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An outer space comet, not native to the system, had been blasting across the skies for some time. Angus pointed out to Jo
Jo
The Psychlos used literally tons of mercury in some mining process. So they got pans of it and tested it. Iron, copper, nickel, most elements now in powder form, were lighter than mercury and floated off or combined. But this strange element went to the bottom with a thud. It was terribly cohesive and clung to itself. It took an awful lot of powdered metal to get any.
They could have rigged some machines to do the pa
They said Angus would be back and they waited for him. He reappeared presently and they asked him: did he need any more? Angus shook his head and beckoned.
In the shop where he was working, Angus had duplicated Terl's box with one exception: it didn't push all the elements together when you raised the lid. A timed piston did that. You set the time and then the piston closed the rods.
Angus had six of them. The center bit was probably not as pure a metal as Terl's but they were sure that was of no importance. The weights were varied a bit but all around seventy-five pounds for the center bit. Angus had not put the centers in place: he had those sitting well apart and every one was making a dent in what it sat on.
“Unless you've got in mind to blow up the universe,” said Angus, “don't you think about eight will do? The load you just brought in should give us two more.”
“But what does it do?” begged Stormalong.
Jo
Jo
Good progress being made in America.
He was almost cheerful. They might have a chance. Thin but possible.
Of course there was the mathematics thing. Lately all Terl seemed to do was scan pages and pages and pages of incomprehensible mathematical equations. He had not started building a console but he was obviously figuring it out from scratch. The old one was burned out. He had demanded it anyway for its case and they had brought him all kinds of scrap but none was it– it couldn't by for Jo
Jo
The tall Hockner was gri
“I didn't know,” said Jo
Although it made the sentries wary, the Hockner went over to a ground car and looked around under the edge of one of the bumpers. “There,” he said, pointing.
Jo
“That's Duraleb," said the Hockner. “It says 'Made in Duraleb.' The Psychlos import all their plane bodies and tank bodies and machinery from other systems and peoples. The Psychlos only furnish metals and then motors and consoles. Nobody can use this stuff except Psychlos, since nobody has the drives. These other planets build other things for other peoples.
But this Psychlo stuff is useless if you don't have the consoles. They make those on Psychlo and only on Psychlo.”
Jo
Jo
The Hockner gave a laugh. It sounded like a horse neighing. “My dear fellow, every wizard brain in the universe for three hundred and two thousand years has tried to figure out Psychlo mathematics. It can't be done. Oh, it isn't their mathematic. An eleven-numeral system is not too strange. There's a race that had twenty-three different numerals. It 's their silly equations. Nothing ever balances. Texts? Anybody can pick up their texts. They're meaningless! Pure rubbish! Balderdash! Rot! Now will you order them to give me and my crew something to eat like you did the
Tolnep?"
Jo
He went to his viewing room and looked at Terl's vast numbers of worksheets again. He wasn't feeling so good now.
Jo
He had a rapidly growing force of visitors overhead. Terl was dawdling.
Jo
He looked over Terl's equations again. They didn't balance. They didn't proceed one to the next logically. Yet the whole fate of this planet depended, in the final analysis, on solving them.
Maybe other people of other races had met this impasse, this same problem before. And lost. Maybe another being had sat here, like this, staring at texts and worksheets of Psychlo math, uneasy, and with a feeling of hopelessness, and then gone out to be destroyed by the Psychlos, his personal courage meaningless.