For a long time I stood looking at him, as he worked with utter absorption and feverish haste.... How strange it was to stand and watch one lone man in a freezing world struggling to save it!
The cold rain was drumming heavily on the roof, and the roar of the sea had risen. The wind was blowing a gale, but there was no lightning in the storm that night. The out-of-doors was as dark as Erebus. Presently it grew cold in the room. I went out and shut the doors, and turned on the resistance heaters. Then I made a cup of coffee and brought it to Sam. He gulped it down absently, and went on without a word. I went back to my chair by the wall, and I think I must have fallen asleep.
CHAPTER V
The Etheric Storm
The next thing I knew, Sam was shaking my shoulder. I sat up, rubbing my eyes, a bit dazed at first, and uncertain whether I could credit what I remembered to be a vivid nightmare. But when I looked at the utter fatigue and the intense anxiety on the old scientist's face, I knew that it was not a dream.
"I've got it adjusted now," he said. "Suppose you go outside and watch. We need to know exactly what happens. And it may fail."
As I got up awkwardly, stretching my tired limbs, he climbed on his stool before the complex array of instruments on the wall, and began to manipulate the switches and dials.
"I have just to pick up their vibrations and synchronize mine with them," he said in a voice dull with fatigue. "In five minutes we will know. With these instruments I can pick up and analyze any disturbance in the ether, whether it be Hertzian or wireless wave two miles long, or any of the shorter waves that extend down to heat or infra-red, through the visible and ultra-violet spectrums, and even below, to the Cosmic Rays. I can pick up vibrations that other scientists have merely reasoned ought to exist! I will analyze the force that is being used, and then put my vibrations against it. I hope to set up an effective interference, temporarily, at least."