We entered the Big Tank's common room, where a few of our colleagues sat reading or writing notes for tomorrow's classes—talking; playing chess or bridge; or sitting behind the closed glass doors of the TV alcove watching the picture through stereo spectacles. We entered the alcove at the other end of the room, where the record-player and music library were, and closed the door.
Dorsey took a three-inch spool of magnetic thread from his shirt pocket and fit it to the playback head of the machine.
"I'm interested in your uninstructed reaction, John," he said. "So don't ask me any questions till you've heard the whole sequence."
"Spin it, professor," I said.
The Australian thread had a noisy background, sounding like a dozen rashers of bacon tossed into a too-hot skillet. Over this hissing, the code began to sound. "DIT ... DIT ... DIT-DIT ... DIT-DIT-DIT-DIT ... DIT-DIT-DIT ... DIT-DIT-DIT-DIT-DIT-DIT-DIT-DIT-DIT ... DIT-DIT-DIT-DIT...." I dutifully entered my count of each burst of DIT's in my pocket notebook. The sequence went: 1, 1; 2, 4; 3, 9; 4, 16; 5, 25; 6, 36; then 5, 2, 49; 8, 64. There the count stopped climbing and commenced again with the pair of ones, to repeat the whole set again.
Dorsey cut off the machine. "I've got four hours of the same thing on this thread," he said. "Want to hear it all, or have you got it already?"