eer shafts of wood left the surface
and the sleek black object soared up into the air.

Into the air! With frightened eyes they watched it wheel around, and
then come roaring towards them. They fell flat again, and did not dare
to look. The thunderous blast passed close over them, then dwindled
and dwindled, until they ventured timidly to look up again.

They saw the shape ringed with sunset fire hurtling through the air,
soaring up and up and up ... till it died to a speck ... till it
disappeared into the face of the sun they worshipped as Aten....

A warrior spoke. His tones were low and awed but they all heard him.

"Truly," he whispered, "he was a god!..."

A ONE-BILLIONTH-OF-A-SECOND CAMERA

Through use of a spectroscopic camera with a shutter which operates in
about one-billionth of a second, physicists at the University of
California have been able to take pictures of the action of light at
various periods during the course of an electrical spark which lasts
only one one-hundred-thousandth of a second.

They have been able to show by photographic evidence that the magnetic
field developed by the passage of an electric current across the spark
gap gives the first light emitted a different appearance from that
emitted a few millionths of a second later.

At the moment that the spark jumps, electricity is released in
enormous quantities much as water is released by the breaking of a
dam. It is this sudden release of the dammed-up current across the
spark gap that causes the temporary magnetic field and the difference
in the appearance of the light from the spark.

In answer to those who scoff at the possibility of a camera shutter
operating in a billionth of a second, it was explained that the
shutter is not a mechanical device, but operates automatically through
the application of a physical law of light. In a general way, it might
be said that the spark takes its own picture.

The spectroscope camera is set up at one end of a long corridor. When
the electrical current jumps across the spark gap it sets up a
momentary current in a set of wires running the length of the corridor
and connected with the camera. This current travels toward the camera
at the rate of about 186,000 miles a second.

At about the same instant that the current jumps, or an infinitesimal
fraction of a second later, the light of the resulting spark starts
toward the camera at a trifle more than 186,000 miles a second. It is
a ra