"I've often wondered, leaving the nondirectional quality out of it, why we couldn't cut our emitting power and somehow compute range by observing the incoming power from a distant infrawave transmitter."
Allison shook his head. "Oddly enough, the matrix mathematics that deal with radiation shows that for any hypothetical radiation with an infinite velocity of propagation, there can be no attenuation with distance."
"Meaning that we should be able to transmit all the way from here to hell and back."
"Not exactly. Infrawave radiation comes in quanta, you know. A kilowatt covers two point one, seven nine three six plus parsecs. Two kilowatts covers twice that distance minus the ninth root of two point, seven nine three six plus. Three kilowatts covers three times two point et cetera, minus two times the ninth root." Allison shrugged and spread his hands.
"And so on it goes," he said, "indicating that at some devilish distance—I've forgotten the figure but we had the master computer chew it out on the big machine at Radiation once—an additional kilowatt just shoves the signal coverage distance out by a micron. But if you don't put in your honest kilowatt, you don't excite the infraspace that carries infrawaves. And if you put in a kilowatt and a half, you have to dissipate the half."
Wilson grunted. "Nice to have things come out even. Who'd have thunk that the Creator wanted the Terran kilowatt to equal one quanta of infrawave distance?"
Allison laughed. "Poor argument, Commodore Wilson. Actually, the figure is point nine, eight three four plus. Close, but no cigar. We've just come to accept the figure as a kilowatt, just as for everyday calculation we accept the less refined figure of two point, one eight parsecs, or even two point, two. At any rate—"
There was a puff of something, and a sound like the puncture of a tire. The green speckles on the dome merged with one another and became a riot of flaming green. There were shouts and cries and a lot of haphazard orders and several techs scrambled to snap toggle switches.
Down the room one of the techs went head-first into a rack with a pair of pliers and a soldering iron. He backed out carrying a smoking little shapeless thing that had lost any character it once possessed. The tech picked up a nice, shiny new doodad from a small box and went into the rack again. When he came out this time he gave a hoarse cheer. Toggles were snapped back and the spreckles reappeared.