Dressed, except for his shoes, Ken went to the hall and leaned over the stair railing. "I'll be down in just a minute, Art. It's okay, Mom. I'm feeling good today."
"Ken! You shouldn't!" his mother protested.
In a moment he had his shoes on and was racing down the stairs. "What's happened, Art? Anything gone wrong?"
The mechanic looked downcast. "Everything! We got the Norton elevator motor and hooked it up with the gas engine. It ran fine for a couple of days, and we got a lot of batteries charged up."
"Then it quit," said Ken.
"Yeah—how did you know?"
"I've been afraid we had missed one bet. It just isn't enough to supply filtered air to the engines built of new parts. The parts themselves are already contaminated with the dust. As soon as they go into operation, we have the same old business, all over again.
"Unless some means of decontamination can be found these new parts are no better than the old ones."
"Some of these parts were wrapped in tissue paper and sealed in cardboard boxes!" Art protested. "How could enough dust get to them to ruin them?"
"The dust has a way of getting into almost any corner it wants to," said Ken. "Dad and the others have found it has a tremendous affinity for metals, so it seeps through cracks and sticks. It never moves off once it hits a piece of metal. What parts of the engine froze?"