He had a whole measure of that science, most of which, he admitted, was ridiculous, and meaningless to any Terran physicist unless he had the key to the art. A complete volume on electronic techniques would be meaningless to any man who knew nothing of electricity.
Most texts are written with considerable elision—electronics texts, for instance, show many circuits but seldom are they entirely complete. They omit the driving force—the source of energizing electricity, the filament supply, and other items which are unnecessary to the trained man.
Since many such items may be ambiguous it makes no difference whether the plate voltage is developed by batteries, rectifier-filter supplies, generators or a vibrator-pack that develops high voltage from a six-volt battery. It is sensible to omit them and merely label the "input" terminal with a symbol.
But couple a text with a complete knowledge of the language, especially a dictionary that is complete in its scientific sense, and you learn of batteries, voltage, generators and the like. You discover that an electron tube has this and that and perhaps why. Using a good sensible knowledge of physics plus ingenuity the science becomes less puzzling.
Similarly James Forrest Carroll was able to reproduce the science of the aliens.
All of this took time, of course—weeks. Weeks of testing and trying and fumbling. As Volta might be baffled by a common transformer where, though the input is shorted together through loops of wire and the output is similarly shorted, yet there is transfer of energy, so Carroll was baffled by the strange and bizarre thing that grew in the cellar of his Wisconsin home.
It was a large circular loop of silver-plated copper tubing. It was mounted on a cylindrical slug of high-permeability alloy which was magnetized to a high charge. The crystal was common enough but its connection made little sense from the Terran point of view. The Ancients used to use crystals for jewelry and would have been bewildered at the modern idea of cutting them in slabs to make standards of frequency.
Finally he surveyed his work with a satisfied smile. He snapped it on and a shining plane of totally reflecting energy filled the circular loop of wire.
"It isn't Lewis," he said. "It's James Forrest Carroll Through The Looking Glass!"
Rhinegallis shook her head. "The proper title is 'Alice Through The Looking Glass'," she told him.