And there it came again! A wild, cacophonous wailing, like a whole
orchestra of instruments playing at random, in random keys. It shook
the very roots of the body, that terrible caterwauling, and not only
did it shake the body, and the mind, but it actually caused loose
plates to rattle in the bulkhead, and the cabinet doors followed in
unison. The diapason stop was out for noon, and the racket filled the
small control room and bounced back and forth, dinning at the ears of
Kingman as it went echoing by. It penetrated to the upper reaches of
the ship, and the crew gritted their teeth and cursed the necessity of
being able to hear orders, for cotton plugs would have been a godsend
and a curse simultaneously. Anything that would blot that racket out
would also deafen them to the vital orders necessary to the operation
of the ship in this precarious poising maneuver.
Two hundred sheer watts of undistorted audio power boomed forth in that
tiny room--two hundred watts of pure, undistorted power to racket forth
something that probably started out as sheer distortion.