Where the hammer head went, they couldn't say. But on the opposite wall there was a fracture in the plaster that Jim swore hadn't been there before. It extended over quite an area, and after some thought, Barney calculated that if the force of Jim's hammer blow had been evenly distributed over that area on the wall, the fracturing would have been just about that bad.
"A weapon, all right," said Barney.
"Sure. All you have to do is to shoot your gun right in this end and the force is dissipated over quite an area out of that end. In the meantime you blow out all of the powerhouses on the planet. If a hammer blow can raise such merry hell, what do you think the output of a sixteen-inch rifle would do? Probably stop the planet in its tracks. D'ye know what I think?"
"No, do you?"
"Barney, I think that we aren't even close as to the operation and use of this device."
"For that decision, Jim, you should be awarded the Interplanetary Award for Discovery and Invention—posthumously!"
"So what do we do now?"
"Dunno. How soon does this lighting situation get itself fixed?"
"You ask me.... I don't know either."
"Well, let's see what we've found so far."