“Please tell him that … that I want that address!”
“That’s already been dealt with by the boy,” said the assistant. “Mr. Thomas tells you to go to hell. Do you think that he’ll leave his work just now when the great moment is being reached? We’re on the point of making it and then—there we are.”
Prokop screamed out in horror: “Run and tell him—quickly—that he mustn’t turn on the high frequency current! He must stop it! Or—something will happen—run as fast as you can! He doesn’t know … he doesn’t know that Daimon—for God’s sake stop him!”
“Pooh!” the assistant broke into a short laugh. “Mr. Thomas knows what he’s doing and you—” Here the butt of the cigarette flew through the partition. “Good night!”
Prokop sprang to the grille.
“Hands up,” came a cry from the other side, and the guard’s whistle sounded piercingly. Prokop took to flight.
He ran along the main road, jumped over the ditch at the side, and ran over the soft ground, stumbling over a ploughed field. He fell over, picked himself up, and dashed on. He stopped with a beating heart. All around him was darkness and deserted fields. Now they wouldn’t be able to catch him. He listened; all was quiet. He could hear nothing but the sound of his own breath. But what—what if Grottup should be blown into the air? He clutched his head and ran on further, descending into a deep valley, scrambling up on the other side, and then limping over more ploughed fields. He felt the acute pain of his old wound and a burning sensation in his chest. He could go no further, sat down on a stone and looked at Grottup, mistily glowing with its arc lamps. It seemed like a bright island in the midst of boundless darkness. It was oppressively dark, and yet within a radius of thousands and thousands of miles a terrible and unremitting attack was being launched. Daimon on his Magnetic Hill was precisely and silently bombarding the whole world. In all directions waves were being sent out which would ignite the first grain of Krakatit which they encountered anywhere in the world. And there, in the dead of night, bathed in this pale light, an obdurate, wrongheaded man was working, bending over a secret process of transformation. “Thomas, look out!” cried Prokop, but his voice was lost in the darkness like a stone thrown into a pond by some childish hand.
He sprang up, trembling with fear and cold, and dashed on further, as far as he could from Grottup. He found himself in the middle of some swampy place and stopped. Had he heard the noise of an explosion? No, all was quiet, and with a new access of terror he clambered up a slope, slipped on to his knees, sprang up again and dashed on, rushing into some bushes, tearing his hands, slipping about, and then descending again. He drew himself up, brushed away the sweat with his bleeding hands, and ran on.
In the middle of a field he came across something white—a cross which had been overturned. Breathing heavily, he sat down on its vacant support. He was now a long way from the ruddy glow over Grottup, which was already on the horizon; it now seemed to be on the surface of the ground. Prokop breathed a deep sigh of relief; there was no sound; perhaps Thomas’s experiment had failed and the terrible thing would not happen. He listened cautiously; no, nothing was to be heard but the cold dripping of water in some gutter underground and the beating of his heart.
Then an enormous black mass was thrown into the air over Grottup and all the lights went out. The next moment, as if the darkness had been torn asunder, a pillar of fire leapt into the air, spread terribly and liberated a tremendous body of smoke. Directly afterwards came an impact through the air, something cracked, the trees began to rustle, and—crash! A terrible blow, as with a whip, an uproar, a shattering blow. The earth trembled and torn-off leaves whirled through the air. Snatching for air, and holding on with both hands to the support of the cross, so as not to be swept away, Prokop stared wildly at the roaring furnace.
And the heavens shall be cleaved by a fiery power and the voice of God shall be heard in the thunder.
Two more masses went up, one after the other, and were broken up by a band of fire. Then came the sound of a still more terrible explosion—evidently the ammunition stores. A roaring mass flew into the air, exploded, and came down in the form of a ray of sparks. The roar changed into a pounding bombardment; in the stores there were exploding rockets which flew up like sparks from an anvil. A purple fire glowed on the horizon, and there was a continuous succession of reports like the noise of a machine gun. A fourth and fifth explosion followed with the noise of a howitzer. The fire spread on both sides and soon half the horizon was a flame.
Only then could he distinguish the sound of the crackling of the timber in Grottup, but this was still nearly obscured by the explosion of the arsenal. A sixth explosion resounded firm and clear—evidently kresylite. As a sort of accompaniment, came the deeper note of the explosion of casks filled with dynamite. A huge flaming projectile flew halfway across the sky, leaving an enormous trail of flame behind it. Another flame sprang up, went out, and reappeared a short distance away, but the noise of the explosions only arrived a few seconds later. For a moment it was so quiet that one could hear the crackling of the fire, like that of broken brushwood. Then there was a further rending explosion and above the Grottup factories there sprang up a flame which spread to the town of Grottup.
Aghast with fear, Prokop picked himself up and
