Potter's curious mental state persisted--that white light of clarity which embraced everything. He did not seem to have to reason to reach conclusions; if one could conceive of flames whose temperature was not heat, but frightful cold; if one could conceive of those flames casting their vivid, super-brilliant light so that it froze to ice crystal everything upon which it fell, one might understand his sensations. That and a silence as if the world had been dead a million years--a sense of the dead silence of things in which the dropping of a pin would have wrenched and reverberated around the globe! It had a nightmare quality which lacked only a horrid terror to make it cross the hair-line between reason and unreason.... Old Angus pottered about, a huge Stilson wrench clutched in his hand. The others were invisible. Potter looked at his watch; it was ten minutes past eleven. In a vague way he wondered if it were ten minutes past eleven on that same night or if years had intervened. He was peering through a window that faced toward the lake. Out of the obscurity of a mist arisen from the lake emerged dark movement, and the movement resolved itself into a black daub that bore resemblance to the shape of a man. It was followed by a second black daub and by a third. Potter watched them, every nerve tense as the strings of a violin. Were they his own men walking about on sentry? He could not tell. He stepped softly to the door at the opposite side of the building, opened it silently, crept out, and made his way with cat-tread around the corner, there to wait, crouching. The black daubs stole closer. There was not even a whisper. One of them knelt beside the hangar. There was a slight sound--the ignition of a match--a shaded glow--then a tiny splutter.... Potter knew. His guard had been passed; the enemy had set its bomb, had lighted its fuse. He arose and leaped upon the kneeling man, nor did he know that as he leaped he shouted.