“Lunch,” Tom decided. “Then to work.”
By the time the boys had finished eating, the heavy transformers and other equipment had been unloaded from the plane and trucked to Tom’s one-story laboratory building. A crew of company linemen were stringing wire from the powerhouse as the young inventor and his friends pulled up in their jeep.
“Where do you want the pots hung, skipper?” the foreman called down, jerking his thumb toward the transformers.
“Mount them on the roof,” Tom called back. “I’ll take over from there.”
“You’ll have a regular substation here,” Ted commented. “What’s the setup?”
“These high-tension lines will bring in 10,000 volts from the powerhouse,”
Tom explained, “and the transformers will step that down to 480. You see, my work will require low voltage, but very high amperage.”
While the linemen were busy erecting the transformers, Tom went into the laboratory and
16 SPACE SOLARTRON
began setting up the first model of his matter-making machine. Bud and Ted watched, fascinated, as the young inventor worked dexterously. “Let me see,”
Tom muttered. “Electromagnet-okay. Castings-check. He turned and glanced at his blueprints. “Vacuum system-than the electronic controls.”
“How does he do it?” Ted muttered to Bud. They gaped in awe as the machine gradually took shape.
A dome about two feet in diameter was supported on a column above a broad circular housing. From this, pipes led to the vacuum pump. The controls were enclosed in a separate console studded with knobs, dials, and oscilloscopes.