The smaller a component, the stronger it tends to be — which explains the value of fine-fibre reinforcements. A very fine fibre can carry so much tension as to reach an almost explosive strain-energy density. Daedalus is now devising a fine powder whose particles are tense with locked-in stress.

Stress, he remarks, can accumulate during crystallization. A needle crystal, growing in solution and bent while it is still very narrow, will develop intense stress as it thickens. Successive sleeves of new molecules are deposited under compression on its inner radius and under dilation on its outer one. If it cannot straighten, the accumulating stress will snap it. So, says Daedalus, grow a needle-crystal compound on a micro-scale circular seed, and it will thicken into a tiny ring, tense with stress. A small shock will crack it; it will snap straight, releasing its energy ballistically as flying fragments.

DREADCO chemists are now trying it. Their circular seeds are plasmids, ring-polymer molecules, and ring-shaped structures made by coating a micro-fine wire, stretching it to shatter the coating into tiny rings, and dissolving it to release them. The chemistry is still unfocused and exploratory, but some promising systems should emerge soon. The final product will look like any ordinary white powder: flour, salt or cement. But it will be tense with strain energy.

DREADCO's Stressed Powder, crystallized almost to spontaneous explosion, will be highly dangerous. Its fiercely screwed-up particles will need a thin inert coating to prevent the mutual abrasion of handling or pouring from setting them off. It will form a novel physical explosive. Fired by a sudden shock, it will release no chemical fumes, just a violent hot blast of abrasive fragments. A weaker grade of Stressed Powder, removed from the crystallizing bath earlier, will have wider uses. It will make a splendid active abrasive, cutting through the hardest workpiece by forceful local energy release. It will transform the technology of surface abrasion, from etching to paint-removal to dental hygiene. Grit-blasted at a workpiece from an air-nozzle or sunk into it from a flexible pipe, Stressed Powder will penetrate like a drill. It will solve the age-old problem of making a deep hole, maybe curved or of non-circular cross-section, in a hard solid. Electricians facing the once intractable task of putting new wiring into an old stone building will bless the name of DREADCO.