"Take that top sheet. Now, look at those readings. Has he reached them yet?"
The figures looked familiar. Of course they were the settings at which Dampier had drawn his little red lines.
"He's past them," I cried. "On all but two."
"On all, my friend." Nebel turned again to the dials. "Bluffing does not work in a game for men."
As he moved Bill sprang. Not at Nebel—not at the machine—but at the two great copper bars that came in through the wall. His lean body fell like a stretched spear across them. There was a burst of flame, the stench of burning flesh, but my eyes had left him. For as he leaped Nebel turned the dials.
Sparks crashed in a crescendo as he threw his body across the giant power cables, in a human short-circuit!
A roar of subterranean thunders shook the room. Vast energies poured into the shining zone. It changed. It was a great mirror of utter blackness, its shimmering silver sheen gone leaving a shell of strange transparency out of which creatures of another world leered crookedly at us. And it began to grow!