Stan Ross signified his assent, and the two approached the monster on the long work bench. Stan felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. Dick attached to the input terminal of the set a long outdoor antenna, which, including the inductances which it contained every fifty feet, contained more than five miles of wire. There were no filaments in the tubes, hence the only batteries needed were some high-voltage blocks, some five hundred volts, altogether. At the extreme right of the panel were two output terminals, across which Dick had temporarily hooked a milliammeter, not knowing whether the output of the set would be auditory, visual, or what. He turned the 110 volts of the lighting system into the step-up transformer connected to the projector tube; the lights blinked, dimmed, and the huge V-Ray tube came to life, glowing greenly. The hum from the transformer seemed to drone a warning, in its ominous sixty-cycle growl--occasionally its safety gap broke down and a viciously snapping tongue of violet flame crashed between the terminals and added its weird glare to the green glow that filled the room. Dick, looking monstrous in heavy leaden surplice, goggles and gloves, grasped the projector controls and swept the tubes below with the ray. Peering over his shoulder Stan watched the vacuum tubes begin to glow as the V-rays bombarded, with billions of electrons, their radium-coated elements. First a point at the base of each tube became incandescent, grew, and finally resolved itself into a ruddy ball of fire and rolled to the top of the plates, where it exploded and spread over the quartz surfaces as an opal luminescence, turning them into swirling blazes of color-- lavender, gold, red. Stan drew back, dizzied and half-hypnotized by the swirling spectra. The tubes seemed alive. _Alive!_ The word drummed through his befogged brain. Dick adjusted the first tube. “Equivalent to inductance,” he muttered. “I tune the set with it.” The milliammeter quivered slightly, responding to atmospherics, presumably, for there were no stations operating at the time on the wave length to which the set was tuned. Stan looked at his watch. “In one minute,” he said, “the largest broadcasting station in San Francisco will come on.” The room became deathly quiet save for the hum of the transformer and the ticking of the watch which Stan held in his hand, as the seconds marched their way into eternity. Then--a spurt of flame, and the milliammeter fell to the floor, not alone burned out, but burned almost in half. The two men stared at each other through their leaden goggles. Stan groped for the telephone on the bench and rang up the broadcasting station. “Hello, hello,” the voice at the other end of the wire answered excitedly, before he had a chance to speak. “The first of a hundred ’phone calls to ask why we’re late? No program tonight--all our tubes blew out at once--generator, too--almost as if something suddenly doubled the load on ’em....”