"No."
Burl remembered then that there could possibly be a living guard at this station. They searched carefully, but there was no sign of life. Boulton was doing a soldier's job, that was all.
While Boulton set up his photographic equipment, Burl made his way around the shining globes and strange tubes that were the nerve center of the station. He finally found the same type of control panel that he had found in the Andes station.
He hesitated before it, wondering if, after all, this, the original charge, would work. He hoped that there might be another charger globe available, but saw none. It would be up to him.
He put a gloved hand on the control. Perhaps, he worried, the charge would not conduct through the insulated, cooled material of his suit. He pushed the levers, and knew then that it did.
The pulsing of the spheres halted. There was a sharp dip in the faint vibration he had been feeling in his feet. He shoved the levers all the way, and suddenly the station went dead. Above him, one of the great discs atop its mast snapped and burst apart under what must have become an impossible concentration of power without a channel for outlet.
"Sun-tap Station Mercury is dead," Burl said quietly into his helmet phone.
At that very instant a distant globe, perched on a pedestal against the wall away from the rest of the equipment, flared a brilliant red.