Dan said, "You can handle it all from that end?"
"Easily. We've got a team here that will do nothing else but question
him."
Dan nodded, aware that the voices of specially trained psychologists
were now speaking in the man's ears, so that he heard nothing else,
while he saw only what the screen in the half-globe projected directly
into his eyes. Soon he should begin to talk, and what he said would be
transmitted through subspace to Kielgaard's team of questioners. Then
it might be possible to learn something of what was going on on this
planet. But there was another way that might also help.
Dan glanced at his wristwatch and saw that it was late enough so that
if this were Earth most stores would probably be closed by now. Dan
didn't know how it was on this planet, but he pronounced a key word and
was in the bookstore that faced the green. The bookstore was closed.
Dan quickly selected an armload of books, brought them back to the
shelter under the river, went back and got another stack of them.
He set up a spidery device of light metal and piled the books near
enough so the feed arms could reach them. A set of rubber-tipped rods
like long skeletal fingers turned the pages, while the scanner on an
overhead arm oscillated from a position over one page to a position
over the other page.
Dan said, "How's it coming in, Kielgaard?"
"Speed it up a little."
Dan moved a small lever. The pages turned more quickly.
* * * * *
Dan said, "We'll see how the feeder works before I leave it." Then he
got out a mirror and went to work to change his appearance again.
The second book fed in with no difficulty, so Dan took four of his
little mataform units, which was all he had room for, and went back to
the terminal.
The crowd seemed to have thinned out somewhat, so he supposed the
evening rush was about over. As in terminals nearly everywhere Dan had
been, most of the people moved briskly, intent on their own affairs. No
one paid much attention to Dan while he glanced around, noting the wall
of flashing lights and moving letters, similar to but far larger than
the one he had seen before, and a series of sizable blocky structures
with large numerals suspended above them, and the stylized outlines
of doorways on their four walls. People appeared in front of these
doorways, or strolled directly toward them and vanished, hesitating
only when a red glow outlined the door to show that someone was coming
through from the other side.
In the center of the room toward either end were large silvery
structures with the word "Information" hanging above them. Dan went
to one and found that vertical blue lines divided it into twenty-four
sections, with room left over for more that weren't there as yet, plus
a section headed "General Information."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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