The glare of the discharge seemed about fifty times brighter than normal.
"Hit the floor, Channy!" he heard Peer's shout.
He hit it without thought, dropping over the dead guard's legs....
Sound rammed at him enormously, roared on and began banging itself about and away among distant mountains. The Asteroid's floor had surged up ponderously, settled back, quivered a bit and become stable again.
"An earthquake," Channok muttered, sitting up dazedly, "was exactly all we needed right now!"
"That wasn't any earthquake!" said Peer, standing pale-faced above him. "Get up and look!"
Long veils of stuff, presumably solid chunks of mountain, were drifting down the distant, towering face of the cliff at the foot of which they had buried the Ra-Twelve. Rising to meet them, its source concealed beyond the horizon of the plain, was the slow, grey cloud of some super-explosion.
"I guess," he said slowly, "one of those two must have got curious about Koyle's wall-safe!"
"We were pretty smart about that," nodded Peer.