<Earth's lightbulbs would break in Z-space, if they tried it,> Ismea says. <Even Andalite bulbs did that sometimes till my innovation a few decades back. Ours are also more efficient, brighter on the high end, programmable so they come on at specific times or in various colors or dim in response to ambient lighting conditions, and more durable. I wouldn't know how mage-lights compare on any of those axes.>

"Mage-lights look like this." He demonstrates one. It's a round tiny globe, bright white; they can poke it without feeling any heat or resistance. "Well, a temporary one. Permanent ones require an artifact, and a power source. This one takes..." And he gives the approximate conversion of the mage-energies to electricity. His current light, in Earth units for electrical power, is about 10 watts, though it would cost more than that if he wanted to fuel it on an ongoing basis from his electricity-to-mage-energies generator, since the conversion is only about 50% efficiency. Permanent mage-lights are about a third more efficient per brightness, and can be almost arbitrarily bright if they have an adequate power source, but also take dozens of hours of skilled mage-time to produce. 

<Our lightbulbs are mass produced. Without the conversion factor mage-lights might be competitively efficient in power but with the opportunity cost of specialized mage labor factored in I think you'll want electric ones.>

"Yes, I agree." He drops his demo mage-light. "I am curious, why would Earth lightbulbs break in z-space and what was your innovation that prevents this for Andalite lightbulbs?" 

<I'm not actually allowed to answer that in detail. Loosely, jumps have small relativistic effects on the atoms in transit and the noble gases used in lightbulbs can under those conditions react where they're not supposed to be able to and I fixed that.>

Leareth nods. "What are your mining techniques like, especially in terms of environmental destructiveness? Once I am confident that it is safe for foreigners without Gifts to operate in Velgarth, there are a number of countries that might be interested in giving you mining rights on some of their territory, if they were paid appropriately; our different tech tree means that I expect many elements of value to Andalite technology have barely been mined at all. Mage-work requires physical materials and sometimes precious stones, but the most standard focus material is quartz, which is not rare." 

<We mostly mine with robots this days anything that can't readily be gotten in open pit shape, it's claustrophobic and unpleasant underground for Andalites. Usually all the grass on top, if there is any, is rolled up and sold off as carpet, some people like it naturally harvested. If it's trees or a swamp or something they do not tend to survive the process. Water contamination can be an issue but filtration technology improves all the time.>

The idea of grass being sold as 'naturally harvested carpet' is honestly adorable and Leareth can't help smiling about it. "I see. Hmm, you mentioned you also do your own shipping; what methods do you use for that? I am curious if you would be interested in some sort of trade in exchange for Gates, either the temporary or permanent kind." 

<Can you do them horizontal, have stuff fall through them? How big can they get? How long can they stay up? Loading and unloading is a bottleneck, especially for anything that goes between planets, if they go point to point then they could be huge.>

"They can be any orientation! I have used Gates horizontally before, although this is better for non-fragile items since they usually come out the other end with some momentum - in the Eastern Empire, a polity in Velgarth, they minimize this by having two different frames for 'departure' and 'arrival' Gates for goods, where the departure Gate is a frame flush with the ground, and the arrival Gate is slightly more than the height of a standard crate or pallet above the ground, so they have only that distance to fall. They always go point to point, I generally would do them from the surface of planets, although there are some routing constraints for very long distances due to the planar mapping - that is why we needed to fly back from Saturn's orbit, it is the only location in this solar system where I can successfully power an interworld Gate to your homeworld alone, and as you saw it was not huge and I could not hold it for long. Size, distance, and duration all increase the power cost, although distance no longer affects the ongoing cost once the Gate is up. Concert-Gates with multiple mages can be made larger or held for longer, but that is a more advanced skill and thus rarer. Permanent Gates have their own power source and so can be much more flexible on this, since they are not bottlenecked on what a single mage can hold; I have already offered to trade one to the Andalite government, and would also be open to selling permanent Gate-termini between selected locations to your company, though they are quite costly to make and thus a major investment." 

<How costly - does anyone have currency conversion guesstimated yet ->

"Only very roughly. I tentatively agreed I would build a Gate between Earth and your homeworld in exchange for a full set of orbital satellites in Velgarth, whatever monetary value that comes to, but that Gate will be an unusually difficult one due to the complicated routing and power requirements; if you wanted one from your homeworld to a more nearby star system, it would not take as much of my time to design it and would be simpler and faster to build; I could give a more exact estimate once I figured out the temporary-Gate routing, we have a computer program to do that now, but it could easily be a quarter to a tenth as much." 

<I'd appreciate the exact estimate. How many is a 'full set'?>

Leareth gets out his notes to double-check that; apparently it's two dozen, with this set of capabilities. If they give him destinations, he can run his planar modelling program on them and get tentative routings. (He took a lot of measurements from the various planes that Andalites hadn't explored before while they were on their homeworld, so he has more data now.) 

<That'd definitely be worth setting a few up. Maybe not immediately, right now all the manufacture is set up near the mines and the finished products go all over the place, not just a few key destinations, but I can keep an eye on operations and think about where the outlay would pay for itself.>

"Of course." Leareth seems very pleased. "Do you have other questions for right now?" 

<What do you have in mind for the role of us visiting tech types?>

"I am not sure what Earth most has in mind, although I think their governments and large businesses would be interested in discussing trade. I am particularly intrigued by studying how magic and your technology can be combined effectively; we have already discovered some such applications, for example, the mage-energy generator for converting electricity." He's never going to have to implement policies that use blood-magic EVER AGAIN, it's great.

"And some applications for computers; tying spells directly to an energy source without a mage either casting from a node or intermittently powering an artifact was a very hard problem before, that required either the cooperation of the Velgarth gods or - approximately creating a very small and specialized demigod-like entity with some basic intelligence, but this in itself is a major production and was about half the time and energy cost of building a permanent Gate. However, a very simple Andalite computer program can control energy-flow adequately for most of my research, and it seems likely a more sophisticated one could handle nodes directly - they are reservoirs of free magical energy found in Velgarth, but are more challenging than the generator. Anyway, this is only what I found in less than a month of mainly working on morph research and occasionally deciding to build some infrastructure to make it easier. I am certain there are other applications here." 

<Hopefully the terms of the tech sharing situation'll loosen up enough that we can really let loose on the trade end.>

"I hope so too. I will also have much more time to dedicate to this when the war is over." 

<I wish you all the luck in the world with that. Though you probably already have a big heap of it, there are rumors of friendly Yeerks.>

"I am not sure to what extent that luck will continue to hold on other Yeerk worlds, but - yes, on Earth many if not most of them have been very cooperative, and it has made everything since their surrender much, much easier and less messy. A substantial faction of them actively prefer the state of affairs where all hosts are voluntary - it seems not uncommon for humans to be willing Yeerk hosts and find it actively valuable, especially when Velgarth magic can enforce Yeerks allowing their hosts control when they wish." 

<Actively valuable! How about that.>

"In a way it makes someone twice as capable, right, if the Yeerk is working toward the same goals. The communication bandwidth is amazing. One of the Andalite researchers here actually asked me to give him the Yeerk researcher I had brought over because I wanted to go to bed and he did not want to stop talking about math, and then he decided that arrangement was just preferable because of the ease of communicating concepts." 

<Amazing. How'd that go over?>