Tom grinned as he twirled several knobs and checked the gauges. The slightest variation in field strength triggered an instant response from the ball of energy. Mr. Swift tried exposing it to radio and repelatron waves. Each time the gauges showed a sensitive reaction.
“Looks as if we’re in business, Dad!” Tom said jubilantly.
Bud left soon afterward as the two Swifts
144 THE VISITOR FROM PLANET X
buckled down to work on the problem of perfecting an apparatus to simulate the human senses. Each concentrated on a different line of approach.
At noon they broke off briefly for a lunch wheeled in by Chow. Then silence settled again over the laboratory.
Tom had rigged up a jointed, clawlike mechanical arrangement with sensitive diaphragms in its “finger tips.” The diaphragms were connected to a transistorized circuit designed to modulate the field current to the electromagnets.
Suddenly the young inventor looked up at his father with a glow of triumph.
“Dad, I just got a reaction to my sense-of-touch experiment!”
CHAPTER XVII
AN URGENT WARNING
MR. SWIFT looked on eagerly as Tom explained and demonstrated his touch apparatus. By moving a pantograph control, Tom was able to manipulate the claws like a hand with fingers. Whenever they touched any material, the brain gauges instantly registered an electrical reaction inside the sphere.
The swing of a voltmeter needle showed how firmly the substance resisted the claw’s touch, thus indicating its hardness or softness.
“With a computer device, such as we planted in Exman,” Tom went on, “the brain would also be able to assimilate the textural pattern of any substance.”