking directly at such blurs!"
"Exactly, sir. They can see the components of what we find a blur—if we unscrambled the sound track squeaks we'd undoubtedly find the same thing there. The question is, How can they do it? and the answer is very frightening—and encouraging."
"You said something about a change of consciousness."
"A radical change. They've been developing it during their isolation period and there's no reason why they won't teach us when the preparatory period's over. They're developing a special kind of inward power that would make it silly for them to want primitive control over other men. They're the next stage in our evolution."
"ESP!" Barnes broke in. "They sensed our antagonism so they humiliated us."
"No, they saw your antagonism." Stern snapped off the machine. "They saw it because their powers of direct observation are so complete, catching every slightest, revealing movement of the face. Look, gentlemen, what have been the evolutionary stages until now? First, self-perpetuating and replicating crystals. Then conditioned-reflex life, followed by the growth of consciousness which in turn gave rise to the development of social consciousness. For the last few centuries we've been in this phase and it has given us the power to spread across the Galaxy and assure one common level of humanity everywhere. Individual and social consciousness interacting—what, we have wondered, would be the next stage to arise from it? But we have done everything to prevent the next stage because we feared any one planet developing along unique lines, lines that might end in a threat to the rest of us. Nodar deliberately isolated itself to be temporarily unique."
"What kind of consciousness could there be besides individual and social as we know them?" Crawford wondered uneasily.
"Nodarian—and if you had it your ten billion brain cells could store up so much knowledge you wouldn't need thinking machines, just purely physical robots!"
"Let's get down to cases," Linder said, for once politely restrained in his impatience.