"The first one was all right."
"Listen," said Mawson, "you carved the first one out by hand and I'll bet it took you four or five hours. We're going to 'run 'em on an automatic screw machine at the rate of ten per minute."
"So?"
"I want to use free cutting brass."
"You'll lose conductivity—"
"The rig will be only seven percent less efficient. Tests—"
"Your tests may be right. But seven percent loss is pretty bad," grumbled Thomas. "I'd say no."
"Then I'm going to ask you to name a substitute. What alloy would suffice? I want a free cutting alloy that'll come off of the tools clean."
Will White spoke up at this point. "We've got a bit of regeneration in our driver system," he said.