I didn't understand this at all, especially when Summer began feeling her arms and legs and inspecting herself all over, carefully. The sound of the machinery in the basement reached a shrieking crescendo that must have put the teeth of everyone in the neighborhood on edge. Mark came to life. His eyes shining fiercely, he grasped Summer by the arm. "Are they going to hurt Thomas?" he demanded intently. "Are they, Summer?" She looked at me, not the boy, and suddenly she was calm as though in the grip of profound shock. I could hardly hear her quiet, childish voice through the noise from the basement. "Where ... know ... don't," she began haltingly. "Gone ... Summer's but. Furnace the in him had they. Thomas saved I." Her voice trailed to a gurgle and then she began to chant, "Burn Thomas burn Thomas burn Thomas...." The boy suddenly broke from her and began to run for the house. And, BACKWARD, she ran after him. Caught by surprise, it was a moment before I could gather my wits and follow, shouting at them. They had disappeared around the corner of the house, and I rounded it in time to see them tug open the outside basement door and vanish inside. An eerie blue light flickered from the open door. Trying to run too fast, I tripped over the garden hose and fell. I got to my feet, momentarily dazed. The explosion knocked me flat on my back, blinded by the flash that burst from the basement windows and through the cracking walls. The blast tilted the den up from the bottom. Its metal and concrete floor, reinforced for the experiment, buckled but remained unbroken, like a giant slide. Down that slide, through the smashed walls, Wyn catapulted, to fall unhurt into the grass. But the rest of the house crumpled in on the basement and caught fire. Under the blazing piles of ruins, I could only surmise, were trapped the children, both mother and son. * * * * * I wept frantically. At my age, I must have been a pitiful spectacle. Neighbors put their arms around my shoulders, tried to comfort me. In contrast, Wyn was remarkably calm as he reported to Gus Adams. "Every precaution was taken, Mr. Adams," he said, staring morosely into the smoking embers of the house. "Both of them ran into the basement just before the explosion. There was nothing anyone could do after that." "Too bad, Mr. Storm, to lose your wife and son all at once," said Gus sympathetically, writing in his report book. We had kept Summer pretty well concealed behind the high board fence in recent years, so few people were aware of her retrogression. "If there's anything I can do to help, let me know." I upbraided Wyn for his apparent callousness when we got to a room at the City Hotel. "You may be right," he said. "But, first, I want to know something."