Quickly, the test tube started to melt into a pool of molten glass.
Asher increased the pressure of his ratchet trigger. The tube was
knocked to the floor.

"Static electricity--always some form of electricity," said Asher
grinning at the astonished oil baron. "Conductor coils here," he
continued as he tapped the sealed cylinder, "are charged much as a
flash-lamp battery. The charged conductors attract the static
electricity of the air, and, in a manner similar to the action of the
power generator, increase power. There is a slight difference: by
turning quick power on my static gun, I can cause the charge to knock
down and merely electrocute, as I knocked the half-melted tube from
the table."

"I can understand that, a little," Johns sighed profoundly. "It's the
same juice that causes a gasoline truck to catch fire if you don't
have a ground chain on it somewhere. But, just the same, I claim it's
remarkable."

"Not half as remarkable as what I expect to find two miles down when I
descend to-morrow." Asher had a dreamy look in his eyes. "I wonder:
new ways to get petroleum wealth ... a strange people...."

* * * * *

"Men,"--Asher, a tight-fitting asbestos composition suit covering him
from foot to neck, spoke tersely--"when you get me on bottom, stop
every bit of machinery, and don't dare pull up until I give the
signal. If I'm down there the entire day, all right. But"--he smiled,
trying to make light of the danger--"if I don't signal within
thirty-six hours, pull up anyhow."

From the bull-wheels of the drilling rig Asher spooled out some of the
air-hose cable through which air blown over ice would be pumped into
the Miner; then when the long steel cylinder was over the hole and
ready, he turned to the company officials and government scientists
and engineers around him in the boarded-up derrick.

"Possibly I can get a survey in an hour. Perhaps I'll have to come
back to the surface and make adjustments to my equipment. That remains
to be seen.... Now, let's get low."

He adjusted a helmet over his head. It looked much like the helmet
worn by a sea diver, except that it had no connecting hose for air.
The windows in the helmet, which contained pressure lights, worked on
the same principle as the disintegrating rays of the Miner. When Asher
turned the ratchet that set the little pressure machine into motion, a
violet tinged green ray of great lighting power shot out and
increa