"Try another station;" the kid insisted stubbornly. I pushed all the
buttons in succession; the static crackled and buzzed, the panel
light flickered on and off in little cryptic flashes. I sighed. "And
reception was perfect at noon," I told him, "You were listening to the
news." I took my hand away again. "I don't want to blow the thing up."
Andy came over and switched the button back on. The little panel light
glowed steadily, and the mellow voice of Milton Cross filled the
room ... "now conduct the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra in the Fifth
or 'Fate' symphony of Ludwig von Beethoven ..." the noise of mixed
applause, and then the majestic chords of the symphony, thundering
through the rooms of the cabin.
"Ta-da-da-dumm----Ta-da-da-DUMM!"
My brother stared at me as racing woodwinds caught up with the brasses.
There was nothing wrong with the radio. "Mike. What did you do to it?"
"I wish I knew," I told him. Reaching, I touched the volume button
again.
Beethoven died in a muttering static like a thousand drums.
I swore and Andy sucked in his breath between his teeth, edging warily
backward. He touched the dials again; once more the smoothness of the
"Fate" symphony rolled out and swallowed us. I shivered.
"You'd better let it alone!" Andy said shakily.
The kid turned in early, but I stayed in the main room, smoking
restlessly and wishing I could get a drink without driving eighty miles
over bad mountain roads. Neither of us had thought to turn off the
radio; it was moaning out some interminable throbbing jazz. I turned
over my notes, restlessly, not really seeing them. Once Andy's voice
came sleepily from the alcove.
"Going to read all night, Mike?"
"If I feel like it," I said tersely and began walking up and down again.
"Michael! For the luvvagod stop it and let me get some sleep!" Andy
exploded, and I sank down in the chair again. "Sorry, Andy."
Where had the intangible part of me been, those eighteen hours when
I first lay crushed under a fallen beam, then under morphine in the
hospital? Where had those scars come from? More important, what had
made a radio lab blow up in the first place? Electricity sets fires; it
shocks men into insensibility or death. It doesn't explode. Radio waves
are in themselves harmless. Most important of all, what maniac freak of
lightning was I carrying in my body that made me immune to electrical
current? I hadn't told Andy about the time I'd deliberately grounded
the electric dynamo in the cellar and taken the whole voltage in my
body. I was still alive. It would have been a hell of a way to commit
suicide--but I hadn't.
I swore, slamming down the window. I was going to bed. Andy was right.
Either I was crazy or there was something wrong; in any case, sitting
here wouldn't help. If it didn't let up, I'd take the first train home
and see a good electrician--or a psychiatrist. But right now, I was
going to hit the sack.
My hand went out automatically and switched the light off.
"Damn!" I thought incredulously. I'd shorted the dynamo again. The
radio stopped as if the whole orchestra had dropped dead; every light
in the cabin winked swiftly out, but my hand on the switch crackled
with a phosphorescent glow as the entire house current poured into my
body. I tingled with weird shock; I heard my own teeth chattering.
And something snapped wide open in my brain. I heard, suddenly, an
excited voice, shouting.
"Rhys! _Rhys!_ That is the man!"