Clifford was about to reply when Robert Fuller broke in: “To hell with screwing its guidance system. If you can make the beam strong enough, why not simply pull the whole damn missile down?”
“Or even stop it from getting off the ground in the first place?” Dalby suggested. “You know . . . the more I think about this, the more I like it.”
“Perhaps we could even bring down an ORBS satellite,” General Straker joined in. He reflected on the idea for a moment, then had another thought. “Or maybe bend spacetime to divert it away into space permanently. How about that?”
* * *
For the first hour after lunch the visitors saw the GRASER running and crowded four at a time into the monitor room to sit spellbound in front of the display screen of the detector. The image did not tell them much, but the very thought of what it meant was enough to keep them speechless for many minutes.
After the demonstrations, they returned to the Conference Theater to listen to Aub. Morelli had devoted most of his time to recounting the history of events and developments that had culminated in the then current state of the art. Aub plunged ahead to speculate on some of the things that might follow.
“The GRASER that you have all just seen produces a strong output of hi-waves,” he said. “In other words, it’s a transmitter. The detector that you’ve looked at is a receiver.” He gazed around the room, inviting them to fill the rest in for themselves.
“We’ve got both ends of a communications system,” someone observed after a second or two. The visitors were joining in and interacting—a good sign.
“Yes indeed,” Aub agreed, nodding. “But this communication system is unlike anything dreamed of before. It uses a transmission medium that is utterly undetectable by any means known to contemporary science. Also, there is no means known to contemporary science by which any disturbance can be impressed upon that transmission medium.” He dropped the formal language that he had been using up to that point and put it another way: “Nobody else in the world has a way of listening in on it or a way of talking through it.”
“Completely espionage-proof,” Franz Mueller commented, nodding vigorously. “The perfect military communications vehicle . . . absolute security.”
“And jam-proof,” Perkoffski added. “That’s what you were getting at, isn’t it, Dr. Philipsz? There’d be no way anybody could jam it . . . or even interfere with it?”
“Just that,” Aub confirmed.
“That’s all I need to hear,” Perkoffski remarked with a smile. “Just tell me where to sign for a system like that. I’m sold.”
“But more than that,” Aub resumed. “It also has zero transmission delay, remember. Now imagine what we could do if we could add control functions—feedback, that is—to the data-communications capability that we’ve been talking about. Now, I’m sure you can all see immediate possibilities for a feedback control technique that has zero time delay in the loop . . . . over any distance!” He paused again to let them think about it. After a second or two, low whistles of surprise came from the audience. Excited muttering broke out on one side.
“Long-range space probes!” a voice exclaimed suddenly. “Holy cow, we could monitor them and control them in real time from right here on Earth—interactively.”
“That means that Earth-based computers could be used for all kinds of things involving fast-response processing in remote places,” a second came in. “How about a Mars-Rover being driven directly by a PDP-64 sitting right here? I don’t believe it!”
“Yes, that’s the kind of thing I had in mind,” Aub said when the buzzing had died down. “But why shouldn’t we look a little further ahead than that as well . . . just for a second? Suppose I were to suggest that one day the arrival of the first robot starship might be witnessed and controlled from a mission-supervision center here on Earth . . . second by second, as it was actually happening, light-years away!” He surveyed the wide eyes around him. “Why not? The basic techniques to do it are already with us. You’ve seen them today.”