I had been blinded when I switched them off, had stumbled over the machine, fallen, all the rest of it. But I'd come to with night vision, naturally. I saw well enough then by the moonlight streaming in the lab windows. All the lights--the machine, too--could have been off, with the fuses blown, without my noticing it. I had assumed the machine was on because its switch was closed, had opened the switch and jerked out the cord plug. What happened had therefore required a tremendous spurt of juice in the circuits, or else a heck of a lot less juice than we carry in our lab outlets. So I took home the prints on the rig and began making changes. Which led to more changes. Which resulted in some rather complicated mathematics to which we scientific chaps resort when the kind we teach in colleges just won't work out right. I got it: a very low power-input. And I got more. The thing is a sort of invisible ray. It can only be emitted, or broadcast, as a narrow beam from the muzzle-coils of a very fancy-looking electronic rig. Low power is a must; more juice not only heats up the rig and smokes insulation, but it won't shoot the beam. I tested it on the black tulips (Biochemical Research Project 187) which I got to close up by the clock, not by the Sun, last year (Project 187-A) and their blossoms closed each time the beam touched them. The purple mushrooms which fluff their tops in radioactivity showed no effects. It works on a simple "A" battery. But there's a transistor hookup that behaves like no transistor. Its molecular structure vibrates, which it shouldn't, and emits a sharp, keening note in the vicinity of E flat. A rather bulky muffler would be required, I'm afraid, to get rid of that noise. But the oddest thing, technically, is that invisible ray-beam. It hasn't any of the effects of electric shock. I'll not go into the electro-neurological aspects of that--nobody could understand it except, just possibly, a neurologist--but the simple fact is that this ray puts a victim to sleep instantly _and it doesn't do anything else_! No blockages or convulsions of nerve ganglia, not even a temporary catharsis of "mild" shock! Apparently it gallops up the "white matter" of the nervous system quite harmlessly, then smacks the "gray matter"--the brain, the spinal column--a good wallop. Painlessly. In short, the victim just flops over and snores up a half-hour or so, and then awakens as if from a short nap, though perhaps with some puzzlement. There is no injury whatsoever. * * * * * Naturally I wanted to find out how the Cooling Effect worked and why--though I may never learn _what_ it is. Hypnosis? Artificially induced, instantaneous sleep? (Victims can be handled without awakening.) Of course, I was curious. I'd have gone through it step by step for my own satisfaction, even if somebody else had already done it before.