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 D.C. 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.