“Any idea why?”
“Routine. The computations were relevant to certain researches that they are conducting.”
“What kind of researches?” Hunt asked.
“On the things we have been discussing. The question that I suggested a few minutes ago was not something that I originated myself; it was a question that they have been asking. They are very interested in the whole subject. They’re curious to find out how Man came to exist at all when all available data says he shouldn’t and all their models predicted that he would destroy himself if he did.”
Hunt was intrigued to learn that the Ganymeans were studying his kind with such intensity, especially since they appeared to have progressed so much further in their deductions than the UNSA team had. He was surprised also that ZORAC would so readily divulge something that could be considered sensitive information.
“I’m amazed that there aren’t any restrictions on you talking about things like that,” he said.
“Why?”
The question caught Hunt unprepared.
“Oh, I don’t know really,” he said. “On Earth I suppose things
like that would only be accessible to people authorized. . . certainly not freely available to anyone who cared to ask for it. I suppose I. . . just assumed it would be the same.”
“The fact that Earthmen are neurotic is no reason for Ganymeans to be furtive,” ZORAC told him bluntly.
Hunt grinned and shook his head slowly.
“I guess I asked for that,” he sighed.
chapter sixteen
The first and most important task that the Ganymeans had faced- that of getting their ship in order again-had now been successfully accomplished. So the focal point of their activities shifted to Pit-head, where they commenced working intensively toward their seeond objective-coming to grips with the computer system of the wrecked ship. Whether the Ganymean race had migrated to an-other star, and if so which star, had still not been answered. A strong probability remained that this information was sitting waiting to be found, buried somewhere in the intricate molecular circuits and storage banks that went to make up the data-processing complex of a ship that had been built after the answers to these questions were known. The ship might even have been involved in that very migration.
The task turned out to be nowhere near as straightforward as the first one. Although the Pithead ship was of a later and more advanced design than the Shapieron, its main drives worked on similar principles and used components which, although showing certain modifications and refinements in some instances, performed functions that were essentially the same as those of their earlier counterparts. The drive system thus exemplified a mature technology that had not changed radically between the times of the two ships’ construction, and the repair of the Shapieron had been possible as a consequence.
The same was not true for the computer systems. After a week of intensive analysis and probing, the Ganymean scientists admitted they were making little headway. The problem was that the system components that they found themselves trying to comprehend were, in most cases, unlike anything they had seen before. The processors themselves consisted of solid crystal blocks inside which millions of separate circuit elements of molecular dimensions were interconnected in three dimensions with complexities that defied the imagination. Only somebody who had been trained
and educated in the design and physics of such devices could hope to unravel the coding locked inside them.
Some of the larger processors were completely revolutionary in concept, even to the Gãnymeans, and seemed to represent a merging of electronic and gravitic technologies; characteristics of both were inextricably mingled together to form devices in which the physical interconnections between cells holding electronic data could be changed through variable gravitic-bonding links. The hardware configuration itself was programable and could be switched from nanosecond to nanosecond to yield an array in which any and every cell could function as a storage element at one instant or as a processing site the next; processing could, in the ultimate, be performed everywhere in the complex, all at the same time-surely the last word in parallelism. One interested but bemused UNSA engineer described it as “soft hardware. A brain with a billion times the speed. . .”