"
Odd indeed. If a Svant said something, he made sound waves; if she
imitated the sound, she ought to imitate the wave pattern. He said
so, and she agreed.
"But come back here and look at this," she invited.
She had been using a visibilizing analyzer; in it, a sound was broken
by a set of filters into frequency-groups, translated into light
from dull red to violet paling into pure white. It photographed the
light-pattern on high-speed film, automatically developed it, and
then made a print-copy and projected the film in slow motion on a
screen. When she pressed a button, a recorded voice said, "_Fwoonk_."
An instant later, a pattern of vertical lines in various colors and
lengths was projected on the screen.
"Those green lines," she said. "That's it. Now, watch this."
She pressed another button, got the photoprint out of a slot, and
propped it beside the screen. Then she picked up a hand-phone and
said, "_Fwoonk_," into it. It sounded like the first one, but the
pattern that danced onto the screen was quite different. Where the
green had been, there was a patch of pale-blue lines.
Pages:
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61