calculate how much of the mass of unnatural iron would get down for the
ground blast. Then the right hand screen broke into a wriggling orgy of
color, and at the same time every scrap of radio-transmitted apparatus
either went out or began reporting erratically. The left hand screen,
connected by wiring to the pickup on the roof, was still functioning.
For a moment, Richardson wondered what was going on, and then shocked
recognition drove that from his mind as he stared at the
ever-brightening glare in the sky.

It was the Auburn Bomb again! He was back, in memory, to the night on
the shore of Lake Ontario; the party breaking up in the early hours of
morning; he and Janet and the people with whom they had been spending a
vacation week standing on the lawn as the guests were getting into their
cars. And then the sudden light in the sky. The cries of surprise, and
then of alarm as it seemed to be rushing straight down upon them. He and
Janet, clutching each other and staring up in terror at the falling
blaze from which there seemed no escape. Then relief, as it curved away
from them and fell to the south. And then the explosion, lighting the
whole southern sky.

There was a similar explosion in the screen, when the mass of nega-iron
landed--a sheet of pure white light, so bright and so quick as to almost
pass above the limit of visibility, and then a moment's darkness that
was in his stunned eyes more than in the screen, and then the rising
glow of updrawn incandescent dust.

Before the sound-waves had reached them, he had been legging it into the
house. The television had been on, and it had been acting as insanely as
the screen on his right now. He had called the State Police--the
telephones had been working all right--and told them who he was, and