“We had to make the machines so they could be used in the horror film,” Blestead said, talking too fast. There was a fine beading of sweat on his face. “The machines had to look realistic.”

“So you make them unrealistic, bah!” Professor Hewett muttered angrily as he made some final adjustments and threw home a large multipoled switch.

The throbbing of the motor-generator changed as the sudden load came on, and a crackling discharge filled the air above the apparatus: sparks of cold fire played over all the exposed surfaces and they felt the hair on their heads rising straight up.

“Something’s gone wrong!” Jens Lyn gasped.

“By no means,” Professor Hewett said calmly, making a delicate adjustment. “Just a secondary phenomenon, a static discharge of no importance. The field is building up now, I think you can feel it.”

They could feel something, a distinctly unpleasant sensation that gripped their bodies solidly, a growing awareness of tension.

“I feel like somebody stuck a big key in my belly button and was winding up my guts,” Dallas said.

“I would not phrase it in exactly that manner,” Lyn agreed, “but I share the symptoms.”

“Locked on to automatic,” the professor said pushing home a button and stepping away from the controls. “At the microsecond of maximum power the selenium rectifiers will trip automatically. You can monitor it here, on this dial. When it reaches zero…”

’Twelve,” Barney said, peering at the instrument, then turning away.

“Nine,” the professor read. “The charge is building up. Eight… seven… six…”

“Do we get combat pay for this?” Dallas asked, but no one as much as smiled.

“Five… four… three…”

The tension was physical, part of the machine, part of them. No one could move. They stared at the advancing red hand and the professor said: