"Quite," said Don. "This is glass. It was once a three-inch cube of precision, polish, and beauty. It is now a combination of a circular stairway with round corners and a sort of accordion pleat. Hell's bells!" "Be not discouraged," gurgled Walt. "No matter what it looks like, we did transmit matter." Arden tapped Don on the shoulder. "May I say it now?" "You do--!" "Then I won't say it doesn't matter." "I'm ignoring your crude remark. Walt, we did accomplish something. It wasn't too good. Now let's figure out why this thing seems to have been run over with a fourth dimensional caterpillar-tread truck." "Well, I can hazard a guess. The synchronizing circuits were not clamped perfectly. That gives the accordion-pleat effect. The starting of the trace was not made at the same place each time due to slippage. We'll have to beef up the synchronization impulse. The circular staircase effect was probably due to phase distortion." "Could be," said Don. "That means we have to beef up the transmission band so it'll carry a higher frequency." "A lower impedance with corrective elements?" "Might work. Those will have to be matched closely. We're not transmitting on a line, you know. It's sheer transmission-tube stuff from here to there. Well, gang, we've had our fun. Now let's widen the transmission band and beef up the sync. Then we'll try number two." * * * * * Number two was tried the following afternoon. Again, everybody stood around and watched over Don's shoulder as he removed the cube from the cabinet. "Nice," he said, doing a little war dance. Franks came in puffing, took the cube from Don's fingers and inspected it. "Not too bad," he said. "Perfect." "Not by a jug full. The index of refraction is higher at this edge than at the other. See? Walt held the cube before a newspaper and they squinted through the glass block. "Seems to be. Now why?" "Second harmonic distortion, if present, would tend to thin out one side and thicken up the other side. A sine-wave transmission would result in even thicknesses, but if second harmonic distortion is present, the broad loops at the top create a condition where the average from zero to top is higher than the average from zero to the other peak. Follow?" "That would indicate that the distortion was coming in at this end. If both were even, they would cancel." "Right. Your scanning at one end is regular--at the other end it is irregular, resulting in non-homogeneity." "The corners aren't really sharp," objected Arden. "That's an easy one. The wave-front isn't sharp either. Instead of clipping sharply at the end of the trace, the signal tapers off. That means higher frequency response is needed." "We need a term. Audio for sonics; radio for electronics, video for television signals--" "Mateo," said Arden. "Um--sounds sort of silly," grinned Walt.