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Sergeant Harry Quong and Corporal Hassan Bogdanoff took their places in the front seat; the car lifted, turned to nose into the wind, and rose in a slow spiral. "Where now, sir?" Quong asked. "Back to Konkrook; to the island." The nose of the car swung east by south; the cold-jet rotors began humming, and the hot-jets were cut in.

But they talked as they ate. Absorbed and often with their mouths full, frequently with imperfect articulation, but with deepening satisfaction as the steaks vanished and the method they'd use took form in their minds. It wouldn't be wholly simple, of course. When the rotors were spinning about their centers of gravity, trimming off the shaft would change the center of gravity.

The coils are placed in radial slots, thereby avoiding side pressure on the slot insulation and the complex stresses resulting from centrifugal force, which, in these rotors, acts normal to the flat surface of the strip windings. Operation

They were serious, but not tragic. The tragedy was the gyros themselves. On their absolute precision and utterly perfect balance the whole working of the Platform would depend. And the rotors were gashed in one place, and the shafts were bent. Being bent and nicked, the precision of the apparatus was destroyed. Its precision lost, the whole device was useless.

We'll form the shaft around the center of gravity, instead of trying to move the center of gravity to the middle of the shaft. We'll spin the rotors on a flexible bearing base. I think it'll work." Surprisingly, it was Mike the midget who said warmly, "You got it! Yes, sir, you got it!" The Chief took a deep breath. "Yeah! And d'you know how I know? The Plant built a high-speed centrifuge once.

Distributed by the channels, the oil would form a film that by its pressure would hold the cone end of the bearing away from actual contact with the metal. The rotors, in fact, would be floated in oil just as the high-speed centrifuge the Chief had mentioned had floated on compressed air.

A tentative chugg-chuff came from the copter; its rotors went round and it lifted, stood poised for a moment on its jetwash, and shot off northward toward the Starmen's Enclave. "What's this about a change in schedule, Dad?" "I want you to ride over with me in the two-man copter. Kandin took your place aboard Copter One. Let's go now," he shouted to the next group. "Start loading up Number Two."

We're gonna have to weld a false frame on the lathe we picked, an' then cut out the bed plate to let the gyros fit in between the chucks. Mount it so the spinning is in the right line." That would be with the axis of the rotors parallel to the axis of the earth. Joe nodded. "We'll be able to get set up in the mornin'," added Haney, "and get started.

"It's been thirteen hundred years since Cavour disappeared, Alan. If nothing of his has turned up in all that time, it's not likely ever to show. But I hope you keep at it, anyway." He banked the copter and cut the jets; the rotors took over and gently lowered the craft to the distant landing field. Alan looked down and out at the heap of buildings becoming visible below.

But Langdon never could endure "the ghastly stink" of crude petroleum, while coal, though dirty, was clean dirt. The Rapier might have old-fashioned engines, but with them one ran no chance of developing that affliction of turbine craft: water in the casing, the consequent stripping of blades off the turbine rotors, and a month or so in a dockyard as a natural concomitant.