"A lot of other people think the same thing," said Ilse dryly. "Including myself. And those engineers! They'll be sweating their curiosity, now that they see how your diagrams are working. They pestered me with questions, but I couldn't answer them."
"Summon them," grinned Kortha.
When they stood silent before him, he laughed them into smiles. One of them echoed his laughter, and then they all were bellowing.
Kortha said when they were wiping tears of delight from their eyes, "Lightning follows a pattern through the air, doesn't it? It follows beams of ionized air that are everywhere. Those ionized air beams flow down to Ruuzol, too. The only way to stop lightning from hitting us was to form other ionized air currents that lead it away from us."
A man with beaming face shouted, "Ultraviolet rays ionize air!"
"All we needed to do was set the batteries of radiators up in such a sequence that the lightning followed the ionized air beams they created. We made our own air currents and naturally the lightning had to follow them. It couldn't get past them!"
The cheer that rang in the room dropped to a hush as the screen glowed with Guantra's snarling face.
"You've won this round, Kortha. But I'm bringing the fleet here. We'll see if you can work magic against belching guns. However, your evil genius can plan, it can't work miracles all the time. You—you imp of Zut's black brother, you!"
Kortha laughed in his face.
The screen went dead.