"That's exactly what it is, and no wonder Phyfe found it had a high frequency. That is nothing more nor less than an explanation of the Stroid concept of the differential. This widget over here must be the sign of the derivative corresponding to our dy/dx."
Hastily, Underwood scrawled some symbols on a scratch pad, using combinations of "x"s and "y"s and the strange, unknown symbols of the Stroids.
"It checks. They're showing us how to differentiate! Not only that, we have the key to their numerical system in the exponentials, because they've given us the differentiation of a whole series of power expressions here. Now, somewhere we ought to find an integral expression which we could check back with differentiation. Here it is!"
Terry, left behind now, went to the galley and brewed a steaming pot of coffee and brought it back. He found Underwood staring unseeingly ahead of him into the dark, empty corners of the lab.
"What is it?" Terry exclaimed. "What have you found?"
"I'm not sure. Do you know what the end product of all this math is?"
"What?"
"A set of wave equations, but such wave equations as any physicist would be thought crazy to dream up. Yet, in light of some new manipulations introduced by the Stroids, they seem feasible."
"What can we do with them?"