ce to fool
the Sacred Cow before I went to get my beautiful. Now I go back
again."

And without so much as a thank-you, he staggered out, grasping for
hand-holds to guide himself in a most unspacemanlike manner.

* * * * *

Mike craftily sat back, still on his heels beside the object, and
watched until Ishie had disappeared, and then turned his full interest
to the playtoy that fortune had placed in his shop.

Without hesitation he removed the false front they had so carefully
put in place. He still had a long tour of duty ahead, and it was very
unlikely that he would be interrupted, or, if interrupted, that anyone
would question the object on which he worked. It would be assumed that
this was just another piece of equipment normally under his care.

Carefully he looked over the circuits, checking in his mind the
function of each. Then he went to his racks and began selecting test
equipment designed to fit in the empty racks around it. Oscilloscope,
signal generator, volt meters and such soon formed a bank around the
original piece of equipment, in positions of maximum access.

Gingerly he began applying power to the individual circuits, checking
carefully his understanding of each component.

The magnetic field effect, Ishie had explained; but this three-phase
RF generator--that puzzled him for a while.

Then he remembered some theory. Brute strength alone would not cause
the protons to tip. Much as a top, spinning off-center on its point,
will swing slowly around that point instead of tipping over, the
spinning protons in the magnetic field would precess, but would not
tip and line up without the application of a rotating secondary
magnetic field at radio frequencies which would make the feat of
lining them up easy.

There, then, were two of the components that Ishie had built into his
device. A strong magnetic field supplied by the magnaswedge
coils--stolen magnaswedge coils if you please--and a rotating RF field
supplied by the generator below the chassis.

But this third effect? The DC electric field? That one was new to him.

In his mind he pictured the tiny gyroscopes all brought into alignment
by the interplay of magnetic forces; and around each proton the tiny,
planetary electrons.

Yet it was very well to think of the proton nucleus of the hydrogen
atom as a simple top, he reminded himself; but they were more complex
than that. Each orbiting electron must also cont