“Hello, Thor,” he said glumly. “Pass the bottle.”
“Hello, Robin. I gather things went badly. Tell me about it.”
Briefly, Weinbaum told him. “And the worst of it,” he finished, “is that Stevens himself predicts that we won’t find the application of the Dirac that he’s using, and that eventually we’ll have to buy it at his price. Somehow I believe himbut I can’t see how it’s possible. If I were to tell Congress that I was going to spend my entire appropriation for a single civilian service, I’d be out on my ear within the next three sessions.”
“Perhaps that isn’t his real price,” the scientist suggested.
“If he wants to barter, he’d naturally begin with a demand miles above what he actually wants.”
“Sure, sure … but frankly, Thor, I’d hate to give the old reprobate even a single credit if I could get out of it.”
Weinbaum sighed. “Well, let’s see what’s come in from the field.”
Thor Wald moved silently away from Weinbaum’s desk while the officer unfolded it and set up the Dirac screen.
Stacked neatly next to the ultraphonea device Weinbaum had been thinking of, only a few days ago, as permanently outmodedwere the tapes Margaret had mentioned. He fed the first one into the Dirac and turned the main toggle to the position labeled START.
Immediately the whole screen went pure white and the audio speakers emitted an almost instantly end-stopped blare of sounda beep which, as Weinbaum already knew, made up a continuous spectrum from about 30 cycles per second to well above 18,000 cps. Then both the light and the noise were gone as if they had never been, and were replaced by the familiar face and voice of Weinbaum’s local ops chief in Rico City.