The visitors inspected the battery of accelerators and massive electromagnets inside which the beam originated and followed the transmission tube, wreathed in its elaborate sheath of coils and coolant pipes, that conveyed it into the sphere of the J-reactor itself—there to be somehow squeezed by forces they were unable to comprehend out of the very universe. The party’s mood grew somber. Hardened as these men were by daily exposure to the harsh realities of systematically engineered methods of mass destruction, they found themselves daunted and apprehensive as the full meaning of the things they saw on every side percolated through to their understanding.
Finally they saw the “brain” by which the entire operation of this awesome ensemble was coordinated and directed—the computer room where the three mighty BIACs ( mighty in performance, that is; each machine occupied just two six-foot-high cabinets) presided over several hundred assorted slave processors and cubicle after cubicle of attendant electronics.
The operation of every component and subsystem that went to make up this aggregate was controlled ultimately from a single nerve center designated simply CONTROL ROOM. This was where all the data and control channels from every part of the vast machine were finally brought together in tiers of instrument panels and monitor screens, and where the command interface with the BIACs was situated. From here, every facet of system operation—control of the reactors and generator banks, beam modulation, target identification and location, direction of the fire-control computers—was orchestrated by just two human operators. The Control Room could, in an emergency, be sealed off from the inside, and with it the critical sections of the weapons system. Thus, regardless of what went on in other parts of the Brunnermont complex, unimpaired operation of Jericho could be guaranteed at any time.
The raised gallery that gave access to the Control Room looked down over the panorama of the Operational Command Floor—the new war room of the Western Democratic Alliance. In this brightly illuminated setting of communications consoles and thickly carpeted surgical cleanliness, enormous mural displays presented the global picture that was revealed from the combined inputs of a network of orbital and ground-based surveillance systems, the interconnected radar and early-warning chains of a score of nations, high-flying robot drones above the Siberian tundra and the Gobi Desert, and ships dotted all the way from Spitsbergen to the Ross Sea. From these surroundings of superficial calm and tranquillity, the integrated war machine of the Western powers could be unleashed in minutes. This was where the men from Washington and the observers sent by the governments of Europe, Russia, Australia, and Japan eventually assembled to see the end-product of Jericho in action.
Clifford and Aub had taken up their positions inside the Control Room, leaving Morelli to attend to the guests. While Morelli was describing the various facilities that were available on the Operational Command Floor, they put the system through a routine checkout drill. Everything was working fine.
The first item on the agenda was a demonstration of the resolving power of the Mark III detector to show how it was used for target registration; also it would give the spectators an insight to the meaning of dynamic real-time control via BIAC interaction between the operator and the machine.
“Just to recap for a moment on some of the things I said earlier, every piece of matter in the universe gives rise to hi-radiation that appears instantly at every point in space.” Morelli spoke in a loud voice to make sure that his words carried to the back of the crowd of attentive faces arrayed before him. “Right at this moment, hi-radiation is pervading this room—radiation that is being generated in the mass of Earth, on the Sun, in Jupiter, in every star in our galaxy and every galaxy in the universe.” He turned slowly to take in the fascinated expressions all around.
“This hi-radiation that originates from objects large and small, near and far, can be made to produce a measurable response by means of the instrument that you have just seen. The intensity of this radiation falls off rapidly with distance from its source, in spite of its traveling instantly between points in ordinary space, but it does carry information from which certain characteristics of the source object can be reconstructed. The amount of information that comes from each source also becomes less the farther away the source is.