It was more like a tent made of metal screens, with a floor and roof of tin, hidden in the mangroves not far from the lab. “In the eighteen hundreds,” Ford explained, “a guy named Faraday proved that electromagnetic waves flow around conductive surfaces, not through them. That’s why people inside a car are seldom struck by lightning. Which was no big deal back then, but now, where there’s no place on Earth not bombarded by radio waves, shielded rooms are used by just about every high-tech industry there is. I was familiar with the concept but didn’t understand the physics—or how easy it is to make something that works.” Until then, Tomlinson had been disappointed. It was unlike his pal to build a skid row–looking jumble of junk that formed a little room for the two battered drones. He’d pictured glistening bars of aluminum, with flotation tanks and a window wide enough for a man’s shoulders but too small for the snout of a meat-eating monster who had a taste for vegetarians.
