While it wasn't a full town meeting as such, most of the adults had gathered at Peter's house. It had unofficially become the communications center for the Ghan stones. Peter had the equivalent of a switchboard where he could tie any two crystals together so that anyone carrying a crystal half could communicate with anyone else carrying one.

This was a class to train anyone working with the crystals. The class covered Morse Code and what they were calling 'Crystal Mechanics'. They had finished their code practice for the evening, and Thomas was now explaining what they knew so far about the crystals.

"Experimentation has shown that the crystals can be further subdivided, beyond being cut in half. The energy transfer is roughly linear among all the pieces. Oddly, no matter how carefully we try cutting the crystals, any attempt after the first cut produces 42 small cylindrical crystals."

Nathan grinned at his father at this point.

"Even more remarkable, the crystals separate cleanly. There are never any broken fragments or debris. Careful measurements show that the total volume of the 42 crystals equals the volume of the original half crystal.

"Given the above, we weren't particularly surprised to find that energy put into one of the 42 crystals is evenly distributed among the others, as well as the other crystal half.

"The energy originating in an undivided half is divided 42 ways in the divided half. Energy originating in one of the 42 sub-crystals is evenly divided 42 ways as well, with the undivided half receiving 1/42 of the total.

"Now, who wants to guess what happens when both halves are divided? What fraction of energy does a subcrystal from one half receive when a subcrystal from the other half is stimulated?"

"One forty secondth of one forty secondth," someone replied without hesitation.

"That's exactly what we expected, but it's not what we measured," Peter said.

"One eighty fourth," Nathan said.

"Why would you say that?" Peter asked, intrigued.

Nathan shrugged. "The crystal is still one, even when it's divided. There's some sort of connection."

"We think so too," Peter said. "We just don't know the coupling mechanism. We thought it was electromagnetic waves - essentially radio. But Gerd disproved that when he communicated with us up at the equator and deep inside one of their iron mines. There's no way a radio signal could get through that much shielding and still travel that distance."

"We're considering an extra-dimensional coupling," Gunther, one of the physicists said.

"About the dividing," Heidi asked. Heidi was a year older than Nathan, and the only other non-adult present. "What happens when you divide a subcrystal?"

Peter looked decidedly uncomfortable. "We tried twice. The subcrystals resist cutting, and if you apply enough force to overcome that, the results are catastrphic. The subcrystal literally explodes, sending a broadband energy pulse through the rest of its parent crystal. We even observed other completely different Ghanstones responding."

"What do you mean 'broadband?" someone asked.

"An energy pulse spanning DC to daylight. We're talking mechanical pulse, radio, heat, and light. Probably ultraviolet and x-ray too, but we didn't look that high."

"Why did you do it twice?" Heidi asked.

"We thought the first one might be a fluke. We were extremely careful the second time, and we were well instrumented to measure the pulse if it wasn't. We won't be wasting any more subcrystals. If Daniel is right, there aren't that many of them. 'Course, he won't tell my what he bases that on."

"With the vibrations transmitting through all 84 subs of a fully divided crystal, how do we tell one signal from another," Heidi asked.

Nathan had wondered about that too, and so had a few others based on the nods and affirmative noises.

"That's not really a problem. Think back to the early days of radio on Earth. Multiple signals were always present. They used unique call signs to determine who and even where a station was. Ultimately, when we have computers again, we can use packet switching and the whole thing will be automatic like it was back home."

"Welcome to Ham Radio," someone said.

"I think we've established this isn't a radio phenomenon, but Amatuer Radio is a good analogy. They too, started out with Morse Code and eventually went to voice and advanced digital modes.

"We may have to forego the analog voice stage, though. These crystals don't do a good job passing voice frequencies. Our tests so far produce very muffled sounding voices - very difficult to understsand. Once you get into ultrasonic frequencies, transmission is as good as the very low frequencies."

"That doesn't stop us from using analog voice Peter," Thomas said. "We can just modulate an ultrasonic carrier. No big deal."

"So as soon as we have transistors again, we can make walkie-talkies," Dan said.

"That, or mobile phones," Peter said. "Walkie talkies would only talk to at most 83 other units. Going through a switchboard would let anyone talk to anyone."

"Probably the best thing would be to have hybrid units," Thomas said. "They could make use of conventional radio or Ghanstones as needed for the application. We could even use radio repeaters to tie multiple radio users to the switchboard of the phone system."

"Again, like the Ham Radio operators on Earth," Peter said. "They were making phone calls from their handheld radios decades before wireless phones became common."

Nathan was the one to bring everyone back to the here and now. "We don't have transistors, (whatever they are). We don't have a comlex manufactoring setup. How do we carry these little crystals around without loosing them, and still communicate?"

"Imitate the ear," Dan said. "The small bones of the inner ear essentially amplify the small movements of the eardrum by mechanical means."

"Sounds like you just got the job Dan," Peter said. "All in favor raise your hand." Everyone but Dan and Nathan raised their hands. Nathan had already seen his father fully absorbed in a project.