illion tiny gyroscopes all lined up together.

"Matter of fact," he said in an aside, "if you want a better
explanation of that effect, you might look up the maintenance manual
on the proton gyroscopes that Sad Cow uses. Or the manuals for the
M.R. analyzer in the chem lab. Or the magnetometer we use to keep a
check on Earth's magnetic field.

"So far, about the same thing.

"What I'm trying to do is place radio frequency fields and
electrostatic fields in conjunction with the D.C. magnetic field, so
as to check out the effect of stretching the electron orbits of the
hydrogen atoms in predictable patterns.

"I picked this place for it, because it was as far away from Earth's
field as I could get. And Mike, when I get ready to test this thing,
I'm going to pray to my ancestors and also ask you to turn off as many
magnetic gadgets as you safely can."

Mike was squatting on his heels by the haywire rig, built into what
looked suspiciously like a chassis extracted from one of the standard
control consoles of the communication department.

Reaching gingerly in through the haywire mass of cables surrounding
the central components, he pointed to one of the coils and exclaimed
in the tones of a Sherlock Holmes, "Ah-ha, my dear Watson! I have just
located the final clue to my missing magnaswedge. I suppose you know
the duty cycle on those coils is only about 0.01?"

"Not after I finished with them!" Ishie grinned unrepentant. "Besides,
I don't want to squash anything in the field. I just want a nice,
steady field of a reasonable magnitude. As Confusion would say, he who
squashes small object may unbalance great powers."

* * * * *

While he talked, Ishie had been busy inserting the carefully machined
piece of quartz plate that Chernov had brought, into a conglomeration
of glassware that looked like a refugee from the chem lab, and flipped
a switch that caused a glowing coil inside a pyrex boiler to heat a
small quantity of water, which must escape through the carefully
machined capillary holes in the plate he had just installed. Each jet
would pass through two grids, and on towards a condenser arrangement
from which the water would be recirculated into the boiler by a small
pump which was already beginning to churkle to itself.

"O.K.," Mike said. "I dig the magnetic resonance part. And how you're
using the stolen coils. But what's this gadget?" and he pointed to the
maze of glass and g