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Lontastan capital system . . . it had a powerful red blinker for Tosen to look
for, and that was all.
Without the equipment in the pod, he might as well warp for home immediately.
He had to have it, and it could not have made the trip through warp with him.
A man-sized mass was about the maximum that could move at warp velocities
without stirring up mind-wrecking turbulence in prime-field.
So Tosen spun slowly in space, straining for a glimpse of the red blinker.
He almost missed it. It was a dim flicker in his peripheral vision that
vanished when he tried to look directly at it. But he had its direction
spotted. He activated his propulsor field and zoomed toward it on semi-inert
mode.
Within fifty yards of the pod he went full-inert and drifted in slowly. The
pod was a slender torpedo of dull red, and the color went black when he
reached and killed the blinker. After activating the automatic setup system,
he drifted a few feet away while he watched the pod unfold, extend a framework
of slender lattices, and fan out a thin pie-slice of silver into a six-meter
telescope mirror. When the components clamped together and motion stopped, he
drifted to the eyepiece and swung the instrument to point in the direction of
Orrbaune.
Basically it was an ancient device that would have been readily recognized for
what it was back in
Earth-Only times an astronomical reflector telescope. It was rendered more
effective by an ampli-sight attachment and tight-line tracking, but its mirror
optics differed little from those used by men to peer into space even before
man himself could leave old Earth's atmosphere.
Tosen grinned at the sheer size of the instrument. Who would imagine a spy
using such a big, cumbersome gadget?
And that was the whole point. Nobody had imagined it, and that was why it had
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never been tried.
People were used to thinking of space equipment in pill-sized packages . . .
devices small enough to place in the various available nooks and crannies of
the human body without making noticeable bulges.
Like ampli-sight, for example, for which a specialized field phenomenon was
produced by speck-like transmitters located within the eyeballs.
Being sane, Tosen mused as he busied himself with the telescope, only gave
individuals access to such abilities as they inherently possessed. It was no
guarantee of great wisdom, or of creative imagination. He felt himself
fortunate to possess the latter of these.
He spent fifteen hours working with the telescope and its computer attachment,
getting the data he needed. When his series of observations was complete, he
knew his position and motion relative to
Orrbaune with more exactitude than any earlier Commonality agent. He figured
on a maximum margin of error of ten miles.
Satisfied at last, he activated the breakdown system and watched the telescope
collapse back into the compact pod configuration. When the process was
complete, he switched on the systems of the pod's record-and-home automatic
sequence.
Then he drifted away from the pod, carefully set up his approach vector, and
warped toward Orrbaune.
* * *
He exited into norm space almost sitting on the planet. His altitude was only
two hundred miles, and his inert momentum in relation to the surface was near
zero.
But he had no time to congratulate himself on this success. He was too busy
observing with every implant-augmented sense he could bring to bear. He had a
lot to try to learn in the two seconds he had allowed himself.
At that, he nearly overstayed. The Lontastans were skittish indeed about
unheralded visitors and especially one appearing almost on top of their heads.
Tosen realized as he automatically went into warp and zipped away that he had
felt the first few milliseconds of a zerburst flare that had blossomed within
a
few hundred meters of where he had been. He could feel the burn all across his
back, and could detect his medicircuits going to work on the damage.
What had he learned?
He wasn't sure, but he hadn't expected to be at this stage. The important
information, he hoped, was that which had been gathered by his special sensing
devices and transmitted to the pod, to be recorded and transported home.
But at any rate, his memory of those two seconds held nothing to indicate
Monte was not a device.
There had been telepathic contact. It had come so swiftly after his exit from
warp that he had noticed no time lag.
But the . . . the feel of that contact was, at first, impersonal, without even
mild emotion. Would a living telepath have such a feel? Tosen had never
experienced telepathy before, but he doubted it.
Then, a split-second later, that impersonal feel was lost in a welter of
obviously human thought-patterns as alerted Guardsmen came storming into the
telepathic linkage with the expected reactions of alarm and anger, and harsh
demands that the intruder identify himself instantly.
All in all, Tosen considered his mission to Orrbaune a complete success.
* * *
He left a confused flurry of exchanges behind him.
Who was that?
demanded Frikason of the Lontastan High Board.
Monte replied: His identity was not revealed as his attention was so totally
on receiving data that he transmitted very little. However, he was from the
Commonality, and his purpose came through clearly.
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Oh? What was it?
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