which to solve the
equation--to choose, fire, move clear--the flitter
bucked._]

More checking. The Lensman and the armored Cloud both knew that every
one of the dozens of instruments upon the flitter's special board was
right to the hair; nevertheless each one was compared with the
master-instrument of the observatory.

* * * * *

The bombs arrived and were loaded in; and Cloud, with a casually-waved
salute, stepped into the tiny operating compartment. The massive
door--flitters have no airlocks, as the whole midsection is scarcely
bigger than an airlock would have to be--rammed shut upon its fiber
gaskets, the heavy toggles drove home. A cushioned form closed in upon
the pilot, leaving only his arms and lower legs free.

Then, making sure that his two companions had ducked for cover, Cloud
shot his flitter into the air and toward the seething inferno which was
Loose Atomic Vortex Number One. For it was seething, no fooling; and it
was an inferno. The crater was a ragged, jagged hole a full mile from
lip to lip and perhaps a quarter of that in depth. It was not, however,
a perfect cone, for the floor, being largely incandescently molten, was
practically level except for a depression at the center, where the
actual vortex lay. The walls of the pit were steeply, unstably
irregular, varying in pitch and shape with the hardness and
refractoriness of the strata composing them. Now a section would glare
into an unbearably blinding white puffing away in sparkling vapor.
Again, cooled by an inrushing blast of air, it would subside into an
angry scarlet, its surface crawling in a sluggish flow of lava.
Occasionally a part of the wall might even go black, into pock-marked
scoriae or into brilliant planes of obsidian.

For always, somewhere, there was an enormous volume of air pouring into
that crater. It rushed in as ordinary air. It came out, however, in a
ragingly-uprushing pillar, as--as something else. No one knew--or knows
yet, for that matter--exactly what a loose vortex does to the molecules
and atoms of air. In fact, due to the extreme variability already
referred to, it probably does not do the same thing for more than an
instant at a time.

That there is little actual combustion is certain; that is, except for
the forced combination of nitrogen, argon, xenon, and krypton with
oxygen. There is, however, consumption: plenty of consumption. And what
that incredibly intense b