"The one about the navel being a fine place to hold the salt when
you're eating celery in bed," said Arden. Channing removed Arden's
hand from his mouth and placed it in hers. "You done it," he told her
ungrammatically. "For which I'll not tell you what Walt and Christine
are doing right now."
Arden's attempt to say, "Pooh. I know," was thoroughly stifled and it
came out as a muffled mumble.
Channing turned to Wes and asked: "Have any good theories on this
thing?"
Farrell nodded. "I noted that the energy entering the crystal was not
dissipated as heat. Yet there was quite a bit of energy going in, and
I wanted to know where it was going. Apparently the energy going in to
the crystal will only enter under the influence of a magnetic field.
Changing the field strength of the magnet changes the band, for the
transmission to the similar crystal ceases until the other one has had
its magnetic field reduced in synchronous amount. Also, no energy is
taken by the crystal unless there is an attuned crystal. The power
just generates heat, then, as should be normal.
"So," said Wes thoughtfully, "the propagation of this communicable
medium is powered by the energy going into the crystal. Crystals tend
to vibrate in sympathy with one another; hitting one with a light
hammer will make the other one ring, and vice versa. I've tried it with
three of them, and it makes a complete three-way hookup. As soon as
Chuck and Freddie Thomas get out a good way, we'll be able to estimate
the velocity of propagation, though I think it is the same as that
other alloy-transmission band we've been using."
Channing grinned. "The speed of light, squared?"
Farrell winced. _That_ argument was still going on, whether or not you
could square a velocity. "We'll know," he said quietly.
The loudspeaker above Farrell's desk hissed slightly, and the voice
of Freddie Thomas came in: "I'm about to trust my precious life once
more to the tender care of the hare-brained piloting of my semi-idiot
brother. Any last words you'd like to have uttered?"
Wes picked up a microphone and said: "Nothing that will bear
transmission under the rules. If there's anything I want to tell
you, I'll call you on this--and if this doesn't work, we'll try the
standard. They're on your course?"
"On the button all the way--they tell me."
"Well, if you jiggle any, call us," said Farrell, "either on the
standard space phone or this coupled-crystal set-up."
Channing grinned. "So it has a name?"
Freddie laughed. "We never did settle on a name for the
driver-radiation communication system. So we're starting this one off
right. It's the Coupled-Crystal Communicator. For short, 'Seesee', see?"
Channing returned the laugh. "Seeseesee, or Seesee, understand?"
Chuck Thomas chimed in. "My semi-moronic brother will delay this
take-off if he doesn't sharpen up," he said. "What he means is: Seesee,
get it?"
"I get it," replied Channing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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