They began construction work from the large colored diagram less than a month after the book containing it had been discovered. The diagram itself, of course, had been enlarged to its full scale, as had other sectional diagrams that Markten said definitely were parts of the same thing, but drawn separately in the book to render greater detail.
Two things had almost stumped the Elder completely, however, before he announced his preconstruction studies finished, and that he was prepared to begin actual construction. There were odors in the laboratory which his aide's nostrils had never experienced before. He wondered if they were as new to Markten.
"I admit," Markten said the day he began work in the two specially constructed, oblong vats filled with a fluid Markten called formaldehyde, "I am puzzled about the power source. Obviously a chain of electrochemical reactions, but stemming from where—that's what I've got to find out. Also, I've had to have another full-scale diagram drawn up. There was another colored one we missed—it was on a regular page. Have a look."
His aide's less-experienced eyes examined the second full-scale drawing Markten had made.
"It's—smaller. And—different, sort of. But yet it's the same. Maybe—"
"Maybe one is just an improved model over the other? One a later development, you think?"
"Why not?"
"That's what I've been wondering. But—no. My studies show that neither has any greater power potential, to any marked degree, that is, than the other. Both structures seem to have almost exactly the same electrochemical potentialities. But for some reason, just the same, they are different."
"The original designers leave no clue in the book?"
"No. Just formulae, and the usual stuff we find with diagrams."