ne off his rocker at last," Scotty muttered. "How can anyone make a
radio out of junk?"

"I'll need a pencil stub, a few screws, and a piece of board," Rick
added. "A safety pin would help, too."

"Rick Brant, you're being silly," Barby said firmly. "This is no time
for practical jokes!"

Dr. Miller held up his hand. "Peace, Barbara. Rick isn't joking. I
believe I see what he has in mind. Rick, I've never heard of this, but I
assume the oxide on the razor blade is to act as a rectifier?"

"That's right, sir. John Gordon told me about it."

The scientist rose. "Then it will work. Come on, gang. Let's build a
radio out of junk."

With many hands to help, the work went quickly. Under Dr. Miller's
direction, Scotty took the transformer out of its case and the girls
went to work unwinding the quantities of wire from its coils.

Rick found a razor blade and anchored it to a rectangular piece of
plywood he found in the woodshed. It was a double-edged blade, and one
small screw from Dr. Miller's junk box served to hold it. He wrapped a
short piece of insulated wire, one of the transformer's connecting
leads, under the screw before he tightened it. He sharpened the lead
pencil with his jackknife, uncoiled the safety pin, and pushed the sharp
end into the exposed lead at the upper end of the pencil, which was a
stub only two inches long.

The safety pin also was screwed to the board, the screw going through
the space in the pin's head. It was placed in such a position that the
sharp end of the lead pencil rested on the razor blade. Another short
piece of insulated wire was wrapped around the screw before it was
tightened. Rick bared the copper end of the wire in order to make a good
contact.

Jan found a cardboard roll that had once held paper towels. Rick cut off
about six inches of it and proceeded to wind it with wire from the
transformer. He wound evenly and tightly, until the roll was full of
wire. Then he stabbed a small hole in each end of the roll and pulled
the wires through to hold the coil in position. The roll--now a
coil--was tacked to the board with thumbtacks.

Dr. Miller, meanwhile, had taken the receiver from the telephone. Scotty
strung yards of wire around the room and handed the loose end to Rick.
That was the antenna. Then Scotty scraped a bright place on a water pipe
with his knife and twisted a length of wire tightly around it. That was
the ground.

Rick and Dr. Miller made connections. Rick g