Comet, July 1941
The Lensman and the observer helped Storm into hisheavily padded armor. Their movements were automatic—the ointment, thedevices—
INTRODUCING "Storm" Cloud, who, through tragedy, isdestined to become the most noted figure in thegalaxy—THE
Vortex Blaster
(Complete in this issue!)
Author of "The Skylark," "Skylark Three," "The Skylark
ofValeron," the Lensman stories, etc.
Safety devices that do not protect.
The "unsinkable" ships that, before the days of Bergenholm and of atomicand cosmic energy, sank into the waters of the earth.
More particularly, safety devices which, while protecting against oneagent of destruction, attract magnet-like another and worse. Such as thearmored cable within the walls of a wooden house. It protects theelectrical conductors within against accidental external shorts; but,inadequately grounded as it must of necessity be, it may attract andupon occasion has attracted the stupendous force of lightning. Then,fused, volatilized, flaming incandescent throughout the length, breadth,and height of a dwelling, that dwelling's existence thereafter is to bemeasured in minutes.
Specifically, four lightning rods. The lightning rods protecting thechromium, glass, and plastic home of Neal Cloud. Those rods wereadequately grounded, grounded with copper-silver cables the bigness of astrong man's arm; for Neal Cloud, atomic physicist, knew his lightningand he was taking no chances whatever with the safety of his lovely wifeand their three wonderful kids.
He did not know, he did not even suspect, that under certain conditionsof atmospheric potential and of ground-magnetic stress his perfectlydesigned lightning-rod system would become a super-powerful magnet forflying vortices of atomic disintegration.
And now Neal Cloud, atomic physicist, sat at his desk in a strained,dull apathy. His face was a yellowish-gray white, his tendoned handsgripped rigidly the arms of his chair. His eyes, hard and lifeless,stared unseeingly past the small, three-dimensional block portrait ofall that had made life worth living.
For his guardian against lightning had been a vortex-magnet at themoment when a luckless wight had attempted to abate the nuisance of a"loose" atomic vortex. That wight died, of course—they almost alwaysdo—and the vortex, instead of being destroyed, was simply broken upinto an indefinite number of widely-scattered new vortices. And one ofthese bits of furious, uncontrolled energy, resembling more nearly ahandful of material rived from a sun than anything else with whichordinary man is familiar, darted toward and crashed downward to earththrough Neal Cloud's new house.
That home did not burn; it simply exploded. Nothing of it, in it, oraround it stood a chance, for in a fractional second of time the placewhere it had been was a crater of seething, boiling lava—a crater whichfilled the atmosphere to a height of miles with poisonous vapors; whichflooded all circumambient space with lethal radiations.
Cosmically, the whole thing was infinitesimal. Ever since man learnedhow to liberate intra-atomic energy, the vortices of disintegration hadbeen breaking out of control. Such accidents had been happening, werehappening, and would co