one needs.”
Paying out wire, Jorn jumped eight of the twelve switches of the fence to
the distributor of the truck’s engine, which was idling. At once, the
tubular gray cloud which surrounded the encampment-the trapped
insects-began to move, slowly, and all in the same direction.
“It works,” Jorn said with grim satisfaction. ‘Driver, run up the engine
slowly. And keep right on running it up until it’s racing, and keep it
there.”
The roar of the engine grew slowly. As it did, the circular cloud moved
faster and faster, and from it came another roar, as of a distant gale.
Both sounds grew. The gray cloud changed color; now it was a dull red.
“Fasterl” Jorn shouted.
The engine snarled. The circling cloud turned glowing white and began to
scream like a cyclone. By now, of course, the insects were all dead, but
their metallic cores hurtled onward in the circling magnetic field.
Then Jorn snapped off one non-jumped switch. At the lakeside, history’s
longest, widest, densest column of white-hot grapeshot screamed straight
out of the tunnel of wire. It struck the looming saurian at an angle.
Nevertheless, the monster vanished utterly. Nothing was left but boiling
red water.
132 lames Blish
“Cyclotrons,” jorn said, “are useful instruments. But well have to board
on the double, now. The screen’s destroyed and the insects will be back.”
10
After nearly a year on the planet, the order to embark had come with
sickening suddenness, and the embarkation itself was so hasty that there was
no time left any more to talk about the problem itself. The javelin was driving