Channing led Franks from the laboratory, and once outside Channing gave way to a session of the shakes. "Walt," he asked plaintively, "take me by the hand and lead me to Joe's. I need some vitamins." "Bad?" "Did you see that glassblower's nightmare?" "You mean that collection of cut glass?" grinned Walt. "Uh-huh. It looked as though it were about to collapse of its own dead weight." "That held an electrolyte of dielectric constant thirteen times ten to the sixth. He had it charged to a mere three thousand volts. Ye Gods, Walt. Thirteen farads at three KV. _Whew._ And when he discharged it, the confounded leads that went through the glass sidewalls to the condenser plates positively glowed in the cherry red. I swear it!" "He's like that," said Walt. "You shouldn't worry about him. He'll have built that condenser out of good stuff--the leads will be alloys like those we use in the bigger tubes. They wouldn't fracture the glass seals no matter what the temperature difference between them and the glass was. Having that alloy around the place--up in the tube-maintenance department they have a half ton of quarter-inch rod--he'd use it naturally." "Could be, Walt. Maybe I'm a worry wart." "You're not used to working with his kind." "I quote: 'Requiring a high voltage source of considerable current capacity, I hit upon the scheme of making a super-high capacity condenser and discharging it through my no-arc alloy. To do this it was necessary that I invent a dielectric material of C equals thirteen times ten to the sixth.' Unquote." "Wes is a pure scientist," reminded Walt. "If he were investigating the electrical properties of zinc, and required solar power magnitudes to complete his investigation, he'd invent it and then include it as incidental to the investigation on zinc. He's never really understood our recent divergence in purpose over the power tube. That we should make it soak up power from Sol was incidental and useful only as a lever or means to make Terran Electric give us our way. He'd have forgotten it, I'll bet, since it was not the ultimate goal of the investigation." "He knows his stuff, though." "Granted. Wes is brilliant. He is a physicist, though, and neither engineer nor inventor. I doubt that he is really interested in the practical aspects of anything that is not directly concerned with his eating and sleeping." "What are we going to do about him?" "Absolutely nothing. You aren't like him--" "I hope not." "And conversely, why should we try to make him like you?" "That I'm against!" chimed in a new voice. Arden Channing took each man by the arm and looked up on either side of her, into one face and then the other. "No matter how, why, when, who, or what, one like him is all that the solar system can stand." "Walt and I are pretty much alike." "Uh-huh. You are. That's as it should be. You balance one another nicely. You couldn't use another like you. You're speaking of Wes Farrell?" "Right."