Albumarak concurred entirely. She could not imagine anyone being so cold-ichored. And yet—and yet, at the very least, this pilot must be brave…
Abruptly she realized that the ceremony was over, and it was time for the demonstration which everybody was awaiting. Hastily, for she had a minor part to play in it, she made her way to Quelf’s side. By now it was full dark, and a layer of low cloud hid the moon and stars and the ceaseless sparkling of meteors. Moreover the nearby luminants were being masked, to render the spectacle yet more impressive. The crowd, which had been chattering and moving restlessly, quieted as Doyenne Greetch introduced Quelf over booming loudeners.
After a few formalities, the neurophysicist launched into the burden of her brief address.
“All of us must be familiar with nervograps, whose origin predated the Greatest Meteorite. Many of us now benefit, too, from sparkforce links, which carry that all-pervading fluid from pullstone generators like the ones you can see yonder”—her left claw extended, and the crowd’s eyes turned as one—”or the more familiar flashplants, which many people now have in their homes. And we’ve learned that there is a certain loss of sparkforce in transmission. In some cases we can turn that loss to our advantage; anyone who has raised tropical fruit in midwinter thanks to sparkforce heaters knows what I mean by that! But in most cases this has been a serious drawback. And the same holds for communications; over a long circuit, messages can be garbled by system noise, and to ensure accuracy we have to install repeaters, not invariably reliable.
“That age is over, thanks to the hard work and ingenuity of our research team! We can now transmit both simple sparkforce, and messages as well, with negligible loss!”
Some of the onlookers had heard rumors of this breakthrough; others, though, to whom it was a complete surprise, uttered shouts of gleeful admiration. Quelf preened a little before continuing.
“On the slope behind me there’s a tower. Perhaps some of you have been wondering what it is. Well, it’s a device for generating artificial lightning. It’s safely shielded, of course. But we now propose to activate it, using a sparkforce flow that will traverse a circuit more than five score-of-scores of padlonglaqs in length, using only those few generators you can see right over there. Are we ready?”
“Just a moment!” someone shouted back. “We’re not quite up to working pressure.”
“Well, then, that gives me time to emphasize what’s most remarkable about the circuit we’ve constructed,” Quelf went on. “Not only is it the longest ever laid; part of it runs underwater, part through desert, part through ice and snow within the polar circle! Nonetheless, it functions just as though it were entirely in country like this park. We all look forward to the benefits this discovery must entail!”
“I could name some people who aren’t exactly overjoyed,” muttered Presthin, who stood close enough to Albumarak for her to hear. She was the goadster of the giant snowrither that had laid the arctic portion of the circuit. Many of her ancestors had been members of the Guild of Couriers in the days before nervograps and farspeakers, and she regarded modern vehicles, even snowrithers, as a poor substitute for the porps her forebudders had pithed and ridden. She was blunt and crotchety, but Albumarak had taken a great liking to her.
Right now, however, she had no time to reply, for the ready signal had been given, and Quelf was saying, “It gives me much pleasure to invite the youngest participant in our researches to close the circuit! Come on, Albumarak!”
To a ripple of applause she advanced shyly up the mound. Quelf ceded her place at the loudeners, and she managed to say, “This is indeed a great honor. Thank you, Quelf and all my colleagues … oh, yes, and if you look directly at the flash you may be dazzled. You have been warned!”
She stepped forward on to the flashplant tendril through which this end of the circuit was completed. At once the park was lit as bright as day. A clap of local thunder rolled, and a puff of sparkforce stink—due to a triple molecule of sourgas—assailed the watchers.