"We still don't know what started it all," the Chief was saying. "But it made a fine tryout for Morgan's invention. If I thought you and he could do it, I would believe you had started that fire yourselves for a"—his voice rose abruptly to a shout—"Man! There's the red on the board—a general alarm!"
"Throw the big switch!" he roared. "Cut us in, quick! Cut us in!"
Danny O'Rourke, under any ordinary circumstances would have been hugely amused at the extraordinary sight of the Chief of the Mountain Division in a ferment of excitement that was near hysteria. But the flashing of the red that swept like a finger of flame across every station number of the big board did not mean that ordinary matters were at hand. A voice was speaking; its high-pitched shrillness showed that the excitement of the moment was not confined to the office of the Mountain Division alone.
"A. F. F. Headquarters, Washington," it shrilled. "General Alarm. Chicago destroyed by fire. Flames sweeping in well defined paths across the country. Originated in Mountain Division. Cause undetermined. Three lines of fire reported; coming east fast—unbelievable speed.... There! Cleveland has got it; reports a path of fire has cut across city melting steel and even stone.... Now Buffalo!... God knows what it is." The voice broke with excitement for an instant; Danny could almost see the distant man fighting for control of himself as a maze of instruments about him wrote incredible things.
"Orders!" said the voice now. "All A. F. F. ships report to your Division Headquarters. Division officers keep in communication with Washington. Mountain Division send all equipment east. Flying orders will be given you en route. The country—the whole world—is in flames!"
Beside him, Danny O'Rourke heard the voice of his Chief. "Unbelievable—impossible—preposterous!" His voice like that other was growing shrill. "The country—world—in flames!"
But he found voice to snap out a command to a waiting officer in the doorway of the adjoining room. "Repeat general order. Send all craft east!"
To Danny he whispered. "Your 'little doodad'—I wish to heaven we had a thousand of them now! But what does it mean? Lanes of fire across the country—whole cities destroyed! What devil's work is this?... There's nobody who knows."
But Danny was staring as if he saw through the high, instrument-covered walls. Back to a valley of flame that was like a doorway to hell, where rocks, gray with the frosty years, had been melted to pools ... back to a glinting light where something swift and scintillant had flashed once in a cloudless sky ... back—far back ... back to a street in a town half across the world, and a figure of a giant who strode away with a smile of triumph on his ill-formed face ... but first that giant had melted his way through walls of stone; and, like the stone, steel bars and human flesh were as nothing before the invisible heat that come from a slender rod!