With a dig of his claw, he opened the book to the point where all the equations were summarized and pointed to the top one. “Now you see this 'B'? You might think it is a symbol for something in Psychlo mathematics. But there is no 'B' that represents anything mathematical except 'Betrayer's.'

He pulled the first paper back. “So where that 'B' occurs, we see that the letter 'B' has a number value of two. So we just have to add or subtract or whatever it says to do to 'B,' the number two.

“When we get to the second stage of the equation, there is no letter but a Psychlo mathematician knows you must take the second letter of 'Betrayer's,' which is 'E' and then look up the number value of 'E,' which is five, and factor the second stage of the equation with five. Now you get the same equation to its third stage and a mathematician knows he has to factor it with the number value of 'T' which is twenty. And so on.

"If the letter in the original equation were 'l,' then we would use its number value and follow right on down with the number values of the letters for 'Infernal.'

“You always have one of these letters in the first equation, so you always have the gate name. And you have to use it. When they put the equations together, they constructed them backward from the answer so a gate name would fit. Got it?”

Jonnie got it. A code and cipher mathematics!

No wonder nothing ever seemed to balance. This made even the original equations rigged.

And add to that all the complexity of a base-eleven math and you had what would appear to any outsider to be an utter mess.

He was glad he had the recorder running under his lapel. Completely aside from his being no native of Psychlo, the gate names themselves were weird.

“I have to be honest with you,” said Soth. “I don't know where I am getting all this impulse to be honest. But all this will be of limited use to you.”

Chapter 6

Jonnie sat very still. Something else? You mean, he'd gotten all this way and he still wouldn't attain it? But he didn't speak. He waited.

Soth fiddled a bit with his papers. He picked up the contract Jonnie had signed and then laid it down again. Obviously he was having qualms about the honesty of accepting it.

“You have to understand how crazy they were on secrecy,” he said at length. “Although what I have given you applies to Psychlo math in general, there is another circumstance. When equations are applied to the calculation of teleportation, you won't find all the answers in the texts.”

Soth sighed. “The government was afraid of a lot of things. Among them was the possibility that Intergalactic

Mining employees, out in some far planet, might get ideas or go into business for them selves. So the exact sequence in which you use the force equations is not revealed in the texts and I think there are dummy equations there as well. I could not work you out a console.”

Jonnie objected, “The Chamco brothers seemed to be working on it!”

“Oh, the Chamco brothers!” said Soth impatiently. “They might have monkeyed about. They might even have tried. But they wouldn't know!”

He swept a paw in the general direction of the other Psychlo dormitories. “These clods here,” he said with contempt, “could none of them build a console. They would know what I have told you and it would work for other things. But not consoles!”

He looked at the contract longingly.

Then he confronted Jonnie. “There was a special class of trainee at mine school. The catrists went over each incoming class with the greatest of care, looking for the most brilliant new students. They were quite rare, really. And when found, they trained them lengthily in every branch of mining activity, theory, and practice.

“The imperial government was determined that only one personnel on any planet would be able to build a teleportation console for use in times of emergency or to repair one. So they specially trained this group of students. We used to call them the 'brain-brains.' They weren't always the best people to know but the catrists thought they were.

“And as the government and company were so crazy on the subject of secrecy, of course the post to which these 'brain-brains' were appointed was that of security officer.'

Terl! thought Jonnie.

And almost as if he was reading Jonnie's thoughts, Soth said, “Terl was a 'brain-brain.' Darling of the catrists. Trained in every branch of anything. Sly, evil. A true catrist product. Only Terl could have built a firing console from scratch and he's gone.”

Jonnie's mind was racing. He had all Terl's work papers! They would tell him the sequence!

And then his hopes were dashed. Soth said, “That also applies to computing motors. Only Terl could have computed out the full circuits for motor consoles.”

Jonnie had no such papers.

“They are,” said Soth, “quite different, you know. The firing console overrides and gets around the 'samespace' principle. The motor runs on the resistance space puts up to being changed.”

Soth was dangling the contract in his claws. “What I have told you about Psychlo math applies to all of it and can be used in solving anything but teleportation."

Jonnie brightened. At least it would apply to the hundreds of thousands of patents. Still, it meant no motors. It condemned him to eventually flying reaction engines. It meant

Desperation Defense wouldn't have an easy conversion to peacetime. Then he recalled something.

“But executives used to repair motor consoles,” he said.

Soth sat up. He looked at the contract and then at Jonnie. “You just want the circuit itself? I thought you were interested in the mathematics. Mathematics is a pure subject,” he added with the vehemence of any dedicated hobbyist. “But if you want just the circuit...” He was fishing around under books and papers. "Where's my breathe-gas mask?”

In minutes they were outside and Jonnie was issuing the orders Soth wanted relayed.

A console was to be removed from a plane, one from a ground car and one from a flying platform. And they were to be brought at once to the repair shop without being further tampered with. Mechanics went racing about.

Presently the three consoles were sitting on the floor of the repair shop.

“These are the three different types of consoles for motor drives. All other motor consoles are one or another of these types. Now you will have to give me a hand. I am not as strong as I was once.”

Soth closed the door, barring everyone else. He reached up on a shelf and brought down a “poison ore bag.” Jonnie had seen them often enough. They were transparent. They had two very tight armholes you could put your hands and arms into. He thought they were used when one sorted out arsenic compounds used in ore refining.

Soth, with a little help from Jonnie, struggled the ground car console into the bag. Then he stuffed in all the trailing connection wires that had just been severed from the vehicle. He sealed the bag tight. He connected an air hose to the fitting at the bottom and the bag around the console began to inflate.

He picked up a pressure gauge and a tool kit and shoved these through the armholes. Then he put his own arms in and snapped seals around his elbows.

Through the transparent top he watched the pressure gauge he had put in. “One hundred pounds is what you want,” he said.

The bag inflated. The gauge went up to one hundred. He checked his elbow seals. The pressure was holding.

Soth picked up a screwdriver from the kit he had put inside and swiftly took out the screws of the top plate.

Jonnie looked on, fascinated. He had done that once with a tank console and it had promptly ceased to work!