The Vortex Blaster

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The Vortex Blaster by E.E. Doc Smith.

Introducing Storm Cloud, who through tragedy is destined to become the most noted figure in the galaxy.

The Vortex Blaster.

safety devices that do not protect the unsinkable ships that before the days of bergenholm and of atomic and cosmic energy sank into the waters of earth more particularly safety devices which while protecting against one agent of destruction attract magnet like another and worse such as the armored cable within the walls of a wooden house it protects the electrical conductors within against accidental external shorts but inadequately grounded as it must of necessity be it may attract and upon occasion has attracted the stupendous force of lightning then fused volatilized flaming incandescent through the length breadth and height of the dwelling that dwelling's existence thereafter is to be measured in minutes specifically four lightning rods the lightning rods protecting the chromium glass and plastic home of neil cloud those rods were adequately grounded grounded with copper silver cables the bigness of a strong man's arm for neil cloud atomic physicist knew his lightning and he was taking no chances whatever with the safety of his lovely wife and their three wonderful kids he did not know he did not even suspect that under certain conditions of atmospheric potential and of ground magnetic stress his perfectly designed lightning-rod system would become a super powerful magnet for flying vortices of atomic disintegration and now neil cloud atomic physicist sat at his desk in a strained dull apathy his face was a yellowish-gray white his tendon hands gripped rigidly the arms of his chair his eyes hard and lifeless stared unseeingly past the small three-dimensional block portrait of all that had made life worth living for his guardian against lightning had been a vortex magnet at the moment when a luckless white had attempted to abate the nuisance of a loose atomic vortex that white died of course they almost always do and the vortex instead of being destroyed was simply broken up into an indefinite number of widely scattered new vortices and one of these bits of furious uncontrolled energy resembling more nearly a handful of material rived from a sun than anything else with which ordinary man is familiar darted toward and crashed downward to earth through neil cloud's new house that home did not burn it simply exploded nothing of it in it or around it stood a chance for in a fractional second of time the place where it had been was a crater of seething boiling lava a crater which filled the atmosphere to a height of miles with poisonous vapors which flooded all circumambient space with lethal radiations cosmically the whole thing was infinitesimal ever since man learned how to liberate intra-atomic energy the vortices of disintegration had been breaking out of control such accidents had been happening were happening and would continue indefinitely to happen more than one world perhaps had been or would be consumed to the last gram by such loose atomic vortices what of that of what real importance are a few grains of sand to an ocean beach five thousand miles long a hundred miles wide and ten miles deep and even to that individual grain of sand called earth or in modern parlance sol three or telus of sol or simply telus the affair was of negligible importance one man had died but in dying he had added one more page to the thick bulk of negative results already on file that Mrs.

Cloud and her children had perished was merely unfortunate.

By sheer force of will and nerve he forced his left hand across the gyrating key-bank to the Bergenholm switch.

He snapped it, and in the instant of its closing a vast, calm piece descended blanket-like.