Then, sensibly, he urged Kingston back into the speedster and raced away, ten, fifteen miles. Then in his speedster Maddox pressed a button. Behind them on the desert a burst of intolerable light, like a million suns compressed into a minute sphere, cast its instantaneous glare across the face of the earth. Like an expanding hemisphere of pure sun-flame, it dinned against the very substance of space and hurled its terrible energy outward. Thunder came then and the still-intolerably bright explosion flashed in multicolored bursts as the shock wave started to rise. Up and up and up into the stratosphere rose the towering ice-cap to roll into a cauliflower shape. And then up through this bursting-white cloud there darted another pillar of sheer flame-energy, to rise above the first and to go on up into the very upper reaches of the atmosphere. Standing aghast, Kingston and Maddox watched the scene with horror. Minutes passed before they could speak, and then it was with bitter fear. Maddox pointed to the ground below the towering pillar of cooling hell. There was a sunlike flame there, burning more brightly by the second. The ground rumbled faintly and, upon the ground at their feet, two shadows were cast which added to the complete unearthliness of the scene. "Now?" demanded Kingston. "Not now," growled Maddox angrily. "Our equipment was utterly destroyed in that blast." "Then we lost?" "No. All we need do is to return and prepare a radio-controlled speedster to carry another space resonator into the near-scene. Then we can send that pillar of hell back where it came from." "Think you'll have any trouble?" worried Kingston. "Nope," said Maddox. "I've been thinking about this for some time. We can do it!" "Then how are we going to transfer a good bit of that flame to Earth One?" "I won't mind going over," said Maddox. "I'll see to it that Earth One gets a goodly dose. In fact, I think it might be a good idea to set up a relay system to bring bits of it through and send to other parts of the earth at one time. We can set atomic fires all over Earth One within a matter of seconds." "Might restart several on Earth Two also," suggested Kingston. "Nothing like speeding things up a bit." Maddox nodded, but there was a worried frown on his face. "There's one thing I don't relish," he said. "So far as we know, the only bit of radioisotopic phosphor containing the resonant element lies in the laboratory of Ed Bronson on Earth One." "That's your only doorway?" "To Earth One, yes." "Then--" "Then we return to our vantage point and watch. Sooner or later they will leave that set-up unguarded and we can get through to place other focal elements at a safer place on Earth One." "Well," smiled Kingston, "once Virginia Carlson gets rid of Ed Bronson they must sooner or later leave that place unguarded and we can break in. Let's go and wait."