Raeillo/ee13 and Raellu//2 felt the group discipline take hold much more firmly than the free-and-easy mesh which each unit enjoyed with the complete group-mind during periods of leisure.
With a speed that would have been dizzying and incomprehensible to any individual unit, the observing banks relayed huge masses of extraneous data to the interpretive bank. They strained out the salient facts and in turn passed these to the computing:prediction section. Here they were routed to the groups who would deal with them. Raeillo/ee13 and Raellu//2 found their own talents pressed into service a dozen or more times in the space of the minute and a half it took the computing:prediction and interpretive banks to arrive at the answer.
“It’s aimed here,” the interpretive bank reported.
“Here!” a jumble of incoherent and anarchistic thoughts resounded [90] ]from many shocked and temporarily out-of-mesh units.
“Order!” came a sharp command from the elite corp of three thousand disciplinary units.
As stillness settled back over the group-mind the speculative bank once more came in. “By here … do you mean right here?”
“Approximately
,” replied the interpretive bank with what would have sounded suspiciously like a chuckle in a human reply. “According to calculations the craft should land within half a mile of our present location.”
“Let’s go there then and wait for it!” That thought from the now seldom used reservation of impulse.
The speculative bank murmured, “I wonder if there would be any danger. How hot is that exhaust?”