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And that, Mike happened to know, was the density of a cryotronic brain, which is 90 per cent liquid helium and 10 per cent tantalum and niobium, by volume. He looked at the microcryotron stack in his hand. It was a one-hundred-kilounit stack. The possible connections within it were factorial one hundred thousand.
Which was much too fast for mere humans to follow. They found him, half an hour later, deep in the ship, near the sections which had already been torn down to help build Eisberg Base. He was standing inside the room next to Cargo Hold One, the room that held all the temperature and power controls for the gigantic microcryotron brain inside that heavily insulated hold. He wasn't moving.
Since the wrecked living room was a flurry of activity and his office had become a thoroughfare, Mike the Angel retired to his bedroom to think. He took with him the microcryotron stack he had picked up at Old Harry's the night before. "For something that doesn't look like much," he said aloud to the stack, "you have caused me a hell of a lot of trouble."
If it were in working order it would have been worth close to three hundred dollars more than that on the black market. If it was broken, though, it was no good to Mike. A microcryotron unit is almost impossible to fix if it breaks down. But Mike took it because he didn't want to hurt Old Harry's feelings by refusing a present. "Thanks, Harry," he said. "Happen to know why it doesn't work?"
Mike the Angel stared at the microcryotron stack and asked: "Now, tell me, pal, just why would anyone want a brain that big? And what is so blasted important about it?" The stack said not a word. The phone chimed. Mike the Angel thumbed the switch, and his secretary's face appeared on the screen. "Minister Wallingford is on the line, Mr. Gabriel." "Put him on," said Mike the Angel.
"You don't happen to have a hundred-thousand-unit microcryotron stack, do you?" "Ain't s'posed to," said Harry MacDougal. "If I did, I wouldn't sell it to you. But, as a matter of cold fact, I do happen to have one. Use it for a paperweight. I'll give it to you for nothing, because it don't work, anyhow." "Maybe I can fix it," said Mike the Angel, "as long as you're giving it to me.
He opened the final door, went into his apartment, and locked the door behind him, as he had locked the others. Then he turned on the lights, peeled off his raincoat, and plopped himself into a chair to unwrap the microcryotron stack he had picked up at Harry's. Theoretically, Harry wasn't supposed to sell the things.
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