Looking for a book...

[VincentUrsus]

If you hadn't said "YA", I'd have thought it was Jack Williamson's "With Folded Hands". The phlebotinum of the story is called "rhodomagnetics", after all.

EDIT: Then again, I found the novella in my high school's library, so it might be considered to be YA...

I was trying to remember the name of that book.

For me, I read the copy from my junior high school's library, so I'll add another data point to the "plausible to regard this as YA" column.