They went through the garden and into the long one-room building beyond. Culquhoun looked at the instruments with a certain wistfulness; he had trouble getting money to keep up any kind of lab. But the heart of the place was merely a second-hand gas stove, converted by haywiring into an air-tight, closely regulated oven. It was hot in the room. Elizabeth pointed to a stack of molds covered with a pitchy tar. "Our failures," she said. "Maybe we could patent the formula for glue. It certainly sticks tightly enough."
Arch checked the gauges. "Got a while to go yet," he said. "The catalyst this time is powdered ferric oxide—plain rust to you. The materials include aluminum oxide, synthetic rubber, and some barium and titanium compounds. I must admit that part of it is cheap."
They wandered back toward the house. "What'll you do with the material if it does come out?" asked Culquhoun.
"Oh—it'd make damn good condensers," said Arch. "Insulation, too. There ought to be a lot of money in it. Really, though, the theory interests me more. Care to see it?"
Culquhoun nodded, and Arch pawed through the papers on his desk. The top was littered with his stamp collection, but an unerring instinct seemed to guide his hand to the desired papers. He handed over an untidy manuscript consisting chiefly of mathematical symbols. "But don't bother with it now," he said. "I blew us to a new Bach the other day—St. Matthew Passion."
Culquhoun's eyes lit up, and for a while the house was filled with a serene strength which this century had forgotten. "Mon, mon," whispered the professor at last. "What he could have done with the bagpipes!"
"Barbarian," said Elizabeth.
As it happened, that one test batch was successful. Arch took a slab of darkly shining material from the lab oven and sawed it up for tests. It met them all. Heat and cold had little effect, even on the electric properties. Ordinary chemicals did not react. The dielectric constant was over a million, and the charge was held without appreciable leakage.
"Why doesn't it arc over?" wondered Elizabeth.