atomic power
apparatus on the opposite bench. "I think it will work. But after
_that_--" He stared, glaring, at the heavy tungsten dome with its heavy
tungsten contacts, across which the flame of released atomic energy was
supposed to have leapt. "That was probably the flattest flop any
experiment ever flopped."

"Well--it didn't blow up. That's one comfort," suggested Devin.

"I wish it had. Then at least it would have shown some response. The
only response shown, actually, was shown on the power meter. It damn
near wore out the bearings turning so fast."

"Personally, I prefer the lack of action." Devin laughed. "Have you got
that circuit hooked up?"

"Right," sighed Kendall, turning back to the work in hand. "Is Douglass
in on this?"

"Yes--in the next room. He'll let us know when he's ready. He's setting
up those instruments."

Douglass, a young junior physicist, late of the IP Physics Department,
stuck his head in the door and announced his instruments were all set
up.

"Keep an eye on them. They'll move somehow, at any rate. This thing
couldn't go as flat as that atom-buster of mine."

Carefully Kendall made a few last-minute adjustments on the limiting
relays, and took up his position at the power board. Devin took his
place near the apparatus, with another series of instruments, similar to
those Douglass was now watching in the next room, some thirty feet away,
through the two-inch metal wall. "Ready," called Kendall.

The switch shot home. Instantly Kendall, Devin, and all the men in the
building jumped some six feet from their former positions. A monstrous
roar of sound crashed out in that laboratory that thundered from one
wall to the other, and bellowed in a Titan's fury. It thundered and
growled, it bellowed and howled, the walls shook with the march and
counter-march of crashing waves of sound.

And a ten-foot wavering flame of blue-white, bellying electric fire
shuddered up to the ceiling from the contact points of the alleged
atomic generator. The heat, pouring out from the flashing, roaring arc
sent prickles of aching burns over Kendall's skin. For ten seconds he
stood in utter, paralyzed surprise as his flop of flops bellowed its
anger at his disdain. Then he leapt to the power board and shut off the
roaring thing, by cutting the switch that had started it.

"Spirits of Space! Did _that_ come to life!"

"_Atomic Energy!_" Devin cried.

"Atomic energy, hell. That's my thirty thousand do