He had made excellent progress. Using microbutton transmitters employed normally in remote controls, he had rigged every switch in the probe so that when it was turned on it would send out an impulse from the remote relay. These relays took a microscope to see properly. They were fastened in with a small molecular spray. The worst part was getting them to stay where one wanted them while spraying them down. But the eye that could detect them unaided had never been made.
Using a scope set at a distance from the probe, he clicked each switch on in turn and the scope bounced in response.
The next part was hard because it involved the adaption of iris leaves taken from tubes of plane viewers. These were small devices that automatically adjusted the volume of a light path. They would close their concentric leaves from wide open to shut.
They had to take these delicate things apart and spray them, molecules thick, with lead and reassemble them so they would not only work but would go on working, opening and closing. Angus was the best at this sort of work.
They then got some contraction rings and put them around these leaded irises and installed microbuttons in them to activate them.
When they had built about fifteen of these, they made a thorough and extensive test. When the probe was clicked on the iris instantly closed. When the probe was turned off the irises sprang open.
In other words, the leaded irises would be shut whenever the probe was on, thus putting a lead screen over any bug and making it undetectable and for the moment unable to “see” and “hear.” But when the probe was off, the screen would be off and any bug or device could “see” and “hear.”
So far so good. They now went on an extensive tour of storerooms– telling Lars, who showed up, that they were looking for "spindle-buffers"-and located not only every other bug probe in the compound but also every other key component it took to make a bug probe. They put these in a box and put the box in their car to be transported out of the country.
They now had a probe that wouldn't probe while obviously working and fifteen irises they could put in front of bug devices.
Lars popped up again, saying they sure were quiet, and they told him to get lost. But presently Ker took a disc recording of hammering and pounding and drilling and let it play.
They cleaned up traces of their work so far and hid their products.
Suddenly they realized it had been a long day. They hadn't eaten. They had a long way to go, but that, they agreed, was enough for now.
Jonnie and Angus, not wanting to tempt the fates by running into too many cadets at the Academy, elected to bed down in Char's old quarters. Ker was going to drive back to the Academy and get them something to eat and bring them some work clothes. Dunneldeen should be there now and Jonnie had a message for him about the Psychlos. Jonnie typed it out on Chirk's writing machine:
All's well. In three days engineer the transportation of the thirty-three Ps now in compound jailhouse to stated destination Cornwall. Report them crashed at sea. Deliver to the doctor. Not before three days. You will have no trouble with them. They'll be screaming to leave. Eat this note.
Ker said he'd deliver it and rushed away.
Jonnie and Angus stretched out to unwind. So far it was okay. They had a ways to go.
Chapter 2
A bit lost in Char's twelve-foot bed, a bit tense in this echoing, empty compound, Jonnie was waiting for Ker's return. It was getting very late and he was wondering what the delay might be. But to pass the time he was reading.
Char, in packing, had tossed out odds and ends that he hadn't cared to take back to Psychlo with him, and one of them was a Psychlo infant's “History of Psychlo," maybe from Char's own early schooling, for it said under the coverleaf, in an immature scrawl, “Char's Book. You Stole it so give it back!” and then below that, “Or I’ll claw you!” Well, Char wouldn't claw anybody now: he was dead, by Terl's thrust, quite a time now.
Because Ker had mentioned underground mines, Jonnie was mildly interested to learn that the whole of the imperial City on Psychlo and all the surrounding area was a maze of deep and abandoned shafts and drifts. As long as three hundred thousand years ago, Psychlo had exhausted surface minerals and had developed semicore techniques. Some of the shafts went down as far as eighty-three miles and in some cases that was within half a mile of the liquid core. How awfully hot those mines must have been! They could only be worked by machines, not living beings.
The labyrinth was so extensive that it caused some buildings on the surface to sag from time to time.
He was just reading about the “First interplanetary War to End Mineral Starvation” when Ker came back.
Ker looked a bit grave, even through his face mask. "Dunneldeen's been arrested,” he said.
Dunneldeen, related Ker, had arrived in a battle plane just at sunset and had gone to find quarters and supper. As he came out of the mess hall, two men in monkey skins with crossbelts stepped out of the shadows and told him he was under arrest. A squad of several more were at a distance.
They had taken Dunneldeen in a ground car driven by Lars up to the big capital building, the one with the painted dome up in the ruined city. They pushed him into the “courtroom” and the Senior Mayor Planet started to charge him with a whole lot of crimes like interrupting Council projects and committing war and had then looked at him more closely and said, “You're not Tyler!" And had called for the guard captain and there'd been a row. Then this Senior Mayor made Dunneldeen promise not to incite a war with Scotland over this and had let him go.
Dunneldeen was back at the Academy after taking Lars' car away from him and he was all right. Ker had had to wait to give him the message and Dunneldeen said to warn Jonnie.
“It means,” concluded Ker, “that they expected you to come in and they've got their eyes out all over the place. We got to work fast, be careful, and get you out of here as soon as we can.”
Jonnie and Angus ate a bit of the food Ker had brought and then went to sleep for four hours. Ker had turned in his old room, sleeping in a breathe-mask for there was no breathe-gas circulation in the general compound.
They were at it again before dawn, working fast. Ker had another disc recording of hammering and pounding and he put it on. The kind of work they were doing didn't sound at all like duct work.
What they had to do now was plant “eyes” and picture transmitters so they could not be seen or detected.
They attacked the lead glass dome and bored “bullet holes” in it in the exact right places; getting around the problem of their being covered by the blinds if drawn. The very top of one of these upper-level domes was much more thickly tinted than the sides, so the detectors (“readers,” Ker called them) had to be up pretty high.
The “bullet holes” also had to be starred out, which is to say, given hairline cracks to make it look like they had come in from the outside. For good measure they put some in other domes and didn't repair them so that the condition appeared more general than in just Terl's quarters.
They sank readers and transmitters into the holes. Then they repaired the holes with one-way, see-through “bubble patch.” They put more glass repair sealing roughly on the “cracks.”
Each reader had a leaded iris in front of it and was in a little lead box. The result looked like a crudely repaired hole fixed up in slovenly fashion by careless workmen. Each of these was focused on a different part of the work areas in the two rooms.