For years we had been receiving help from various research bodies. (Unknown to them, of course; their papers came to us through the Directorate.) The suggestion was for these bodies to be fed bits of our work and steered to the same conclusions. An idea acceptable to me, although obviously it would take time.
As indeed it did. Two years passed — no papers — and my impatience grew. I understood the problem. People on major work will not rush to publish until sure of their results. And not everything could be fed to them at once! All the same, my friend determined to steer more strongly; and in another year was able to advise that a promising paper was on the way from the Voronsky Institute (of Electro-Chemistry — they had done the early work on the visual chain I have mentioned).
This paper I saw, and it was a good one, although still a long way from the necessary breakthrough into optics. Patience! advised my friend. He had several lines out. Very soon now we would have news of optical developments.
And so we did. But not, I think, in the way intended.
It happened just then that a specialist in optics, whose work I had been following, became unexpectedly available. I asked for him to be approached, he accepted, and joined us. This man was greatly surprised at our advanced work, and especially with the boosting techniques.
In the week of his arrival he asked for a private tête-à-tête and told me the following story.
Some time before, while touring facilities, his plane had been forced to land in a remote area where the only accommodation was a certain rocketry centre. He had stayed the night and one of the staff, hearing of his speciality, had asked his opinion on some recent work. This man was a designer of circuits and the question he was interested in concerned optical fibre.
In the designer’s laboratory miniature rockets were used for the testing of firing programmes — rather precise and exacting work. Missiles must constantly correct themselves in flight, and their terminal homing devices depend for accuracy on very brief rocket bursts. This requires exceedingly rapid start-up and shut-down procedures: the man’s particular field.
Some weeks before a party of officials had arrived with a new device for test. The device was an electronic circuit, boxed with two quartz pellets, apparently for frequency modulation. The device was placed in the laboratory, the man instructed to install a programme for one of the bench rockets; and they all retired to an adjacent observation room.
From here the rocket was activated — a normal ten-minute programme, allowing for many timed and recorded bursts — and after some minutes the electronic device was also remotely activated. The firing programme instantly changed. Firing did not stop. The device had been activated while it was actually going on, and it continued, not following its programme — a single prolonged burst until burn-out.
When it was safe to strip down the rocket, nothing was found wrong with it. The circuits were intact, contacts and breakers all as they should be, the heat-protected wiring (of optical fibre) perfectly cool. The designer was asked to pass a signal through the fibre. He could get no signal through it. In some way it had been rendered inactive. All the same he was asked to leave it in position for a certain number of days, and then repeat the programme. This he did. And everything worked; the optical fibre again quite operational.
He now asked, with much curiosity, what optical theory could explain such a thing …
This was the story the specialist told me, and he said that having now heard of the incident with Anton he wondered if there could be some connection.
I asked if he had told anyone else this story, and he said he had not. Optical fibre was not his field; he had almost at once forgotten it. His stay at the rocketry centre had been a mere overnight accident. A chance event.
I asked him to let me think over this event.
I thought it over, and I thought most soberly. Three years had now passed, with publication of our discovery no nearer. And far more, of course, since the work with the rogue harmonic — all that well behind us.
But not evidently finished with.
The quartz ‘pellets’, the remote boost, the ‘certain number of days’ of waiting … all this had surely to do with our rogue harmonic. The use of harmonics is not original. But this harmonic was original; it was not a thing come by accidentally. Somebody was using it.
I asked the specialist to remain silent a little longer and waited for my Directorate friend to visit.
When he did, I asked if work was going on with harmonics.
Yes it was going on, he said.
When was it intended to publish this work?
In time, Efraim, in time.
Had a use been found, perhaps, for the rogue harmonic?
He gazed at me. ‘Why do you ask?’
I told him why, and he sighed. ‘I am very sorry, Efraim. You should not have been embarrassed in this way.’
But he explained everything to me — and very frankly.
We had come on a principle of extraordinary military value. And to explain it he had first to outline the phenomenon of EMP — electro-magnetic pulse. This pulse, a side-effect of nuclear explosions, halts all electrical current in its vicinity — all current flowing in wires. Power stations stop, cars stop — and telephones, radios, lifts, lights; everything depending on electricity stops. Including, significantly, military command and control centres: no counter action could be ordered.
The answer to this paralysis was found in optical fibre; a material not susceptible to EMP but very efficient in conveying signals. Because missiles in flight could also be affected — the firing circuits and fuses immobilised by nuclear blasts in nearby orbit — they too had been re-equipped. Now every nuclear power was invulnerable to EMP.
To EMP but not — now — to everything. For our chance discovery had opened a new window of vulnerability.
At the simplest level it could physically blind ground forces — on foot, in tanks, or in bunkers; for the frequency penetrated all structures. With missiles, and nuclear activity generally, its potential was incalculably greater …
At present the tests were at laboratory level, but it was hoped to conduct them later on a missile in flight. Under current agreements the flight-testing of missiles had to be internationally supervised. Plainly, this test could not be supervised. But as it happened, China was not a party to these agreements, and a new guidance system was under development there. It would be flight-tested to their base at Lop Nor; indeed the commander there, a General Liu, had already been given advance instructions. Means were now being considered of ourselves supervising this test, by satellite …
And how, I asked him after a moment, would this affect our discoveries for sighting the blind.
‘Efraim,’ he said gently, ‘you know what is needed to sight the blind, and how that operation is completed. To produce a paper showing the harmonics would lead to an investigation of all that band of harmonics. And then?’
He went on much longer — in fact with good arguments.
(Ours was a military establishment. It had produced a military weapon. We knew other weapons developed here — disgusting ones. This one had all their potency but none of their vices. Our country was in a state of great instability, a beggared giant with nuclear rivals on all sides. The people might yet be exposed to horrors. The Directorate had a duty to protect the people. Sighting the blind was a magnificent thing. But for the moment this must have priority. People lived with blindness, but could they live after events that this was designed to prevent?)