"Have to drill it out," I said.
My drill was a cutie. It was a modified dentists' drill, the kind
that's run by a little air turbine at about two hundred thousand
r.p.m.'s. I really mean that. They turn like mad.
I'd been taught to use it with care. When a dentist drills your teeth,
he blows olive oil and water through the turbine, and the mixture
cools the tooth--and the drill--while the cutting is going on. We
couldn't afford any cloud of vapor--or the shorting out that ice would
cause--so I had only the pressurized mixture of oxygen and helium in
the tanks on my back to run the drill. And that meant light and
intermittent pressures on the number 43 wire gauge drill--the one
that's the right size to drill out a 4-40. It took me about fifteen
minutes and I was down to my last number 43 drill bit when she broke
free.
From then on I had to heat each screw before I went to work on it. I
had something like a soldering iron that I could press against the
screw-head. Heat would flow through the highly conductive alloy and
make it less brittle. I flicked each screw I removed out into space
and at last carefully hinged the gate wide open.
The gate was the length of the sector--about two feet. It was four
inches wide and about an inch thick and had parts strung along it like
kernels on an ear of corn.
At this stage I readjusted the position of my webbing girdle until I
could clamp my head in position and begin the testing. It was slow
work. The first sad thing was to learn that the solenoid M1537 was as
good as new. When I put enough voltage across its terminals, the
actuator clicked down through the core.