And yet it would take a completely dispassionate observer to tell which was worse; to ruin a man's body or to ruin a man's life. * * * * * The man in question was oblivious to these plans on his future. He was standing before a complicated maze of laboratory glassware and a haywire tangle of electronic origin. He looked it over in puzzlement, and his lack of enthusiasm bothered the other man. Wesley Farrell thought that his boss would have been volubly glad to see the fruits of his labor. "No doubt it's wonderful," smiled Channing. "But what is it, Wes?" "Why, I've been working on an alloy that will not sustain an arc." "Go on. I'm interested even though I do not climb the chandelier and scream, beating my manly chest." "Oil switches are cumbersome. Any other means of breaking contact is equally cumbersome if it is to handle much power. My alloy is non-arcing. It will not sustain an arc, even though the highest current and voltage are broken." "Now I am really interested," admitted Channing. "Oil switches in a spaceship are a definite drawback." "I know. So--here we are." "What's the rest of this stuff?" asked Channing, laying a hand on the glassware. "Be careful!" said Farrell in concern. "That's hot stuff." "Oh?" "In order to get some real voltages and currents to break without running the main station bus through here, I cooked this stuff up. The plate-grilleworks in the large tubes exhibit a capacity between them of one microfarad. Empty, that is, or I should say precisely point nine eight microfarads in vacuuo. The fluid is of my own devising, concocted for the occasion, and has a dielectric constant of thirteen times ten to the sixth power. It--" "Great Howling Rockets!" exploded Channing. "That makes the overall capacity equal to thirteen _farads_!" "Just about. Well, I have the condenser charged to three kilovolts, and then I discharge it through this switch made of the non-arcing alloy. Watch! No, Don, from back there, please, behind this safety glass." Channing made some discomforting calculations about thirteen farads at three thousand volts and decided that there was definitely something unlucky about the number thirteen. "The switch, now," continued Farrell, as though thirteen farads was just a mere drop in the bucket, "is opened four milliseconds after it is closed. The time-constant of the discharging resistance is such that the voltage is zero point eight three of its peak three thousand volts, giving a good check of the alloy." "I should think so," groused Channing. "Eighty-three percent of three thousand volts is just shy of twenty-five hundred volts. The current of discharge passing through a circuit that will drop the charge in a thirteen farad condenser eighty-three percent in four milliseconds will be something fierce, believe me." "That is why I use the heavy busbars from the condenser bank through the switch."