United States or Tunisia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Ball lightning was an area of space so stressed that its energy-content could leak out only very slowly, unless it made contact with a conductor, when all bets were off. It blew. And the Zan pirates used ball lightning to force the surrender of their victims. Hoddan began to draw diagrams. The Lawlor drive-unit had been installed long after the yacht was built.
But a switch cut out certain elements of the Lawlor unit and cut in those others which made the modified drive-unit into a ball lightning projector. A flaming speck of pure incandescence sped from the yacht through emptiness. It would miss No. Hoddan swerved it. It struck the liner's hull. It would momentarily paralyze every bit of electric equipment in the ship.
It writhed and spun in the vast silence of emptiness. Hoddan drove to a point still above the five-diameter limit of Walden. He interestedly switched on the control which made his drive-unit manufacture landing-grid-type force fields. He groped for Walden, and felt the peculiar rigidity of the ship when the field took hold somewhere underground. He made an adjustment, and felt the ship respond.
He carefully maneuvered the very last of the novelties he had built into an originally simple Lawlor drive-unit. The two ships came together with a distinct clanking sound. It seemed horribly loud. Thal jerked open the door, ashen-white. "W-we hit something! Wh-when do we fight?" Hoddan said ruefully: "I forgot. The fighting's over. But bring your stun-pistols.
He returned to his adaptation of the Lawlor drive to the production of ball lightning. It was possible to wind coils. A certain percentage of the old condensers held a charge. He tapped the drive-unit for brazing current, and the drill-press became a die-stamping device for small parts. He built up the elements of a vacuum tube such as is normally found only in a landing grid control room.
Word Of The Day