“Yes,” answered Tom. “That’s just what it does.”
“All right,” I said.
“Now, we’ll start up,” remarked Tom. “Turn off the lights, throw off the inner insulation,” he commanded, turning to Jones, who obediently threw a couple of switches.
We were left in partial darkness. On the long scale, on the opposite side of the room, the single line of light rested at the centre, illuminating the zero. There was a shaded incandescent in one corner, which threw no light on the black wall where stood the scale, but gave a dim radiance sufficient to reveal the belt of polished metal as it swiftly revolved about the mass within. Dorothy sat near the apparatus. Jones was puttering with something at one end of the scale, and Tom and I sat side by side, watching the whole scale. Suddenly the beam swept swiftly far up the scale, fluttered for a moment and rested on a point. The moving belt stopped with a slight click.
“That’s it. There’s another battleship gone,” cried Tom, as we all hurried over to the scale. “Now we can tell just where he is doing his deadly work. 2, 340, 624. 1401” he read, scrutinizing with a microscope the scale at the point where the beam rested. “Here, Jones, turn on the lights. Bring me the logarithm tables, our table of constants, and Denckel’s table of constants that we found under the middle cylinder.”
Jones ran excitedly across the laboratory, returning with the needed things. Tom, Dorothy and Jones each sat down to figure while I watched Dorothy’s nimble fingers, as they flew over the paper, filling sheet after sheet with computations. What different powers lay in those little hands. Abstruse calculations vied with bread making, careful manipulations of delicate instruments with the steering wheel of her motor car. Last week we had eaten a dinner prepared wholly by her. This week she was working out one of the great triumphs of modern science. It seemed almost a shame to confine those talents in a single home—but yet—and the old train of thought started on its ever recurring cycle.
Suddenly Tom threw down his pen. “Beat you that time, old girl!” he said. Dorothy gave no heed, but figured on for a minute more. Then she, too, dropped her pen.
“Want my figures, Tom?” she asked.
“Not yet,” answered Tom. “Wait for Jones. I’ll go and get the maps, and we’ll work the second step as soon as we have checked these figures.”
Jones worked laboriously on, and Tom had gone and returned, bearing two huge portfolios, before his task was ended.