"Still," I said uncertainly, "whether we hear it or not, all that soundwave-energy has to do something, Artie. If it turns ultrasonic, we may suddenly find ourselves in a showerbath of free electrons and even worse subatomic particles from disrupted air molecules. Or the lab might turn molten on us. Or—"
"Oh, turn it on, Burt!" said Artie. "That's just a chance we have to take."
"Don't see why we have to take it...." I groused, but I'm as curious as the next man, so I turned it on. (I could have arranged to do it by remote control, except for two pressing deterrents: One—At a remote point of control, I wouldn't be able to watch what, if anything, the machine did, and Two—Who knows where the safe spot is where soundwaves are concerned? With some sonic forces, you're safer the nearer you get to the source.) So, like I said, I turned it on.
Silence. Beautiful, blissful, silence. There before us twirled the rows of shiny cones, lifting slowly into the air, and there was nothing to hear at all. Beside me, Artie's lips moved, but I couldn't catch a syllable. This time around, we'd looped a rope through a few metal grommets in the base of the machine, and as it rose, Artie slipped the trailing ends under his arms from behind, and proceeded to lash it across his chest, to test the thing's lift-power. As he fumbled with the knot, I shouted at him, "Use a firm hitch!"
Nothing came out, but Artie wasn't a bad lip-reader. He scowled, and his lips made a "What?!" motion, so I repeated my caution. Next thing I knew, he was taking a poke at me, and I, to fend him off, ended up wrestling on the floor with him, while the untended machine burred its way into the ceiling, until the engine overheated and burned away the electrical insulation on the wires, and the machine, plus a good two feet square of lab-ceiling, once more descended to demolish the scale.
"—your language!" Artie was snarling, as sound returned.
"All I said was 'Use a firm hitch!'" I pleaded, trying to shove his shins off my floor-pinned biceps.
Artie stared at me, then rocked off my prostrate body, convulsed in a fit of laughter. "Say it silently in front of a mirror, sometime," he choked out. Before I had time to see what he was talking about, I smelled smoke, above and beyond that engendered by the scorched insulation.
I ran to the door, and opened it to observe the last glowing, crackling timbers of the house, the theatre, and the heliport vanish into hot orange sparks, in the grip of a dandy ring of fire that—in a seventy-yard path—had burned up everything in a sixty-five to hundred-thirty-five yard radius of the lab.