Kendall attached the second apparatus, a larger device
into which the silver block with its mirror surface fitted. With the
uttermost care, the two physicists lined it up. Two projectors pointed
toward each other at an angle, the base angles of a triangle, whose apex
was the center of the mirror. On very low power, a soft, glowing violet
light filtered out through the opening of the one, and a slight green
light came from the other. But where the two streams met, an intense,
violet glare built up. The center of action was not at the focus, and
slowly this was lined up, till a sharp, violet beam of light reached out
across the open yard to the target set up.

Buck Kendall cut off the power, and slowly got into position. "Now. Keep
out from in front of that thing. Put on these glasses--and watch out."
Heavy, thick-lensed orange-brown goggles were passed out, and Kendall
took his place. Before him, a thick window of the same glass had been
arranged, so that he might see uninterruptedly the controls at hand, and
yet watch unblinded, the action of the beam.

Dully the mirror-force relay clicked. A hazy glow ran over the silver
block, and died. Then--simultaneously the power was thrown from two
small, compact atostors into the twin projectors. Instantly--a titanic
eruption of light almost invisibly violet, spurted out in a solid,
compact stream. With a roar and crash, it battered its way through the
thick air, and crashed into the heavy target plate. A stream of flame
and scintillating sparks erupted from the armor plate--and died as
Kendall cut the beam. A white-hot area a foot across leaked down the
face of the metal.

"That," said Faragaut gently, removing his goggles. "That's not a
spotlight, and it's not exactly a gas-flame. But I still don't know what
that blue-hot needle of destruction is. Just what do you call that tame
stellar furnace of yours?"

"Not so far off, Tom," said Kendall happily, "except that even S Doradus
is cold compared to that. That sends almost pure ultra-violet
light--which, by the way, it is almost impossible to reflect
successfully, and represents a temperature to be expressed not in
thousands of degrees, nor yet in tens of thousands. I calculated the
temperature would be about 750,000 degrees. What is happening is that a
stream of low-voltage electrons--cathode rays--in great quantity are
meeting great quantities of sextuply ionized oxygen. That means that a
nucleus used to having two electr