"Of course," he said. "Since formulae are usually drawn in one plane, I doubt if anyone ever noticed that before. And when it comes under stress by compression, it's only natural that it should fold." He paused and looked at the calendar, "Four weeks?" he asked.
"That'll do fine," said Dr. Brinton. "I'll arrange the details. You look after the fuel. Harrison can give us the details of this one, but there are probably any number of fuels based on this principal. Some will be even more efficient, too."
He excused himself, went to a phone, and asked for a Washington number. The call was answered.
"Hello, Senator MacNeill?" he said. "How would you like to be guest of honor at a party?"
Brinton peered through the ring of reporters over to the head table where Senator MacNeill was speaking, and speaking, and speaking.
"He's on his home state," Dr. Brinton said. "About half an hour to go. Now, gentlemen, you were asking about the new fuel. You all received press handouts containing the information. You will probably receive copies of the Senator's speech. And the broadcast from our first men on the Moon went out over several networks hours ago. It seems to me that you have enough for several stories."
One of the reporters asked bewilderedly, "What is a tesseract? I read the handout twice and I still don't understand."
"A mathematician would be better qualified to explain," said Dr. Brinton, "but I'll try. A tesseract is a fourth dimensional cube. A line has one dimension, a square has two, a cube has three, and a tesseract has four. A cube can be unfolded into six squares, and a tesseract unfolds to eight cubes. The new fuel had a molecular structure resembling an unfolded tesseract. When pressure is applied, it folds up into a tesseract so that it takes up less room and relieves the pressure.
"The practical application is that we can get eight pounds of it into a one pound can. The other seven pounds of it are riding around in the fourth dimension. As soon as it starts to burn, the structure is destroyed, so that it comes back out of the fourth dimension. Several people have assured me that it can't work. They're probably right, except that it does. Oh, I'll be back in a minute."