"Is he? How can he know?"
"Charley rigged the Relay Girl's drivers up with a voice modulator, and Freddy is jerking his head off because the acceleration is directly proportional to the amplitude of his voice, saying: 'One, two, three, four, test.' Don, have you ever wondered why an engineer can't count above four?"
"Walt, does it take a lot of soup to modulate a driver?" asked Arden.
"Peanuts," grinned Franks. "This stuff is not like the good old radio; the power for driving the spaceship is derived mostly from the total disintegration of the cathode and the voltage applied to the various electrodes is merely for the purpose of setting up the proper field-conditions. They draw quite a bit of current, but nothing like that which would be required to lift a spaceship at 2-G for a hundred hours flat."
He turned back to Channing and said: "What's the gloom?"
Don smiled in a thoughtful fashion. "It doesn't look so bad right now. Some gang of stock market cutthroats have been playing football with Interplanetary Communications, and Cartright says he is sure that they want control. It's bad; he's been clipped a couple of hard licks, but we're still pitching. The thing I'm wondering right now is this: Shall we toss this possibility of person-to-person and ship-to-ship just at the right turn of the market to bollix up their machinations, or shall we keep it to ourselves and start up another company with this as our basis?"
"Can we screw 'em up by announcing it?"
"Sure. If we drop this idea just at the time they're trying to run the stock down, it'll cross over and take a run up, which will set 'em on their ear."
"I don't know. Better keep it to ourselves for a bit. Something may turn up. But come on down to Wes' lab and give a look at our new set-up."
Channing stood up and stretched. "I'm on the way," he said.