The laboratories at Arctic City were fairly new but already had the cluttered appearance of all research labs. Electronic instruments, coils of wire, and various articles of chemical apparatus lay on the work benches. One room held the dial-studded face of a computer. Another contained several induction and carbon arc furnaces used in high temperature work. Men wearing white smocks or plastic aprons went quietly and efficiently about their tasks. Roger and Darcy entered a lab in which a man sat staring at the face of an oscilloscope, where weird figures danced in yellowish-green tracery. The bench was covered with a bewildering array of equipment. A row of gas discharge tubes glowed with varicolored light. From them a spaghetti-like arrangement of many colored wires led to various instruments scattered along the bench. "How's it coming, Phil?" Darcy asked. The man looked up from his work. "Hi, Jake," he said. "I might get somewhere if this oscillator would stop wandering all over the place. This thing doesn't seem to be very accurate at high frequencies." He indicated a piece of equipment connected to the oscilloscope. "I'll sure be glad when we get a good physical chemist to do this work. My business is ceramics, and I'm getting sick and tired of wrestling with his wiring." "Well," said Darcy, "you won't have to worry about this any more. This is Roger Lorin, our new physical chemist. Roger, this is Philip Gordon, our ceramics expert." Gordon grinned and extended his hand. "I'm glad to meet you," he said. "Sorry I blew off like that. I just get disgusted sometimes." "It does get frustrating," Roger agreed as they shook hands. "Electronics is rather tricky." "You're right there," replied Gordon. "Especially when you don't know too much about it. What I learned about electronics in college has long since departed. Take a look at this set up. It's about as poor a job of haywiring as you'll find anywhere." "I see you're using high frequency excitation to get your high temperatures," Roger commented. "Just what compounds are you working with?" "I've been working with some plastics, inert stuff, to see just what they'll react with, and how fast they'll react at high temperatures." "It isn't too easy," Lorin said. "It never has been easy to find reaction rates. I'll get to work on these this afternoon. Maybe I can get some of these finished tomorrow or the next day." "Thanks," Gordon said in a relieved voice. "It'll be good to get some results I can rely on." Lorin and Darcy left the lab and walked through a winding succession of corridors until they came to a large room. One wall was lined with catwalks linked by metal ladders. Men in coveralls moved against the slate gray background like insects on the side of a building. Through a door to their right Lorin could see banks of instruments at which several men were working.