Then, as the hubbub of voices began dying away, Patrick Cleary turned back to face the stage. “Professor Morelli, what you’ve described to us is obviously a much-extended extrapolation of Maesanger’s Field Theory.”
“That’s correct,” Morelli agreed.
“What is incredible is not only the extension of the theoretical concepts, but also the experimental support that you’ve been able to demonstrate.”
“Never mind all that,” Samuel Hatton threw in. “They’re already turning out solid applications. That’s what blows my mind.”
“Sure,” Cleary acknowledged. “I didn’t mean to play that down.” He turned to face Morelli again. “What I was about to ask, Professor, was: Is this by chance the famous hyperspace of science fiction that we’ve all been waiting for?”
Morelli grinned briefly.
“Better ask our theoretical king about that,” he said, then called toward the back of the room, where Clifford was sitting with the Sudbury contingent. “Brad, what would you say to that one?”
“Depends on which of the many varieties of hyperspace you have in mind,” Clifford replied. “In the sense of dimensions existing beyond the accepted ones, I guess, yes, it could be. If you’re thinking of instant star-travel or something, I think you’ll be disappointed. Certainly we’ve not got that on today’s schedule.”
Dr. Harry Sultzinger spoke next.
“This business about instant propagation intrigues me,” he said. “Are you saying that Special Relativity’s gone out the window . . . or what?”
“Actually, it doesn’t really go against Special Relativity,” Morelli said. “Relativistic physics puts an upper limit on the velocity of energy through ordinary Einsteinian spacetime. Hi-waves exist in another domain entirely—one to which the laws of conventional spacetime don’t apply. I guess you could say that Einstein’s traffic cops patrol the public highways only, but hi-waves travel cross-country.”
“But what about information?” Sultzinger insisted. “If a hi-wave goes from here to there in zero time, it’s carried information in zero time. Relativity says you can’t do that.”
“Only because all methods for moving information that have been known up to now invariably involve moving through classical spacetime,” Morelli said. “But with hi-waves we’re effectively bypassing that, so the problem doesn’t arise.”
“Actually, it does get slightly more involved than that,” Clifford called again from the back. “Some people have put together all kinds of complicated cause-and-effect arguments to show that instant information transfer gives rise to all kinds of logical paradoxes. My own view is that the difficulties lie in the logic and the conceptual limitations rather than in anything factual. We’re working on that at the moment, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a number of old ideas about simultaneity end up having to be re-examined.”
“How detailed could the information be that could be carried on these waves?” Admiral Kaine asked.
“The pictures you’ve just seen are pretty crude because we’ve only got a first-attempt lab lash-up instrument that was never designed for that job in the first place,” Morelli answered. “How far we could push it, we don’t know yet. That’s one of the main things we mean to find out.”
“The whole thing reminds me of the first crude spark-gap experiments of Hertz,” Cleary declared, sounding impressed. “And that led to the whole science of radio, radar, TV, and electronic communications. Have you got any idea what kind of technology might grow out of what you’re doing here?”
Morelli launched into an account of the possibilities of gravitic engineering that he never tired of discussing, especially with Aub. The questions poured out all through lunch, all of them positive, imaginative, and obviously prompted by genuine desires to learn more.
“Could there be a way of focusing artificial gravity into some kind of beam that could be directed remotely,” General Perkoffski asked Clifford at one point, “so that you could direct it at a target?”
“It’s too early yet to say,” Clifford replied. “What did you have in mind?”
“I was wondering if you could use it to disorientate a missile’s inertial guidance system,” Perkoffski said. “It wouldn’t need to be too powerful.”
“Say, I never thought of that angle,” said Arwin Dalby, who had been following from the opposite side of the table. “A localized gravity beam . . . if it was possible, I wonder how strong you could make it and how localized.”