He threw the power-intake switch, which could have been on all the time. The power-yield needle stirred. The minute grid was drawing power like its vaster counterpart. But its field was infinitesimal by comparison. It drew power as a soda straw might draw water from wet sand.
Then the intake-needle kicked. It swung sharply, and wavered, and then began a steady, even, climbing movement across the markings on the dial-face. Riki was not watching that.
"They see something!" she panted. "Look at them!"
The four men who had trundled the smaller grid to its place, now stared upward. They flung out their arms. One of them jumped up and down. They leaped. They practically danced.
"Let's go see," said Massy.
He went out of the tunnel with Riki. They gazed upward. And directly overhead, where the sky was darkest blue and where it had seemed that stars shone through the daylight—there was a cloud. It seemed to Massy, very quaintly, that it was no bigger than a man's hand. But it grew. Its edges were yellow—saffron-yellow. It expanded and spread. Presently it began to thin. As it thinned, it began to shine. It was luminous. And the luminosity had a strange, familiar quality.
Somebody came panting down the tunnel, from inside the mountain.
"The grid—" he panted. "The big grid! It's ... pumping power! Big power! BIG power!"
He went pounding back, to gaze raptuously at the new position of a thin black needle on a large white dial, and to make incoherent noises of rejoicing as it moved very, very slowly toward higher and ever higher readings.
But Massy looked puzzledly at the sky, as if he did not quite believe his eyes. The cloud now expanded very slowly, but still it grew. And it was not regular in shape. The bomb had not shattered quite evenly, and the vapor had poured out more on one side than the other. There was a narrow, arching arm of brightness—