Sam, even had his mind been clear, could not have guessed how widespread the phenomenon was. He could not have known that, within a twenty mile radius fuses were blowing out, transformers were smoking in their oil-baths and generators were groaning under a terrific overload, as though their armatures had been gripped by an invisible colossus.
But Sam could guess some of the might of the new phenomenon. His body convulsed like the body of a condemned culprit in an electric chair as shocks ripped through him. He could not imagine the origin of what was happening now, unless the forces he had unleashed had entered a new phase of destruction.
Yet this did not seem to be true, for after the first spurt of unknown power had passed, that sonorous hum of doom had been completely strangled. Before the second spurt stopped there was a violent ripping explosion and the tinkling of broken window panes in the adjoining laboratory room. And that constricting paralysis and heat were gone from Sam's body. There were five bursts of strange energy, in all. Then it was over.
Prodded by sheer startlement Sam got to his feet and found that, in spite of weakness, he could stand. His brain was clearer, too. Ellen Varney, unconscious before, was trying to rise. He helped her up and supported her against him.
They stared out of the doorway at the sky. The auroral glow was gone. But they saw, for just an instant, a huge phosphorescent shape, hanging high against the stars. It was a little like a colossal image of a man, but it couldn't have been solid. It was like the aurora itself—as tenuous, as luminous—a kind of gigantic photograph projected in the air. The arm of the vapory figure extended; then the whole image vanished, as if at a speed far exceeding that of light, to some colossal distance.
Sam didn't even speak of the being right away. He helped the girl out of the building into the open.
"Wait here for a few seconds, Ellen," he said in a tone that trembled with awe.
Then he stumbled back into the old garage. All electrical devices were dead, even his flashlight. He had to find his way to the laboratory by burning matches. Every bit of apparatus was in fused ruins now, faintly reddened with heat. But there was no ominous hum in the hot, black stillness. Something deadly had been burned out of diseased substances by counter fire. Even Sam's own flesh had submitted to a curative force.
He found his way to one corner of the room, where, beneath a heavy block of concrete, he had prepared a new hiding place for his aluminum box, and the Martian demonstration apparatus it contained. Tugging the block of concrete free, he looked below it, lighting another match. Somehow the lid of the box had been blown off. Within, the Martian machine was the same as before, except that the crystal cube was no longer clear. Instead it was blackened all the way through, like a black diamond. And there were cracks in it that destroyed its usefulness forever. It, too, had been touched by those counter waves of energy. Touching the cube with his fingers, Sam found that it was hot.
He left the thing in its hole and returned to Ellen, his mind full of colossal realizations.