"Woah, goodness," laughed Christine. "What is a bugger factor?"
"You'll learn," said Arden, "that the boys out here have a language all their own. I've heard them use that one before. The bugger factor is a sort of multiplying, or dividing, or additive, or subtractive quantity. You perform the mathematical operation with the bugger factor, and your original wrong answer turns into the right answer."
"Is it accepted?"
"Oh sure," answered Arden. "People don't realize it, but that string of 4's in the derivation of Bode's Law is a bugger factor."
"You," said Christine to Walt, "will also tell me what Bode's Law is—but later."
"O.K.," grinned Walt. "At any rate, I came up with a bugger factor that gave me to think. The darned solar beam points to where Sol actually is!"
"Whoosh!" exclaimed Channing. "You don't suppose we're tinkering with the medium that propagates the law of gravity?"
"I don't know. I wouldn't know. Has anyone ever tried to measure the velocity of propagation of the attraction of gravity?"
"No, and no one will until we find some way of modulating it."
Jim Baler smiled. "No wonder Barney was a little wacky when he got home. I come out here to take a look around and maybe give a lift to your gang on the transmission tube—and bump right into a discussion on the possibility of modulating the law of gravity!"