When they put one of the bulky helmets on him, he looked up at them, squinting a little in the bright light. "This ... this isn't going to ... well, do me any damage, is it?"
"My goodness, no," Ford said. "You mean mentally? No, of course not. You're not on the General Staff, so it shouldn't ... it won't ... affect you the way it did the others. Their reaction had nothing to do with the computer per se ..."
"Several civilians have used the computer with no ill effects," General LeRoy said. "Ford has used it many times."
The CIA man nodded, and they closed the transparent visor over his face. He sat there and watched General LeRoy press a series of buttons, then turn a dial.
"Can you hear me?" The general's voice came muffled through the helmet.
"Yes," he said.
"All right. Here we go. You're familiar with Situation One-Two-One? That's what we're going to be seeing."
Situation One-Two-One was a standard war game. The CIA man was well acquainted with it. He watched the general flip a switch, then sit back and fold his arms over his chest. A row of lights on the desk console began blinking on and off, one, two, three ... down to the end of the row, then back to the beginning again, on and off, on and off ...
And then, somehow, he could see it!
He was poised incredibly somewhere in space, and he could see it all in a funny, blurry-double-sighted, dream-like way. He seemed to be seeing several pictures and hearing many voices, all at once. It was all mixed up, and yet it made a weird kind of sense.