"What?"
He didn't answer. He went heavily over to the table where he had storage-battery current available. He plucked a momentary-contact switch out of a drawer and connected it to the wires from the small thing he'd made. Then he hooked on the storage battery.
"Stand back, Sandy," he said tiredly. "We'll see what happens."
He flipped the momentary-contact switch. There was a crash and a roar. The six-inch thing leaped. It grazed Burke's head and drew blood. It flashed across the room, a full thirty feet, and then smashed a water-cooler and imbedded itself in the brick wall beyond. A tool cabinet tottered and crashed to the floor. The storage battery spouted steam, swelled. Burke grabbed Sandy and plunged outside with her as the building filled with vaporized battery acid.
Outside, he put her down and rubbed his nose with his finger.
"That was a surprise," he said with some animation. "Are you all right?"
"You—could have been killed!" she said in a whisper.
"I wasn't," said Burke. "If you're not hurt there's no harm done. It looks like the thing worked! Lucky that was only a millisecond contact! Negative self-induction.... I'll break some windows and come to the office."
He did break windows, from the outside, so air could flow through the building and clear away the battery-acid steam. Sandy watched him anxiously.
"Okay," he said. "I'll come quietly."