Warren Murphy: Return Engagement

Three round billets of grayish-blue titanium stood on a worktable. They bore the Titanic Titanium triple-T stamp. They looked like ordinary lead bars, except for their rounded corners and high finish. If you saw one lying on the street you wouldn't give it a second look.

But Ferris knew that in their way, they represented the ultimate in titanium technology. To get pure titanium in bar form, the metal had to be consolidated from its mined granule form. Even then, the billet was only the raw material. It had to be painstakingly ground, cut, or machined into usable parts, and a lot of valuable titanium was ground away in the process. It could be welded only with difficulty and it could not be melted. With its high melting temperature, heating titanium turned it into a pourable, but brittle, slag that was useless for commercial applications.

The problem seemed insoluble, but Ferris D'Orr had hit upon a solution that was as perfect as it was obvious. In other words, it was brilliant.

If heating titanium to get it into a desired shape created more problems than it solved, then the trick was to melt the metal without heating it.

Ferris D'Orr had explained his idea to the president of Titanic Titanium Technologies, Ogden Miller. "You're out of your mind," Miller said. Ferris reminded him of how he had discovered the method of annealing bronze while still in college. Miller gave him a private lab and unlimited funding.

The result was the titanium nebulizer. Ferris D'Orr wheeled the prototype over to the worktable where the three billets stood on separate trays.

The titanium nebulizer looked like a slide projector on wheels. There were no high-tech dials, frills, or gimmicks. It was simply a black box with a stubby tubelike muzzle mounted on a mobile stand. Ferris pointed the muzzle at one of the billets, which sat in a tray labeled A. Another rested in a tray labeled B. The third lay on the middle tray, which was labeled AB.

He turned on the nebulizer. It hummed, but otherwise there was no indication that it was working. Ferris adjusted two micrometer settings until the numbers matched.

"Vibration frequencies attuned," he sang happily. "Ready, set, go."

He pressed the only other control, a microswitch button.

The billet in the A tray melted like a dropped ice-cream bar.

"That's A," Ferris hummed.

He readjusted the micrometer settings and hit the microswitch.

The billet in the B tray wavered and swam, filling the tray like poured coffee.

"That's B," Ferris sang. "Here comes the hard part." Ferris fiddled with the micrometer settings. Each time he thought he had the vibration settings he wanted, he hit the button. Nothing happened. The melted titanium in the A and B trays shimmered liquidly, The middle billet just sat there.

"Damn," said Ferris. "I'm so close."

"You're close to being shut down," said a voice at his side.

Ferris jumped.

"Oh, Mr. Miller. I didn't hear you."

"Ferris, what's this about your secretary leaving in tears yesterday?"

"We had an argument," said Ferris absently, removing a panel on the side of the nebulizer to get at the inside workings.

"She claims you tried to get into her pants."

"Actually, I succeeded."

"In this very room, from what I hear."

"She enjoyed it. Or so she claimed at the time."

"So you fired her after you had your way with her? Is that it? Stop fiddling with that thing and look me in the eye when I talk to you."

"Can we discuss this later? I think I'm almost there."

"You're almost out the door, is where you are, Ferris."

"Since when is sleeping with my secretary a crime? Almost everybody in this company sleeps with some other worker. At least I don't sleep with members of my own sex.

"We can live with that," Ogden Miller said nastily. "What we can't live with is a discrimination suit. She claims you fired her for religious reasons."

"She was Jewish. She admitted it. If I'd known it beforehand, I wouldn't have slept with her. Or hired her in the first place."

"You'd damn well better have a stronger excuse than that. We have big government contracts that can be taken away over something like this."

"It's not my fault," said Ferris forlornly. "Her last name was Hart. What kind of a Jewish name is that? Scnnebody ought to give them badges, so we can tell them apart or something."

"Someone tried that. I think his name was Hitler. What's gotten into you?"

"Could you stand aside? I think I have the setting synchronized again."

"You're out of sync, Ferris. That's your problem."

"Out of sync," Ferris said, closing the panel. "Maybe that's it. In sync for A and B, out of sync for AB. It might work."

"What might work?"

"Watch," said Ferris D'Orr, replacing the A and B trays with identical trays and placing new billets in each tray.

The tray marked A is alpha-phase titanium," Ferris said as he hit the button.

The billet liquefied.

"So what?" said Miller. "We already know you can melt titanium with a laser. It doesn't matter. The metal's too brittle to use now. It's been exposed to air."

"This isn't a laser."

"Yeah?"

"It's a nebulizer. It doesn't use heat."

"No heat," said Miller thoughtfully, taking a cigar out of his mouth.

"Do you feel any heat?"

"Now that you mention it, no."

"Put your hand in front of the nozzle."

"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."