Part 9 (2/2)
”Okay. It's all yours. I'll be back sometime,” and Hilton went out onto the dock, where the dejected Laro was waiting for him.
”Hi, Laro. Get the car and take me to the Hall of Records.” The android brightened up immediately and hurried to obey.
At the Hall, Hilton's first care was to see how the work was going on.
Eight of the huge rooms were now open and brightly lighted--operating the lamps had been one of the first items on the first spool of instructions--with a cold, pure-white, sourceless light.
Every team had found its objective and was working on it. Some of them were doing nicely, but the First Team could not even get started. Its primary record would advance a fraction of an inch and stop; while Omans and humans sought out other records and other projectors in an attempt to elucidate some concept that simply could not be translated into any words or symbols known to Terran science. At the moment there were seventeen of those peculiar--projectors? Viewers? Playbacks--in use, and all of them were stopped.
”You know what we've got to _do_ Jarve?” Karns, the team captain, exploded. ”Go back to being college freshmen--or maybe grade school or kindergarten, we don't know yet--and learn a whole new system of mathematics before we can even begin to _touch_ this stuff!”
”And you're bellyaching about that?” Hilton marveled. ”I wish I could join you. That'd be fun.” Then, as Karns started a snappy rejoinder--
”But I got troubles of my own,” he added hastily. ”'Bye, now,” and beat a rejoinder--
Out in the hall again, Hilton took his chance. After all, the odds were about two to one that he would win.
”I want a couple of things, Laro. First, a thought screen.”
He won!
”Very well, Master. They are in a distant room, Department Four Six Nine. Will you wait here on this cus.h.i.+oned bench, Master?”
”No, we don't like to rest too much. I'll go with you.” Then, walking along, he went on thoughtfully. ”I've been thinking since last night, Laro. There are tremendous advantages in having Omans ...”
”I am very glad you think so, Master. I want to serve you. It is my greatest need.”
”... if they could be kept from smothering us to death. Thus, if our ancestors had kept their Omans, I would have known all about life on this world and about this Hall of Records, instead of having the fragmentary, confusing, and sometimes false information I now have ...
oh, we're here?”
Laro had stopped and was opening a door. He stood aside. Hilton went in, touched with one finger a crystalline cube set conveniently into a wall, gave a mental command, and the lights went on.
Laro opened a cabinet and took out a disk about the size of a dime, pendant from a neck-chain. While Hilton had not known what to expect, he certainly had not expected anything as simple as that. Nevertheless, he kept his face straight and his thoughts unmoved as Laro hung the tiny thing around his neck and adjusted the chain to a loose fit.
”Thanks, Laro.” Hilton removed it and put it into his pocket. ”It won't work from there, will it?”
”No, Master. To function, it must be within eighteen inches of the brain. The second thing, Master?”
”A radiation-proof suit. Then you will please take me to the creche.”
The android almost missed a step, but said nothing.
The radiation-proof suit--how glad Hilton was that he had not called it ”armor”!--was as much of a surprise as the thought-screen generator had been. It was a coverall, made of something that looked like thin plastic, weighing less than one pound. It had one sealed box, about the size and weight of a cigarette case. No wires or apparatus could be seen. Air entered through two filters, one at each heel, flowed upward--for no reason at all that Hilton could see--and out through a filter above the top of his head. The suit neither flopped nor clung, but stood out, comfortably out of the way, all by itself.
Hilton, just barely, accepted the suit, too, without showing surprise.
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