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Page 18
"I'd rather you wouldn't," said Tom. "That's the whole
difficulty--compressing your air. Wait! I'll explain it to you."
Then the young inventor went into details. He told of the
ponderous machinery needed to condense air to a form
approximating water, and spoke of the terrible pressure exerted
by the liquid atmosphere.
"Anything that you would gain by having a slow-speed motor and
smaller propeller blades, would be lost by the ponderous air-
condensing machinery you would need," Tom told Mr. Damon.
"Besides, if you could surround your propellers with a strata of
condensed air, it would create such terrible cold as to freeze
the propeller blades and make them as brittle as glass.
"Why, I have taken a heavy piece of metal, dipped it into
liquid air, and I could shatter the steel with a hammer as easily
as a sheet of ice. The cold of liquid air is beyond belief.
"Attempts have been made to make motors run with liquid air,
but they have not succeeded. To condense air and to carry it
about so that propellers might revolve in it, would be out of the
question."
"You think so, Tom?" asked Mr. Damon.
"I'm sure of it!"
"Oh, dear! That's too bad. Bless my overshoes, but I thought I
had a new idea. Well, you ought to know. So Damon's Whizzer goes
on the scrap heap before ever it's built. Well, we'll say no more
about it. You ought to know best, Tom. I wasn't thinking of it so
much for myself as for you. I thought you'd like some new idea to
work on."
"Much obliged, Mr. Damon, but I have a new idea," said Tom.
"You have? What is it? Tell me--that is, if it isn't a secret,"
went on the eccentric man, as much delighted over Tom's new plan
as he had been over his own Whizzer, doomed to failure so soon.
"It isn't a secret from you," said Tom. "I got the idea while I
was riding with Mary. I wanted to talk to her--to tell her not to
jump out when we had a little accident--but I had trouble making
myself understood because of the noise of the motor."
"They do make a great racket," conceded Mr. Damon. "But I don't
suppose anything can be done about it."
"I don't see why there can't!" exclaimed Tom. "And that's my
new idea--to make a silent aircraft motor--perhaps silent
propeller blades, though it's the motor that makes the most
noise. And that's what I'm going to do--invent a silent
aeroplane. Not because I want so much to talk when I take
passengers up in the air, but I believe such a motor would be
valuable, especially for scouting planes in war work. To go over
the enemy's lines and not be heard would be valuable many times.
"And that's what I'm going to do--work on a silent motor for
Uncle Sam. I've got the germ of an idea and now--"
"Excuse me," said a voice behind Mr. Damon and Tom, and,
turning, the young inventor beheld the form of Mr. Peton Gale,
president of the Universal Flying Machine Company.
CHAPTER VI
MAKING PLANS
Tom Swift had drawn pencil and paper from his pocket, and, as
he and Mr. Damon were sitting on the steps of one of the shops,
the young inventor was about to demonstrate by a drawing part of
his new project, when the interruption came in the shape of one
of the men who had, an hour before, made a business offer to Tom.
"Excuse me," went on Mr. Peton Gale, "but Mr. Ware and I got to
talking it over on our way to the station--the matter of having
you in our company, Mr. Swift--and we concluded that it was worth
twenty-five thousand dollars a year for us to have you. So I came
back--"
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