The Forbidden Trail

"By Jove, it's big enough to lose my charge!" groaned Roger. "Bring bugs, everybody."

Felicia, "bug" and oil can in hand, was running over the pipes at the top before the others had arrived.

"Here it is, Roger! Oh, an awful one. There!"

The leak was in a pipe joint at the top of the stack. The odor grew almost unbearable. For half an hour the men wrestled with it, turn about, and at last succeeded in stopping it. Other minor leaks occurred but all were located and controlled. Finally Roger announced all safe and lighted his pipe. In the flash of the match, his face showed tense and dripping with sweat, his eyes bloodshot from the gas fumes.

"Darn the leaks!" exclaimed Elsa.

"Well, it's what we'll have to expect as long as I can't afford to buy bent pipe or an acetylene welding outfit," said Roger. "But after all, the leaks are the least of my troubles."

"What is troubling you?" asked Charley quickly.

"There isn't as much power there as my calculations had indicated there would be."

"I told you that you were running pretty close on your absorption area," exclaimed Ernest. "You see your temperature readings have been lower right along down here than that table we had up in the laboratory for this region."

"But I don't want to increase the absorption area in order to get more power. It's a clumsy solution. It makes the plant too large and too high priced. The solution to the problem lies in making that engine more efficient." Roger sighed.

"Now don't change your engine design, Roger!" cried Ernest. "That is a peach and has been for years."

"Yes, I know," replied Roger. "But there's a possibility that you and the Dean and I have been too complacent about that engine."

"Gee, but you're a regular pessimist, Rog!" exclaimed Dick.

"No, I'm not. No inventor is. I'm just open minded. And don't think I'm blue, either. If I weren't so heckled and worried by the time and money element I'd be having the time of my life. Wouldn't I, Felicia, honey?"

There was no answer. Felicia, with the oil can hugged tight against her middy, was curled up on the work bench, fast asleep.

"Well, it seems to me I'd better take my family home," said Dick. "Where's the rest of my harem? Elsa! Charley! Come with papa."

By eleven o'clock the camp was quiet. Roger prowled about the condenser a bit, covered the engine with canvas and then went to bed. It had been a hard day and none of the three men were wakened by the smell of sulphur dioxide that began to hang over the camp at midnight. The dawn wind blew most of it away, but when Gustav rose to get breakfast, he sniffed suspiciously and called Roger. They traced a leak in the lower tier. Half the charge had evaporated during the night.