"No, thanks."
"Then hold this button down while I put my hand in front of the thing."
Ferris waved his hand in front of the nozzle. He grinned.
"Microwaves?" asked Ogden Miller.
Ferris shook his head. "They'd cook my hand to hamburger. It's sonic."
"No heat at all?"
"Watch," said Ferris, walking to the A tray. He dipped his index finger in and brought it out dripping liquid titanium.
"Oh my God," said the president of Titanic Titanium Technologies. "I'll get a doctor."
He was halfway out of the room when Ferris got in his way.
"Touch the metal," he said, holding his metal-coated finger under Miller's nose.
Gingerly Miller felt the metal. It was hard, cold. And as Ferris pulled the thin covering off his fingernails, malleable. Definitely malleable.
"Not brittle?" asked Miller incredulously.
"Not brittle at all." Ferris grinned.
"Do you realize what this means? No more superplastic forming. We can pour the billets directly into molds. Like steel."
"Better," said Ferris D'Orr. "We can skip the mill stage altogether. The nebulizer will leach the raw titanium from rock. We can melt and remelt it like it was taffy. "
"This thing will do that?"
"That's not all," said Ferris, pulling a square block off a shelf. He handed it over.
"What's this?"
"Yesterday, it was two rectangular forms. Pure titanium."
"I don't see any weld seams."
"Weld seams are yesterday. Like the 78 RPM record. Or dry-box welding."
"No more dry-box welding?" Ogden Miller's voice was tiny, like a child's.
Ferris nodded. "You can throw them all out-as soon as I lick the alpha-beta-phase titanium problem."
"Can you?"
The two men walked over to the nebulizer. "Something you just said makes me think I can," Ferris D'Orr said as he played with the micrometer settings. "As you know, titanium in the alpha phase has its atoms arranged in a hexagonal formation. When the metal is heated above 885 degrees Centigrade, it's transformed into body-centered cubic beta titanium."
"I don't know that technical stuff. I don't have to. I'm the president."
"But you do know that alpha-beta titanium is the best for commercial use?"
"I've heard it said, yeah."
"This device, through focused ultrasound, causes the metal to vibrate so the atomic structure is, to put it in layman's terms, discombobulated. It falls into a liquid state without heat or loss of material."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that. But alpha-beta titanium won't respond to the nebulizer. I've spent the last two weeks trying every possible vibratory setting to get the same reaction. It's like trying to crack a safe. You know the tumblers will respond if you hit the right combination. You just have to keep searching for that exact number sequence."
"Well, keep searching."
"If alpha titanium discombobulates when exposed to synchronized frequencies, then might not alpha-beta-phase titanium respond to out-of-sync vibrations?"
"You're the whiz kid. You tell me."
"No, I'll show you."
And Ferris D'Orr got to work.
Ogden Miller, president of Titanic Titanium Technologies, Inc., pulled up a stool and lit another cigar. His face shone like a wet light bulb; his eyes glazed in thought. He had visions of his company dominating America's defense and aerospace programs into the twenty-first century. Perhaps beyond. This was big. It was bigger than big. It was a metallurgical revolution. He had visions of a two-page ad in the next Aviation Week announcing the first one-to-one buy-to-fly ratio in metallurgical history. And it had been created on Titanic Titanium company time. Which meant that Ogden Miller owned it. If it worked on alpha-beta titanium, that is.
Under his superior's watchful eye, Ferris D'Orr worked through lunch. He worked past five o'clock. And he worked well into the evening, setting and resetting the micrometer dials and triggering the nebulizer, without result.
At exactly 9:48 eastern standard time, the billet in the AB tray liquefied.
The two men, their eyes bloodshot from hours of staring at that stubborn chunk of bluish metal, blinked furiously.
"Did it melt?" whispered Miller. "My eyes tell me it did."
"I don't trust them."
"Mine neither."
"Do you want to dip your finger into it, or should I?"
"I want the honor this time."
Ogden Miller walked to the AB tray and carefully touched the cool surface of the bluish material in the tray. It shimmered. It felt cool to his touch, like a very dense pudding. When he lifted out his finger, it gleamed silvery-gray and the puddinglike stuff plopped down into the tray, one fabulous drop at a time.
Ogden Miller looked back at Ferris D'Orr. "AB titanium. You're certain?"
"We did it!" Ferris howled. "We can pour titanium into molds like steel."
"We can forge it, weld it. Hell, we can practically drink it!"