“This means that although the detector in theory receives hi-wave information from every object in the universe at the same time, in practice the amount that is contributed from beyond comparatively small distances . . . at our present state of the art, a couple of hundred thousand miles or so . . . is so small that you can neglect it. There are exceptions to that—for instance the Sun and some other bodies appear abnormally ‘bright’ for their distance—but by and large what I’ve said is true. Any questions so far?”
“Just one.” The speaker was a tall, swarthy man wearing the uniform of a Vice Marshal of the United States of Europe Air Force. “If I remember correctly, you said earlier that this hi-radiation that exists everywhere gives rise to conventional background energy by a process which, I believe, you called ‘secondary interactions.’ This background is immeasurably small even on Earth, because by astronomical standards Earth is really very tiny.”
“Yes. That’s correct.”
“Fine. Does this mean then that near other, much more massive astronomical bodies, you would see greater amounts of background radiation . . . ones that were readily measurable?”
“Precisely so, and it does happen,” Morelli responded. “In fact, the black holes in space have very intense radiation halos. This could never be explained by classical physics, and was one of the things that led to k-theory being recognized in the first place.”
“I see. Thank you.”
There were no further questions, so Morelli resumed his lecture. “The detector, then, responds to hi-waves that originate, to all intents and purposes exclusively, from objects situated in the nearby regions of space. Now, by some sophisticated processing techniques, we are able to extract from the information they carry, sufficient data to single out one portion of the composite hi-wave signal . . . we can zoom in, if you will, on any region that we care to select out of the whole volume in space that the total signal is coming from. Within limits, that region can be as large or as small as we like. Moreover, from the information that we have extracted, we can derive spacelike solutions to the equations involved, which enable internal and external visual representations of the selected object to be constructed.”
“Another question, Professor Morelli,” a voice called from the back.
“Yes?”
“What are the limits that you mentioned? What range of sizes of object can you resolve?”
“At the small end it gets worse the farther away the object is . . . also, don’t forget, what we’re really seeing is a measure of the difference in mass-density between the object and its surroundings. We’re not looking at any kind of optically generated image, so you won’t see normal visual contrasts and details. What you will see are contrasts in density.
“But to answer your question—if you swallowed a .22 caliber lead bullet, we could pick it up if you were standing a mile away. For an object sitting on the other side of the world—somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean, say—if it were solid steel standing up in air, we could go down to a size of, aw, twenty, twenty-five feet. So, you see, we could identify a tank.
“At the big end, well, we’re only limited by the effective range of the detector itself . . . in other words, its sensitivity, since the signals from places that are farther away get smaller. But as I said earlier, there are some quite strong radiators a long way away. Up until about a year ago we did start to make pictures of things such as the Sun—nothing detailed, all you saw were smudges—but that was with an earlier model of the detector. The one we’ve got here would do a lot better, but I guess we’ve been too tied up with other things to bother much about taking it further.”
A muttering of interest arose as some of the listeners realized for the first time the full potency of the system, if only as a means of surveillance, never mind as a weapon.
“Let’s now have a look at some of the things I’ve been talking about,” Morelli said. He gestured upward toward one of the huge screens above the floor. “This screen is coupled to slave off of the main BIAC monitor display in the Control Room. On it you will see an enlarged copy of what the BIAC operator can project on to his own console. Ready, Brad?” He addressed his last words to Clifford, who was following events on one of the monitor screens in the Control Room.