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Jo
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 Jo
If activated by a wrong turn of the switch, that component would send a surge through the board and erase the invisible circuit.
Jo
Terl now was putting the board together.
And Jo
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.
Jo
When the screw was touching the top edge of the console, the magnetic top edge kept a tiny current ru
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 Jo
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...
Jo
It was an appalling risk and might cost men's lives.
He knew they would have to do it.
Chapter 9
Jo
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 Jo
Academy and Angus gave in reluctantly.
A Scot aide of Sir Robert's was there and Jo
Jo
Jo
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.
Jo
When he returned to the African compound, it was Day 87. He found Stormalong there with more discs that showed the color codes of the cables and the pole wires. They could simply hack off the console's cables and reco
Stormalong said this would be his last run so Jo