‘That’s our pitch-pipe,’ said Arnott.  ’We may be a bit ragged.  I’ve never conducted two hundred and fifty performers before.’  He pulled out the couplers, and struck a full chord on the Service Communicators.

The beams of light leaped down again, and danced, solemnly and awfully, a stilt-dance, sweeping thirty or forty miles left and right at each stiff-legged kick, while the darkness delivered itself—­there is no scale to measure against that utterance—­of the tune to which they kept time.  Certain notes—­one learnt to expect them with terror—­cut through one’s marrow, but, after three minutes, thought and emotion passed in indescribable agony.

We saw, we heard, but I think we were in some sort swooning.  The two hundred and fifty beams shifted, re-formed, straddled and split, narrowed, widened, rippled in ribbons, broke into a thousand white-hot parallel lines, melted and revolved in interwoven rings like old-fashioned engine-turning, flung up to the zenith, made as if to descend and renew the torment, halted at the last instant, twizzled insanely round the horizon, and vanished, to bring back for the hundredth time darkness more shattering than their instantly renewed light over all Illinois.  Then the tune and lights ceased together, and we heard one single devastating wail that shook all the horizon as a rubbed wet finger shakes the rim of a bowl.

‘Ah, that is my new siren,’ said Pirolo.  ’You can break an iceberg in half, if you find the proper pitch.  They will whistle by squadrons now.  It is the wind through pierced shutters in the bows.’

I had collapsed beside Dragomiroff, broken and snivelling feebly, because I had been delivered before my time to all the terrors of Judgment Day, and the Archangels of the Resurrection were hailing me naked across the Universe to the sound of the music of the spheres.

Then I saw De Forest smacking Arnott’s helmet with his open hand.  The wailing died down in a long shriek as a black shadow swooped past us, and returned to her place above the lower clouds.

‘I hate to interrupt a specialist when he’s enjoying himself,’ said De Forest.  ’But, as a matter of fact, all Illinois has been asking us to stop for these last fifteen seconds.’

‘What a pity.’  Arnott slipped off his mask.  ’I wanted you to hear us really hum.  Our lower C can lift street-paving.’

‘It is Hell—­Hell!’ cried Dragomiroff, and sobbed aloud.

Arnott looked away as he answered: 

’It’s a few thousand volts ahead of the old shoot-’em-and-sink-’em game, but I should scarcely call it that.  What shall I tell the Fleet, sir?’

’Tell ’em we’re very pleased and impressed.  I don’t think they need wait on any longer.  There isn’t a spark left down there.’  De Forest pointed.  ‘They’ll be deaf and blind.’

‘Oh, I think not, sir.  The demonstration lasted less than ten minutes.’

‘Marvellous!’ Takahira sighed.  ’I should have said it was half a night.  Now, shall we go down and pick up the pieces?’