Toron smiled indulgently.
“Wait a paraparth,” he said. “I am just getting to that. To get back to the motor-stopping ray, which I was telling you about, I discovered that it was not the radio impulse which actually did the work, but rather a sort of sub-wave, or by-product of it, which was more of the nature of a light-wave than anything else. In fact, it was a bit like the black light of which you taught us, and which we used so effectively in our signaling and in our searchlights. This led me to turn my efforts to producing the sub-wave directly, rather than as a by-product of a radio impulse.
“When this had been accomplished I discovered that this new wave worked by converting its path through the air into an electric conductor more perfect even than heavy electric cable. It was this conductive path, falling athwart the wiring of the airplane, that short-circuited the ignition and stopped the motor.
“From this discovery it was but a simple step to use the wave as a power-line. In the battle this morning we would focus two rays on the fuel tank of an enemy plane, send a high potential current up one wave and down the other—and bang goes the tank. Very neat, wasn’t it?”
“Toron, you’re a genius!” Cabot exclaimed, patting the other warmly on the cheek. “The radio man from the earth yields the palm to the radio man of the planet Poros.”
“This is something which the holy father must know at once,” Nan-nan interjected.
“In order to maintain his reputation for omniscience,” Cabot laughingly added.
This reminded him that he had ignored the presence of the priest and the colonel, ever since the sudden arrival of Toron, so he turned with an apology and introduced them.
“I must beg your majesty’s pardon and that of my two distinguished friends here,” he said. “Your majesty, permit me to present Colonel Wotsn, impressed into service as chief of staff of the palace forces, and Nan-nan, one of the priests of the lost religion, who ministered unto me in the Caves of Kar. A very human individual, in spite of being a priest.”
Toron patted the cheek of each in turn as they bowed low before him.