"When they're properly aligned, they will scat right through a mountain of solid iron without attenuation. It takes one tower every hundred and seventy miles, and the only restriction on tower height is that the tube must be above ground by ten to one the distance that could be flashed over under high intensity ultraviolet light."
"That isn't clear to me."
"Well, high-tension juice will flash over better under ultraviolet illumination. The tube must be high enough to exceed this distance by ten to one at the operating voltage of the stuff down the line. Another thing, the darned beam can be made to curve by adjusting the beam plates in the tube. The boys in the Palanortis Jungles say they're a godsend, since there are a lot of places where the high-tension towers would be impossible since the Palanortis Whitewood grows about a thousand feet tall."
"You'd cut a lot of wood to ream a path through from Northern Landing to the power station on the Boiling River," said Arden.
"Yeah," drawled Don, "and towers a couple of hundred miles apart are better than two thousand feet. Yeah, these things are the nuts for getting power shipped across country."
"Couldn't we squirt it out from Terra?" asked Arden. "That would take the curse off of our operating expenses."
"It sure would," agreed Channing heartily. "But think of the trouble in aligning a beam of that distance. I don't know—there's this two hundred mile restriction, you know. They don't transmit worth a hoot over that distance, and it would be utterly impossible to maintain stations in space a couple of hundred miles apart, even from Venus, from which we maintain a fairly close tolerance. We might try a hooting big one, but the trouble is that misalignment of the things results in terrible effects."
The door opened and Charley Thomas and Walt Franks entered.
"How's our playthings?" asked Walt.