West said briskly—exactly as if before a television camera—that Mr. Dabney had started from the well-known fact that the properties of space are modified by energy fields. Magnetic and gravitational and electrostatic fields rotate polarized light or bend light or do this or that as the case may be. But all previous modifications of the constants of space had been in essentially spherical fields. All previous fields had extended in all directions, increasing in intensity as the square of the distance ...
"Cut," said Cochrane.
West automatically abandoned his professional delivery. He placidly re-addressed himself to his beer.
"How about it, Jones?" asked Cochrane. "Dabney's got a variation? What is it?"
"It's a field of force that doesn't spread out. You set up two plates and establish this field between them," said Jones curtly. "It's circularly polarized and it doesn't expand. It's like a searchlight beam or a microwave beam, and it stays the same size like a pipe. In that field—or pipe—radiation travels faster than it does outside. The properties of space are changed between the plates. Therefore the speed of all radiation. That's all."
Cochrane meditatively seated himself. He approved of this Jones, whose eyebrows practically met in the middle of his forehead. He was not more polite than politeness required. He did not express employer-like rapture at the mention of his employer's name.
"But what can be done with it?" asked Cochrane practically.
"Nothing," said Jones succinctly. "It changes the properties of space, but that's all. Can you think of any use for a faster-than-light radiation-pipe? I can't."
Cochrane cocked an eye at Jamison, who could extrapolate at the drop of an equation. But Jamison shook his head.
"Communication between planets," he said morosely, "when we get to them. Chats between sweethearts on Earth and Pluto. Broadcasts to the stars when we find that another one's set up a similar plate and is ready to chat with us. There's nothing else."