The Shapers had listening dishes dug in all over the asteroid. The bowl-shaped impact craters were ready-made for their camouflaged gridworks of copper mesh. All antennae fed into a central processor, whose delicate semiconductors were sheltered in a tough acrylic console. Slots in the console held cassettes of homemade recording tape, constantly spooling on a dozen different heads. Another cutout on the acrylic deck held a flat liquid crystal display for video copy and a hand-lettered keyboard.