Babylon saw the strange, almost fearful look on Pertin's face as his gaze followed her, and understood something of what was in Pertin's mind. "Consider relationships," indeed! Babylon knew what relationships his friend was considering. Doris was a Purchased Person, whose distant owners were only academically interested in human sexual practices. Usually she was permitted to share Pertin's bed only when they had no other plans for her. But sometimes they were in direct control. How strange it must be, Babylon thought, to murmur drowsy endearments into a worn- an's ear, and find a reply from her remote and inhuman owners!
But there was not much time for such reflections now. The T'Worlie moved silently to the center of the room, facing its human companions. It chirped, "Concurrence. Recommendation to advise all other beings is agreed." It floated silently for a moment, its five eyes seeming to stare at each of them in turn, then added a quick series of chirping whistles and a pungent smell of clove. The Pmals rapped out the translation: "Observation: Situation becoming critical. Proposaclass="underline" All information now be shared, including data from helmet, information store obtained from wrecked vessel—and communication just received through being identified as Doris."
Redlaw boomed, "He's right! We don't have a choice— so let's do it!"
If the orbiter had been excited before, now it was like an anthill gone mad. Beings of every fantastic shape flew and hurled themselves along the corridors. The news had sped faster than a tachyon transmission, and each race, almost each individual of every race, reacted with its own special pattern of consternation and anger, and even fear. Hardly a civilized planet in the Galaxy, it now seemed, had been spared its equivalent of the Kooks; and the suggestion that they were all part of some incredible conspiracy was explosive. Chugging Scorpian robots sped through swarms of milling Boaty-Bits without warning; Sheliaks and Purchased People stopped each other at the intersections with furious bursts of screeches and rattles from the overworked Pmals; and all of them tried to crowd their way into the farlink chamber, where the T'Worlie were feeding data into the computer as fast as it could be accepted.
First Babylon had overseen three great Sheliaks, functioning as porters, as they bodily moved the store of hexagonal rods and their reader into the chamber. Then they obeyed the Doris-being's command.
The T'Worlie had plugged farlink into the circuits, and every datum from the hexagonal rods was entering its data stores. The images were slower to build, but they were clearer, more detailed—farlink was not only observing, it was pondering what it saw, matching it against a vast store of information. Doc Chimp was given the task of feeding the hexagons into the reader; he fumbled through the stack until he found the key one—the "spherical object"—and slipped it into its slot.
At once the translucent block cleared, and the great metal bubble shone forth inside it. Doc touched the scanning plate, and the image began to go through its cycle— slowly now, as farlink studied each new display in turn and enhanced the images. First the featureless metal globe. Then the cutaway sections. Then the schematics: a network of scarlet structural members, replaced by an interlinked system of ivory-colored arteries—transportation passages? Something like that, perhaps. Then, coded in bright silver, a set of mirror-finished rings, making a sort of basketwork duplicate of the sphere itself.
The swarm of beings in the chamber hissed and muttered to each other, but no clear voice emerged. Doc Chimp pushed himself back and stared morosely at the image. "I don't see anything sensible," he complained. "What's it supposed to mean?"
Zara said doubtfully, "Well, let's see. It's a sphere. An artifact. I suppose it represents some instrument or machine—a spacecraft, maybe?"
Babylon ventured, "I understand there are old orbiting vessels you can't approach around Cuckoo—like the wrecked ship?"
Pertin shook his head. "They don't look a bit like that," he growled, and then called, "farlink? Any interpretations?"
The clear, cold voice of the machine replied, "Negative. Analysis continuing. More data required."
The humans looked at each other, and Zara shrugged. "The helmet?"
Org Rider nodded. "We have no choice," he declared. "Benpertin, please produce the helmet. We must share this information, too!"
* * *
The excitement and resentment that followed the giving up of the helmet—how dare these Earth beings withhold valuable data!—was only exceeded by the uncertainty of how to use it. Obviously the helmet could not be worn by farlink as it could by a human being—or by the beings who had made it; obviously, if those who had worn it simply told farlink what they had seen they would omit much priceless data, or corrupt it. At last a Sheliak plunged into the center of the group and plastered itself against farlink's data-input terminals, extruding a bubble of its flesh toward the helmet. The bubble crept inside; the doughy mass of Sheliak flesh suddenly contorted, and then was still. Pertin nodded grudgingly. "Knew the damn beasts would be good for something one day," he declared. "They can shift their organs and nerves around as easily as their bodies—it's giving direct transmission of its nervous impulses to the computer!"
Babylon shook his head unbelievingly. "Raw sensory inputs? How can farlink read them?"
"That's farlink's problem, and it'll solve it," Pertin boasted. "Just wait and see!"
It was easy enough advice to follow—there was no real alternative!—but the mob of beings in the chamber was getting louder and more raucous.
The first sign that anything happened was that the great globe from the hexagon-rod data disappeared. The cube remained clear, but it contained no information. There was a gasp, buzz, hiss, whistle—whatever sounds each made— from the beings; but as moments passed and the image did not reappear the surprise reverted to angry impatience.
Then, at a single stroke, all the dozens of circling flat- picture screens were wiped blank, while the holo of the expedition on the center stereostage firmed up. It became more clear in all its parts, and began to move in real time. farlink was doing its job. As it matched the images from the other Doc Chimp's camera against the data from the helmets—and against that vast collection of other information that made its datastore—it filled in the gaps, interpolated details, made the scene as real as if the observers were standing at some vantage point and beholding the scene itself.
Since there was nothing else to look at at the moment, every being in the chamber was looking at the scene, and one, at least, felt a queer stirring, half a memory, half a long-forgotten apprehension. Jen Babylon shook his head. What was it? The scene showed the toiling line of porters and leaders passing through the narrow corridors and emerging into a great chamber, kilometers wide and deep, with walls that seemed to be set with bright, winking jewels and a network of cables and branching cyclopean structural beams. All rose from a floor formed of silver-white lines that looked thinner than threads, too fragile and too far apart to hold anything.
"I've seen that before," he muttered, mostly to himself, but beside him Zara caught the words and looked at him curiously.
"You have, Jen? Where?"
He shook his head. "I can't remember," he confessed. "Maybe in a dream. Quite a while ago. —No, it's gone. But somehow that looks familiar—and frightening!"
She studied his face carefully before she said, "Please think hard, Jen. It may be important."
And perhaps it was, but Babylon got no chance to think about it more carefully, nor did any being in the chamber, about that or about anything else. For the blank cube suddenly sprang into life. It showed the ball of layered silver rings, then the ivory arteries, then the bright scarlet structural members—the same sequence as before, but in reverse order, as if the artifact was being constructed before their eyes. And much faster, much surer; with a sense of reality and solidity to the images that had been lacking before. Like the first series, the remaining view was the great featureless globe, hanging in space.