"Yes, but—"
Kortha rasped an oath, stood up.
"Do what I say. I'll explain to you later, when I bring the final distribution sheets to you. You'll have to follow my instructions to the letter. The radiator batteries must be set so, to make a pattern thus. Any deviation will result in disaster. Hurry!"
Up in the control tower the red light was flickering. Kortha allowed himself a smile. The ultraviolet batteries were in place, needing only a fingerpress on a button beneath his hand to fire them. He looked up at the flagship maneuvering in circles above the dome. They were ready up there now.
Kortha depressed the button, and laughed.
An instant later, white fires burst from the guns of the flagship, flaring zigzags that darted toward the upright tubes on either side of the paraboloid. The metal planes would draw that lightning; it would sear them, crack them, erupt into thunderous cascades of escaping power—
The lightnings never touched their target.
As though an invisible mantle of veins were spread above the radio city, the lightnings sprayed away, following the veins, grounding in showers of tiny sparks on the plains below. They made eerie traceries of light over the city as the guns spouted lightning again and again. The glassite dome was bathed in a white, luminescent glow from the nets of meshed zigzags in the air above it, that ran in streaks of jagged white fire all around the city.
And always the lightnings grounded on the plains. The city lay untouched.
Kortha chuckled. He laughed aloud. He bellowed his mirth, slapping a thigh with his big hand, yelping, "A million kofuls to see Guantra's face I'd give right now. He must be swallowing his tongue in rage. I'll bet he's hopping. He doesn't know what I've done. He thinks I'm a magician!"