Jonnie stared at this activity. Then he rushed out of his viewing room, raced up to one of the compound storerooms, and got a piece of insulating board and an annealing knife. He made a diagonal mark across the board with the sewing end of the knife. He put clips at both ends of his mark and put current through it. The current flowed!
By aligning usually insulative molecules in a straight line, one had a path, a “wire.”
He had seen that Psychlos, in cutting these boards to size to install circuit breakers, always sawed them. He had just thought knives didn't work on them. True enough, knives were not efficient in cutting them. But by aligning molecules, the insulating board conducted electricity at the points of touch.
Jonnie, starry-eyed, went back to further view this activity Terl had been engaged upon.
It had taken Terl two days just to trace that circuit. Finally he finished.
And then Terl took some solvent and a rag and wiped the whole board clean.
There was not one visible trace left. But that “insulating” board now contained all the alignments of a complex circuit.
The underside's visible components were a total fake. They weren't ever intended to work. And anybody examining one of these boards would think he had blown its fuses. Scientists of many races had probably spent hundreds of years of time trying to make that false circuit make sense and agree with Psychlo math.
Terl was doing something in the upper left corner of the board. Unfortunately he had carelessly dropped a text open in such a position that its cover obscured much of what he was doing. It had something to do with the installation of a switch. It was a switch which would appear in the top panel. All Jonnie could see on the discs was that the switch probably had to be changed with every use of the board. Up one firing, down the next, up the next, and so on. The switch was misleadingly labeled, “Dimmer.” The component it was attached to was visible enough.
If activated by a wrong turn of the switch, that component would send a surge through the board and erase the invisible circuit.
Jonnie couldn't see what position the switch was rigged to be in at the first firing.
Terl now was putting the board together.
And Jonnie found why loosening the screws which held it all together made the board inoperational.
Terl took a large electromagnet and put it around the case. Then just inside one screw, where it went through the insulating board, he inserted a fuse.
Jonnie went down and got one. It was a “magnet fuse.” As long as a current went through it, it stayed whole. The moment a magnetic current was absent, it blew. To remove a console top, one had to put a magnetic field around the console.
When the screw was touching the top edge of the console, the magnetic top edge kept a tiny current running forever. The moment that screw was loosened, the magnetic current ceased and the fuse blew.
More: when it blew it activated one of the components just under it and wiped the invisible circuit out of the board.
But to take a panel top off all you had to do was put a magnetic field generator near that screw and the fuse wouldn't blow.
An invisible circuit, two booby traps to wipe it out, a completely false circuit to distract.
And that was the secret of the Psychlos.
A sober Jonnie made plentiful copies of Terl’s circuit. One could simply put it on a piece of insulating board and trace it in. The metal plugs through it activated the invisible circuit. They could duplicate it.
All except for one switch. And that was why he was sober. Exactly how it was rigged he did not know. The position it would have to be in for each sequential firing he did not know.
He reviewed the discs again. No, he could not make it out.
He speculated on the possibility of just making several boards and working it out. No, it might do something else too.
He made a full file and plenty of notes.
They couldn't make teleportation motors from this, but possibly they could open them and trace the circuit. Maybe. But without that one switch...
Jonnie knew they would have to go over and seize that console just to see where Terl set it.
It was an appalling risk and might cost men's lives.
He knew they would have to do it.
Chapter 9
Jonnie quietly and efficiently neatened up his scene.
In case anything happened to him, which he felt was more than likely in this American raid, he carefully briefed Angus in all the intricacies of the console. He made copious notes especially for Angus, so that he could duplicate and operate such a console. He told him some of the things that could be done with it.
Angus objected violently to Jonnie's going on the raid. Jonnie said he was not going to risk anyone else's life, for the actions he had to take were too dicey. He would have the backup of thirty Scots, ten drivers, and fifteen pilots. Angus was still trying to protest but it didn't do any good. If Robert the Fox had been there the two of them might have prevailed, but Sir Robert was over in America moving the
Academy and Angus gave in reluctantly.
A Scot aide of Sir Robert's was there and Jonnie briefed him on the military aspects of their situation: the visitors were waiting for something– he was not sure what. Jonnie felt it had to do with whether or not they got a transshipment rig operating. An analysis of their chatter among themselves showed they were observing the American compound, waiting for something to happen: the visitors had seen Psychlos there (probably Terl and Ker) and seemed to think the American scene might still be in Psychlo hands, or in any event might be political. Jonnie expected the sky to fall in right after that transshipment rig was fired and an alert should be out, then for Day 92, which was approaching very quickly.
Jonnie briefed another Scot officer and arranged a decoy platform to be hastily built in the Singapore area. There was a minesite there northwest of the ancient, deserted man-city where the Psychlos had mined tin, titanium, and tungsten; it had full hydroelectric power, atmosphere armor, and a certain amount of stores and planes left in it. A handful of Chinese, three pilots, a communicator, a Coordinator and this officer were to play out a platform and poles. Jonnie gave them the old burned-out console which they repainted. Under the protection of the cable they were to make like they were busy firing, complete with things appearing and disappearing on the platform. When the flights left the American area with the real console, the heaviest part of the escort would streak to the Singapore area and pull any pursuit of the real console away. The Kariba platform had been under camouflage nets from the beginning and chatter from the visitors showed they thought it was a temple. He warned the officer that the attack would be heavy there in the Singapore area. But the Scot just smiled and grabbed his allocated men and left.
Jonnie made a fast tour of Kariba. The Chinese had done wonderfully well. There was a roof under the screen but over the firing platform, all held together with wooden pegs; swooping gables and points made it very artistic. They had a lot of dragons around, carved from wood and cast in clay, that pointed out from the beam ends with flaming mouths and scaly tails. They had bunkers inside the protected cone. They all had tiled interiors. They even had a little hospital. Their own village was inside the protective cable over by the lakeshore. It was all very colorful and attractive, more like a garden than a war area.
Dr. Allen had gotten some juice of plants from up in the old Nairobi area– he called it "pyrethrum"-that killed insects very efficiently, and despite the number of animals in the woods thereabouts that attracted flies, they had had no trouble with tsetse sleeping sickness.