It said:
| md | = | K |
| ft2 |
Malone looked at it for some seconds. At last he said: "It's very pretty. What is it?"
"This," Dr. O'Connor said, in the tone of voice that meant You Should Have Known All Along, But You're Just Hopeless, "is the basic formula for the phenomenon, where m is the mass in grams, d is the distance in centimeters, f is the force in dynes and t is the time in seconds. K is a
constant whose value is not yet known."
Malone said: "Hm-m-m," and stared at the equation again. Somehow, the explanation was not very helpful. The value of K was unknown. He understood that much, all right but it didn't seem to do him any good.
"As you can see," Dr. O'Connor went on, "the greater the force, and the longer time it is applied, the greater distance any mass can be moved. Or, contrariwise, the more mass, the greater mass, that is, the easier it is to move it any given distance. This is, as you undoubtedly understand, not at all in contradistinction to physical phenomena."
"Ah," Malone said, feeling that something was expected of him, but not being quite sure what.
Dr. O'Connor frowned. "I must admit," he said, "that the uncertainty as to the constant k, and the lack of any real knowledge as to just what kind of force is being applied, have held up our work so far." Then his face smoothed out. "Of course, when we have the teleports to work with, we may derive a full set of laws which—"
"Never mind that now," Malone said.