* * * * * One of them leaped to his feet. Ramsen, I think his name was. He was a big shot in the field, almost as big as De Forest and Marconi. "Fradin," he yelled, "that is the most preposterous statement I ever heard from the lips of any man in his right senses. It raises the immediate question of whether or not _you_ are in your right senses." There was a buzz of approval following his statement. Fradin waited for it to die down. "Mr. Ramsen," he said, "you have chosen to challenge my theory. Perhaps you can tell me what medium _does_ carry the electro-magnetic radiations that we call radio waves?" "Certainly," Ramsen answered. "Any schoolboy knows that." "We are not here concerned with the knowledge of schoolboys," Fradin gently replied. "Sound is carried in air and water and by many solid substances. But we know that radio waves do not travel in air, because they will pass through a perfect vacuum. In what medium do they travel, Mr. Ramsen?" Right here was where I began to pay close attention. Something about Fradin's manner, his calmness, his certainty, gave me the impression that he knew pretty much what he was talking about. "Radio waves, Mr. Fradin," Ramsen answered, in the manner of a scoutmaster revealing the facts of life to an errant Boy Scout, "travel in the ether." He was right. I was not assigned to cover this meeting by chance but because I happen to have a pretty good groundwork in science. Radio waves, all scientists admit, are propagated through the ether. "And what," Fradin countered, "is the ether?" "Why--" Ramsen answered. "It's--" He started to flounder. A sudden silence fell in the room. Ramsen's face started to get red. "The ether," he finished, "is--why it's the ether, that's what it is." "What you are refusing to admit," Fradin crowed, "is that 'ether' is a meaningless word invented by numbskulls such as are gathered here to describe something about which they know absolutely nothing. The ether is a word, nothing more. It does not exist. The Michelson-Morley experiments conclusively proved that, if it existed, its nature was such that it could not be detected by any physical experiment whatsoever. In other words, that it exists only as a handy tool by which scientists who ought to know better can conceal their own ignorance. Gentlemen," he said, turning from the red-faced Ramsen to the perturbed audience, "I can not only conclusively prove that radio waves are transmitted through the fourth dimension--but I can also prove that power, actual power, can also be transmitted through the same medium!" He stopped suddenly, biting his lips as if he had said more than he had intended to. But I think only one man in the audience had caught the full implication of Fradin's words. The rest of them were too busy defending themselves against the accusation of being numbskulls to notice the one really important thing he had said.