“Hmm.” Bud scratched his head. “Can you give me the ABC’s of how it works? Or is all that too deep for a nongenius like me?”
88
TELEPHONE THREAT 89
“Don’t be so modest, fly boy!” Tom chuckled. “But, anyhow, I’ll try to give you the main idea without getting too technical.”
Picking up pencil and paper off the workbench, Tom drew a simplified diagram of what the reactor’s final assembly would look like.
“The cosmic rays will enter the screen layer, then pass into the injuster layer, and change velocity in the vacuum layer,” Tom began.
At this point, he continued, after the radiation had entered the central part of the machine, flexa-trons would absorb the energy of the cosmic rays -thus giving the whole assembly a “push” in the same direction as that in which the rays had first been moving.
“Now notice this smaller housing at one side of the reactor,” Tom pointed out.
“What’s it for?” Bud inquired.
“That will be the direction converter-narrowing into an output vent,” Tom replied. “This gadget will bypass the cosmic radiation, so to speak, whenever we don’t want any more ‘push’ on our kite. Or we can use it for ‘draining off’ part of the radiation when the input is too great.”
“Hey, that’s pretty neat, professor,” Bud said, slapping his friend on the back.
“You make it sound so simple that I get the picture fine and clear!”
Tom laughed. “Good. If it just works the way I explained it, I’ll be happy.”
90 COSMIC ASTRONAUTS
As Tom went back to work, Bud mentioned that he had spent the morning in the astronomical observatory, which occupied one whole spoke oŁ the space wheel.