Franklen, who was one of Norden's associates objected: "That means you'll have to shunt the snivvy over here. That lengthens the leads and cause instability." "But we can reinstate the stability by running the leads through a dingink." "That won't help. Shielding the leads only adds distributed capacity." "It works. Only one percent loss in efficiency and better stability, believe it or not." "Well," said Norden, "I'll leave it up to Lionel, here. What do you think?" "I'll have to consider it," answered Lionel. "You understand that it is important," urged Norden. "But why?" "Why?" exploded Norden. "Great Scott! Look Lionel, the arrangements of these knobs are such that the operator must cross the calibration-scale with his hand while adjusting the output. That means that he must either assume a cramped position or he must adjust, observe, adjust, observe, and so on, taking the adjustment of output by increments instead of a stepless arrival at the precise value." "Um." "Look, Lionel, we aren't toying with the job of lifting a standard weight. We are hoisting three hundred tons of semirigid structure that mustn't be joggled too much." "I see. Well under the circumstances I'll take quick action and give you the answer within twenty-four hours." "We can't have it immediately?" "I'm afraid not. I must make some tests before I can pass judgment on the matter." "We are more or less forced to accept your time-limit," said Norden glumly. "Please understand that time is essential because every minute that our production line is down costs the company about twenty dollars." "I'll get your answer in twenty-four hours," Thomas faced another man. "And your trouble?" He was Mawson, of Technical Manufacturing, Inc. "You specify this part," indicating another set of blueprints, "as pure copper. Anything else do?" "It carries high frequency. Copper is best--unless you could get silver. If that is--" "Look we're making production and hope to hit fifteen thousand completed assemblies per day. That piece would weigh about two pounds. Silver is out." "What's the matter with copper?" asked Lionel. "It cuts like cheddar cheese, gums up the tools, and is generally not good for close tolerance work." "The first one was all right." "Listen," said Mawson, "you carved the first one out by hand and I'll bet it took you four or five hours. We're going to 'run 'em on an automatic screw machine at the rate of ten per minute." "So?" "I want to use free cutting brass." "You'll lose conductivity--" "The rig will be only seven percent less efficient. Tests--" "Your tests may be right. But seven percent loss is pretty bad," grumbled Thomas. "I'd say no." "Then I'm going to ask you to name a substitute. What alloy would suffice? I want a free cutting alloy that'll come off of the tools clean." * * * * * Will White spoke up at this point. "We've got a bit of regeneration in our driver system," he said.