"Joe did."
"O.K. Look, Ted, can you fake us up a gadget like this?"
Walton looked the thing over. "Give me about ten hours," he said.
"We've got a spare turnover driver from the Relay Girl that we can hand-carve. There are a couple of water-boilers that we can strip, cut open, and make to serve as the top end. How're you hoping to maintain the vacuum?"
"Yes," said Wes Farrell, "That's going to be the problem. If there's any adjusting of electrodes to do, this'll take months."
"That's why we, on Venus Equilateral, are ahead of the whole ding-busted solar system in tube development," said Don. "We'll run the thing out in the open—and I do mean open! Instead of the tube having the insides exhausted, the operators will have their envelopes served with fresh, canned air."
"Like a cartoon I saw somewhere," grinned Walt. "Had a bird in full armor tinkering with a radio set. The caption was: 'Why shield the set!'"
"Phooey," said Ted Walton, "Look, Tom Swift, is this another one of the Franks' brainchildren?"
"Tom Swift?" asked Wes.
"Yeah. That's the nom de plume he invents under. The other guy we call Captain Lightning."