After a brief conversation with the officer in charge, Dunark turned to Seaton.
"Didn't you find that your springs couldn't stand up under the acceleration?"
"Yes, they flattened out dead."
"The Kolanix Felan, in charge of the work, thought so, and substituted our compound-compensated type, made of real spring metal, for them. They'll hold you through any acceleration you can live through."
"Thanks, that's fine. What's next, instruments?"
"Yes. I have sent a crew of men to gather up what copper they can find—you know that we use practically no metallic copper, as platinum, gold, and silver are so much better for ordinary purposes—and another to erect a copper-smelter near one of the mines which supply the city with the copper sulphate used upon our tables. While they are at work I think I will work on the instruments, if you two will be kind enough to help me."
Seaton and Crane offered to supply him with instruments from their reserve stock, but the Kofedix refused to accept them, saying that he would rather have their help in making them, so that he would thoroughly understand their functions. The electric furnaces were rapidly made ready and they set to work; Crane taking great delight in working that hitherto rare and very refractory metal, iridium, of which all the Kondalian instruments were to be made.
"They have a lot of our rare metals here, Dick."
"They sure have. I'd like to set up a laboratory and live here a few years—I'd learn something about my specialty or burst. They use gold and silver where we use copper, and platinum and its alloys where we use iron and soft steel. All their weapons are made of iridium, and all their most highly-tempered tools, such as their knives, razors, and so on, are made of opaque arenak. I suppose you've noticed the edge on your razor?"
"How could I help it? It is hard to realize that a metal can be so hard that it requires forty years on a diamond-dust abrasive machine to hone a razor—or that once honed, it shaves generation after generation of men without losing in any degree its keenness."