The careful positioning of the stations that held the warp of the collapsed fore element was lost as the tractor-pressor beam system took the unleashed overload current. The regular duodecagon pattern warped into a space pattern as the alignment lost not only its regularity of distance-between-stations, but its perfection of flatness.
Then as the raging current was stopped by open circuits, burned or broken, the internal damage stopped also. The stations that held the magneto-gravitic warp began to drift aimlessly, pulled at cross-purposes by the undirected tractor-pressor system.
The electro-gravitic warp of the second element thickened as the fore surface moved into the space formerly occupied by the fractured lens. The effect was similar to that of restraining a spring and then releasing it. The rear element went into a damped cycle of expansion and contraction, alternately shortening and lengthening the focal length. The series of stations that held the rear element were shaken in long, sickening swells as the electro-gravitic warp oscillated back and forth along the axis of the lens.
Here, in the stations that held this warp, there was no danger from electrical failure. But the long swells of back and forth movement shook the mechanical equipment until the bearings of rotating machinery began to rattle. An occasional relay would snap shut for the briefest of instants and make instantaneous circuits that caused minor imperfections of the lens.
The cycle damped to zero in ten minutes, and then the men in the second element stations surveyed their bruises and began to pick up the mess; from every cabinet, from every bench, from every shelf, tools, supplies, and instruments had been thrown. They lay in profusion throughout the stations and must be replaced before the men could make a move toward repair.
On Pluto, all was serene. Light that had passed through the distorted lens had not reached the far planet yet, and so they did not know.