“That was a big hassle,” Clifford admitted. “The information carried by a hi-wave contains timelike and spacelike data all scrambled together with other things you can’t really interpret. It took a while to figure out how to extract the spacelike data from all that stuff, but . . .” he gestured toward the display, “I guess we managed it in the end okay.”
“So what are we looking at?” Zimmermann inquired. Aub joined in at that point.
“Here we’re tuned to resolve a perpendicular plane anisotropic to the detector and extending for ten thousand miles. It’s a cross section right through the center of Earth. Doesn’t show a lotta detail but . . .” he shrugged, “it’s only our first attempt, after all.”
“Actually, if you look at the numerical data, you’ll see that it’s possible to distinguish the crust, upper and lower mantle, and the core,” Clifford informed him. “It just doesn’t show up too well on the picture.”
Zimmermann was speechless.
Aub noted his puzzled expression and began operating keys on his panel, causing the disk on the screen to shrink to a fraction of its previous size, though remaining unchanged in general appearance.
“Rotating the sectional plane to lie perpendicular to the axis,” he sang in the tones of a fairground showman. “The plane now coincides with the circle of latitude eighty-five degrees north—just below the pole. Hold on to your seats for an instant trip right through the world.” He commenced playing the keys casually. The disk swelled slowly, then stopped at a size that almost filled the screen. “Now you’re at the equator,” Aub announced. The disk shrank once more and finally condensed rapidly to a tiny point of orange. “South Pole.”
“We can do better than that, too,” Morelli added, encouraged by Aub’s performance. “The dominant hi-wave components received here are naturally the ones that come from the mass of Earth. However, once we’ve computed the matrix that defines that mass, we can negate it and feed it back into the equations to cancel itself out. That leaves only the lesser hi-wave components that come from other places. Once they’re isolated, they can be amplified and used to compute spacelike images in the same way as you’ve seen. Aub . . .”
Aub took the cue and conjured up another disk, similar to the previous one but exhibiting a less pronounced variation in color from edge to center.
“That’s the Moon,” Clifford stated. This was the most impressive item of the demonstration, but out of sheer devilment he forced his voice to remain matter-of-fact. “We could do the same thing with other bodies as well, but there’d not be much point with the setup we’ve got at the moment. As you can see, it gives little more than a smudge. Doesn’t tell an awful lot.”
“With Mark II you’d really see something,” Aub added. “For instance, I reckon we could chart all the black holes in the neighboring parts of the galaxy—directly; you wouldn’t have to rely on their effects on companion bodies to detect them the way you have to now.”
“And don’t forget,” Clifford rounded off. “You’d see all those things like they are now . . . no time delay.”
Zimmermann continued to stare back at them silently. Never before in his life had so many staggering revelations been compressed into such a short interval of time. His mind reeled before the vision that was unfolding of the unimaginable potential of the things he had just witnessed. Surely the first acquisition of the sense of sight by the early multi-celled organisms in the seas had been no more revolutionary in terms of its impact on the evolution of an awareness of the universe. He was present at the birth of a new era of science.
The others watched him in silence. They knew what he was thinking, but overdramatization and plays of emotion were not their style.
“This is incredible!” Zimmermann managed at last. His voice was barely more than a whisper. “Incredible . . .” He looked back again at the image on the screen as if to make sure that he had not dreamed the whole thing. After contemplating it for a while longer, he had another question. “Do you really believe that you could resolve detailed images . . . ones that carry information? We could really gaze down to the core of Earth and for the first time actually see what is happening in the world beneath our feet? We could look inside the planets . . . inside the stars . . . ?”