Science fiction; Space ships -- Fiction; Space warfare -- Fiction
"My investigation is practically complete," replied the First of
Psychology, gravely. "I have explored many Fenachrone minds, and without
exception I have found them chambers of horror of a kind unimaginable to
one of us. However, you are not interested in their psychology, but in
facts bearing upon your problem. While such facts were scarce, I did
discover a few interesting items. I spied upon them in public and in
their most private haunts. I analyzed them individually and
collectively, and from the few known facts and from the great deal of
guesswork and conjecture there available to me, I have formulated a
theory. I shall first give you the known facts. Their scientists cannot
direct nor control any ray not propagated through ether, but they can
detect one such frequency or band of frequencies which they call
'infra-rays' and which are probably the fifth-order rays, since they lie
in the first level below the ether. The detector proper is a type of
lamp, which gives a blue light at the ordinary intensity of such rays as
would come from space or from an ordinary power plant, but gives a red
light under strong excitation."
"Uh-huh, I get that O. K.," said Seaton. "Rovol's
great-great-great-grandfather had 'em--I know all about 'em," Seaton
encouraged Drasnik, who had paused, with a questioning glance. "I know
exactly how and why such a detector works. We gave 'em an alarm, all
right. Even though we were working on a tight beam from here to there,
our secondary projector there was radiating enough to affect every such
detector within a thousand miles."
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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