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Boake Valkanhayn and Garvan Spasso were simply beyond astonishment and beyond words. The looting of Eglonsby then began. They gathered up machinery, and stocks of steel and light-metal alloys. The city was full of warehouses, and the warehouses were crammed with valuables.
With a confident smile Arcot switched on the current of the big magnet. At once a terrific magnetic flux was set up through the light-metal. He took the little compressed-air saw, and applied it to the crystal plate. The smooth hiss of the air deepened to a harsh whine as the load came on it, then the saw made contact with the refractory plate.
The wires led directly up to the roof, and, suspended on three-foot hangers of the light-metal, continued on toward the bow. Could this be the source of power for the entire ship? It seemed impossible, yet there were many other seeming impossible things here, among them that strangely reflecting matter.
"You remember those two substances we found in the Nigran ships during the war?" "Sure," said Fuller. "One was transparent and the other was a perfect reflector. You said they were made of light photons so greatly condensed that they were held together by their gravitational fields." "Right. We called them light-metal. But Wade said that was too confusing.
Suddenly they rounded one of the huge main power units, and saw before them, at the center of square formed by these machines, a low platform of transparent light-metal. At the exact center of this platform, which was twenty feet in diameter, there was a table, about seven feet across and raised about five feet above the level of the platform on stout light-metal legs.
"Whew light-metal certainly isn't light metal! I'll bet this little scrap weights ten pounds! We'll have to reduce it considerably before we can use it. But that shouldn't be too difficult."
What will destroy light-matter, won't destroy electricity-matter, and what will destroy electricity-matter, won't disturb light-matter. "Do you remember the platform of light-metal, clear as crystal? It must have been an insulating platform. What we started as our assumptions in the case of the light-metal, we can now carry further.
You're more used to those determinations and that type of manipulation than we are. When you get through, we may be able to show you some interesting results ourselves!" Wade picked up a tiny chip of the light-metal and headed for his own laboratory. Here he set up his Jolly balance, and began to work on the fragment.
Outside the kitchen door, his younger brother, Hector, was noisily chopping wood. Going through the door, he filled another of the light-metal basins with hot water, found his razor, and went outside again, setting the basin on the bench. Most of the ware in the Hughes cabin was of light-metal.
"Well, we're ready," said Arcot finally, as he placed the projector screen in position and dimmed the lights in the room. A touch of the switch, and the projection screen was illuminated with the greatly enlarged image of the tiny scrap of light-metal. With his hand on the switch, Arcot spoke to the other two.
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