He extended the sheet to Ben, who examined the maze of figures gravely for a moment.
"Now suppose you interpret," he said. "I can't read Chinese."
"Sap. This is the formula for the electrical device I was talking about."
"Yeh. Well, go on, spill it."
"Well, I suppose I'll have to explain so even your limited intelligence will grasp the point.... In our black box, we've been breaking up the atoms of lead into positive and negative charges. We've been using the positive, and then just turning the negative loose. This thing will make use of both, and give us a swell new weapon all at once.
"Look—the negative charges will do for our gravity beam just as well as the positive. They will create an excess of negative electrons instead of an excess of positive protons in the object we hit, and cause atomic disintegration. It's a gravity process just the same, but a different one. Now that gives us something else to do with the positives.
"You know what a Leyden jar is? One of those things you charge with electricity, then you touch the tip, and bang, you get a shock. Well, this arrangement will make a super-Leyden jar of the Monitor. Every time she fires the gravity-beam, the positive charges will be put into her hull, and she'll soon be able to load up with a charge that will knock your eye out when it's let loose."
"How's that? I know the outside of the Monitor is covered with lead and so is the outside of a Leyden jar, but what's the connection?"
"Well, it's this way. When you load up a Leyden jar the charge is not located in the plating, but in the glass. Now the Monitor has a lot of steel, which will take up the charge just as well as glass. As soon as she fires the gravity-beam, these filaments will load her up with the left-over positives till she grunts. See?"
"And since the earth is building up a lot of negative potential all the time, all you have to do is get your bird between you and the earth and then let go at him?"