Joe said, with very great pains not to seem triumphant, “Instead of spinning the shaft and trimming the rotor, we’ll spin the rotor and trim the shaft. We’ll form the shaft around the center of gravity, instead of trying to move the center of gravity to the middle of the shaft. We’ll spin the rotors on a flexible bearing base. I think it’ll work.”
Surprisingly, it was Mike the midget who said warmly, “You got it! Yes, sir, you got it!”
The Chief took a deep breath. “Yeah! And d’you know how I know? The Plant built a high-speed centrifuge once. Remember?” He grinned with the triumph Joe concealed. “It was just a plate with a shaft in the middle. There were vanes on the plate. It fitted in a shaft hole that was much too big. They blew compressed air up the shaft hole. It floated the plate up, the air hit the vanes and spun the plate—and it ran as sweet as honey! Balanced itself and didn’t wobble a bit! We’ll do something like that! Sure!”
“Will you work on it with me?” asked Joe. “We’ll need a sort of crew—three or four altogether. Have to figure out the stuff we need. I can ask for anybody I want. I’m asking for you. You pick the others.”
The Chief grinned broadly. “Any objections, Haney? You and Mike and me and Joe here? Look!”
He pulled a pencil out of his pocket. He started to draw on the plastic table top, and then took a paper napkin instead.
“Something like this——”
The steaks came, sizzling on the platters they’d been cooked in. The outside was seared, and the inside was hot and deliciously rare. Intellectual exercises like the designing of a machine-tool operation could not compete with such aromas and sights and sounds. The four of them fell to.
But they talked as they ate. Absorbed and often with their mouths full, frequently with imperfect articulation, but with deepening satisfaction as the steaks vanished and the method they’d use took form in their minds. It wouldn’t be wholly simple, of course. When the rotors were spinning about their centers of gravity, trimming off the shaft would change the center of gravity. But the change would be infinitely less than trimming off the rotors’ rims. If they spun the rotors and used an abrasive on the high side of the shaft as it turned....
“Going to have precession!” warned Mike. “Have to have a polishing surface. Quarter turn behind the cutter. That’ll hold it.”