"Yes, I understand that, professor. But just what was the actual experiment, in terms of physical operations?"
Dandrik looked helpless for a moment. Faress, who had been choking back a laugh, interrupted:
"Your Majesty, we were using the big turbo-linear accelerator to project fast micropositos down an evacuated tube one kilometer in length, and clocking them with light, the velocity of which has been established almost absolutely. I will say that with respect to the light, there were no observable inaccuracies at any time, and until the micropositos were accelerated to 16.067543333-1/3 times light-speed, they registered much as expected. Beyond that velocity, however, the target for the micropositos began registering impacts before the source registered emission, although the light target was still registering normally. I notified Professor Dandrik about this, and——"
"You notified him. Wasn't he present at the time?"
"No, Your Majesty."
"Your Majesty, I am head of the physics department of the University. I have too much administrative work to waste time on the technical aspects of experiments like this," Dandrik interjected.
"I understand. Professor Faress was actually performing the experiment. You told Professor Dandrik what had happened. What then?"
"Why, Your Majesty, he simply declared that the limit of accuracy had been reached, and ordered the experiment dropped. He then reported the highest reading before this anticipation effect was observed as the newly established limit of accuracy in measuring the velocity of accelerated micropositos, and said nothing whatever in his report about the anticipation effect."
"I read a summary of the report. Why, Professor Dandrik, did you omit mentioning this slightly unusual effect?"