Yes, these were food for Rahll; but two factors held him from consuming all six branches of impulse together.
The first was that he was so weak that any more than one of the spoke-impulses absorbed at a time would have shattered his frail form.
The second was that this collective impulse operated on a frequency altogether different from Rahll's. Try as he might, Rahll could not emulate this frequency; it was too alien, too far removed from his own, and he was too weak. But this impulse's frequency was flexible; if he could make it become harmonious with his own frequency, then he could easily absorb it, branch by branch.
It would be a relatively simple matter to make the impulse harmonize with him, Rahll knew; all he had to do was make the flexible-frequencied impulse accept his own impulse as something un-alien and natural, by taking a form the impulse would not suspect; something which blended with the impulse's environment. As soon as a branch of the alien impulse accepted Rahll's own impulse as natural, Rahll would move blocks into the channels of that branch and absorb it.
First he examined the branch devoted to sensing odors. Yes, it would be child's play to cause an impulse to transmit through the odor channels to the central hub, where it would be interpreted as an odor....
Brenner sat hunched over the controls of the spaceship. Damm! How had he gotten so far away from Base? There weren't any planets here for millions of miles in all directions; only blackness. He couldn't make connection with Base; he couldn't make connection with anything.
His small, three-compartmented ship sped swiftly along toward nothing. In the tail compartment, the atomic and the electrical generators hummed serenely; in the nose compartment, Brenner continued to curse.
Something in the mechanism of his directional equipment was fouled up. That must be it. He decided to cut power and think for a while.