noon
Tom said jubilantly . Bud left soon afterward as the two Swifts buckled down to work on the problem of perfecting an apparatus to simulate the human senses . Each concentrated on a different line of approach . At noon they broke off briefly for a lunch wheeled in by Chow . Then silence settled again over the laboratory . Tom had rigged up a jointed , clawlike mechanical arrangement with sensitive diaphragms in its `` finger tips . '' The diaphragms were connected to a transistorized circuit designed to modulate the field current to the electromagnets .