Chapter 19.
Conquest of the Comet
For the first time since the coming of the comet, Ken sensed defeat in his father. Professor Maddox seemed to believe at last that they were powerless before the invader out of space. He seemed like a runner who has used his last reserve of strength to reach a goal on which his eye has been fixed, only to discover the true goal is yet an immeasurable distance ahead.
Professor Maddox had believed with all his heart and mind that they had hurdled the last obstacle with the construction of the pilot projector. With it gone, and all their tools and instruments and notes, there was simply nothing.
As Ken considered the problem, it seemed to him the situation was not as bad as first appeared. The most important thing had not been lost. This was the knowledge, locked in their own minds, of what means could prevail against the dust. Beyond this, the truly essential mechanical elements for starting over again were also available.
Art Matthews had been very busy, and he had parts enough for six more motor-generator sets. These were decontaminated and sealed in protective packing. It would be only a matter of hours to assemble one of them, and that would power any supersonic projector they might choose to build.
And they could still choose to build one. In the radio supply stores of the town, and in the junk boxes of the members of the science club, there were surely enough components to build several times over the necessary number of generator elements. In the barns and chicken sheds of the valley there was plenty of aluminum sheeting to build reflectors.
The more he considered it, the more possible it seemed to take up from where they had left off the night before the fire. There was one important question Ken asked himself, however: Why stop with a replica of the small pilot model they had built on the roof of Science Hall?
As long as they were committed to building a projector to test for effectiveness, they might as well build a full-scale instrument, one that could take its place as an actual weapon against the dust. If there were errors of design, these could be changed during or after construction. He could see no reason at all for building a mere 30-foot instrument again.
The greatest loss suffered in the fire was that of the chemistry laboratory and its supplies and reagents. Materials for running tests on the dust could not be replaced, nor could much of their microchemical apparatus. The electron microscope, too, was gone. These losses would have to be made up, where necessary, by having such work done by Pasadena, Schenectady or Detroit. If the projector were as successful as all preliminary work indicated, there would be little need for further testing except as a matter of routine check on the concentration of dust in the atmosphere.