Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 90: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

88 or not is another matter. May I turn the main banks on, Heldon?’” ei 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 in- spection port. The result to Karst’s cars must have been rather weird. The technique of speaking without moving one’s lips is simply a matter of subsituting consonants which do not involve lip movement, such as “y,” for those that do, such as w”’. If the resulting sound is picked up from inside the resonating cham- ber, 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 loca- tion, 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. “T think so. One of these tubes is gassing, and they 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 be- tray 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. 66 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION “Certainly,” the Proctor said. “Is that all?” : “By no means, I think you ought to rip out about half of these circuits, and install transistors wherever they can -be used; we can sell you the necessary germanium at the legal rate. You’ve got two or three hundred tubes to a unit here, by my estimate, and if you have a tube failure in flight . . . well, the only word that fits what would happen then is blooey!”’ 7 ‘Will you be able to show us how?” “Probably,” the mayor said. “If you'll allow me to inspect the whole system, I can give you an exact answer.” “All right,” Heldon said. “But don’t delay. I can’t count on more than another half-day at most.” This was better than Amalfi had ex- pected—miles better. Given that much time, he could trace at least enough of the leads to locate the master control. That Heldon’s expression failed totally to match the content of his speech disturbed Amalfi profoundly, but there was nothing that he could do that would alter that now. He pulled paper and stylus out of Karst’s pack and began to make rapid sketches of the wiring before him. After he had a fairly clear idea of the first generator’s set-up, it was easier to block in the main features of the second. It took time, but Heldon did not seem to tire. The third spindizzy completed the picture, leaving Amalfi wondering what the fourth one was for. It turned out to be a booster, designed to com- pensate for the losses of the others wherever the main curve of their out- put failed to conform to the specs laid down for it by the crude, over-all regenerative circuit. The booster was ‘located on the backside of the feed- back loop, behind the computer rather than ahead of it, so that all the com- puter’s corrections had to pass through connicloooks.c© im