Title Page

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Dedication

For the final time, to Barbara …

Jenny kissed me when we met,

Jumping from the chair she sat in.

Time, you thief, who love to get

Sweets into your list, put that in.

Say I’m weary, say I’m sad;

Say that health and wealth have missed me;

Say I’m growing old, but add—

Jenny kissed me!

—LEIGH HUNT

Epigraph

In the nineteenth century, a German-born engineer named John Fritz, working at the Cambria Iron Company in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, captured the [can-do] spirit when, after working for months to finish the first Bessemer steel machinery in this country, he came to the plant one morning and said, “Alright, boys, let’s start her up and see why she doesn’t work.” The desire to find out what’s not working, fix it, and then maybe get it to work is an American quality and our guiding star.

—DAVID MCCULLOUGH
American Heritage
Winter 2008

Chapters:

AUGUST

James A. Van Allen Museum of Science

JAMES A. VAN ALLEN MUSEUM OF SCIENCE

“MHD?” asked Jake Ross. “What’s MHD?”

Leverett Cardwell smiled his enigmatic little smile and replied, “It stands for magnetohydrodynamics.”

“Oh, like Alfvén.”

Jake was walking with the older man along the Hall of Planets, which ran the length of the museum’s planetarium. They were passing beneath the model of Mars, a rust-red globe dotted with long-dead volcanoes. He had first introduced himself to Dr. Cardwell at almost this exact spot, more than a dozen years earlier.

“Alfvén dealt with astrophysics. The branch of MHD I’m talking about now is a way of generating electricity very efficiently,” Cardwell went on, his tenor voice soft but perfectly clear. “An MHD generator can produce a lot of power in a relatively small piece of equipment.”

Jake nodded. Lev was up to something, he knew. The old man didn’t just chat to pass the time of day. He had some purpose in mind.