Seven minutes, Jennings thought, and here I am trying to explain the culmination of the entire science of all mankind to a lardbrain in simple kindergarten words. Well, he'd wished there was something to break the tension of the last half hour, keep him occupied. He had it.
"You mean the army wouldn't know, after the ship got up, whether it was ours or the enemy's?" the senator asked incredulously.
"There are meteors in space, Senator," Jennings said carefully. "Radar contact is all we'll have out there. The IFF mechanism reconverts our beam to a predetermined pulse, and it bounces back to us in a different pattern. That's the only way we'd know if we were still on the ship, or have by chance fastened on to a meteor."
"What has that got to do with the enemy?" O'Noonan asked uncomprehendingly.
Jennings sighed, almost audibly.
"The mechanism was developed during the war, when we didn't know which planes were ours and which the enemy's. We've simply adapted it to this use—to save money, Senator."
"Humph!" the senator expressed his disbelief. "Too complicated. The world has grown too complicated."
"Beep, six."
The senator glanced irritably at the time speaker. It had interrupted his speech. But he chose to ignore the interruption, that was the way to handle heckling.
"I am a simple man. I come from simple parentage. I represent the simple people, the common people, the people with their feet on the ground. And the whole world needs to get back to the simple truths and honesties...."