Swing. Stop. Run-back.
The projector droned.
I kept wanting to look at the rocks but Eastlake had said it wasn't worth bothering with. They weren't interested in the rocks. And it was no good asking them for a clue because the object of the exercise was that I should see the target for myself, avoiding the risk of conditioned illusion.
Swing. Stop. Run-back.
The dunes were becoming a mirage. The dunes and the rocks and the flow of light and shade across the scene were beginning to swirl in a slow-moving vortex and I was losing track of perspective.
'Would you like us to back-project against a — '
'What? No. Run it back. Run it back, will you?'
The scene swung to a stop.
'Tell me when — '
'Yes.'
Anti-clockwise. The shadows flowing and the angle. Stop.'
'This frame?'
'Back another fraction.'
The sprockets whirred again and stopped. 'Yes, that's the one. I've got it now.'
2: OVERFLIGHT
'It didn't take you long.'
'You're joking.'
The WRAF shut down the projector and we all stretched our legs.
'It took us a bit of time ourselves,' said Eastlake, 'even though the navigator had seen it through direct binocular vision.' He showed me a couple of dozen stills and blow-ups and filter-screen montages on the static viewers but they weren't any clearer, and even the still they'd taken from the frame of the movie strip didn't have the same definition. I asked Johnson about that. He was the interpretation officer.
'It doesn't seem possible,' he said, 'does it? When you look at the still you're looking at exactly the same picture as the one on the strip — but there's some data missing, all the same. The eye hasn't got anything for immediate comparison. It's the movement through the projector that leads the eye over the changing pattern till it suddenly sees an inconsistency. That's what happened with you.'