Grabbing pencil and paper, Tom pushed back the luncheon dishes and began sketching out his idea. The rays to hold up the highway would be generated by repelatron transmitters, planted at widely spaced intervals. Installing these would be a much cheaper and easier job than building a continuous highway through the jungle.
“A breath-taking idea, son,” Mr. Swift commented. “The question is, can it be worked out?”
“Dad, I’m positive it can!”
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“What about that swamp you described-the problem that stumped Burlow?” Ned Newton put in.
“I agree with him that it wouldn’t take a conventional roadbed, Uncle Ned. But a few ray transmitters are a different matter. I see no reason why we can’t plant those on pilings or concrete floats. Or, if necessary, we can freeze the gunk to make a temporary caisson and insert some solid fill.”
Tom felt so confident that he plunged into work that afternoon on the job of inventing a suitable roadway material. He decided to use Durafoam-an air-celled adaptation of his amazing vacuum-celled Durabuoy plastic. This would be reinforced with fibers of Durastress, the fantastically strong and rigid material he had invented to contain his midget atomic dynamo.
By late the next day Tom had rigged a machine in his laboratory to produce the stuff. It jetted out the Durafoam bubbles into a long, dome-shaped, transparent plastic chamber where they were mixed with the fibers. Tom noticed that the jet nozzles, located on the far wall, were clogging.
“Good grief!” he muttered in disgust. “I’ll have to wade through that goo and clean them out.”
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