“It’s a pretty safe guess. He’s sitting, or standing, or whatever it is he does, about two metres on the other side of the screen. If the resolution had been a bit better, we might even have calculated his size.”
Stormgren’s feelings were very mixed as he stared at that scarcely visible inflexion of the trace. Until now, there had been no proof that Karellen even had a material body. The evidence was still indirect, but he accepted it without question.
“The other thing we had to do,” said Duval, “was to calculate the transmission of the screen to ordinary light. We think we’ve got a reasonable idea of that — anyway it doesn’t matter If we’re out even by a factor of ten.
You’ll realize, of course, that there’s no such thing as a truly one-way glass.
It’s simply a matter of arranging the lights. Karellen sits in a darkened room; you are illuminated — that’s all.” Duval chuckled.
“Well, we’re going to change that!”
With the air of a conjurer producing a whole litter of white rabbits, he reached into his desk and pulled out an overgrown flashlight. The end flared out into a wide nozzle, so that the whole device looked rather like a blunderbuss. Duval grinned.
“It’s not as dangerous as it looks. All you have to do is to ram the nozzle against the screen and press the trigger. It gives out a very powerful beam lasting ten seconds, and in that time you’ll be able to swing it round the room and get a good view. All the light will go through the screen and it will floodlight your friend beautifully.”
“It won’t hurt Karellen?”
“Not if you aim low and sweep upwards. That will give his eyes time to adapt — I suppose he has reflexes like ours, and we don’t want to blind him.”