The entire crust of the Earth in this particular area, agitated by the many continent-sized plates of Von Neumann crystals of Pellucid, built up a negative charge of unthinkable magnitude, and concentrated it on one spot: directly under the nine-mile-wide mouth of the Bell. For a moment before the actual bolt struck, Saint Elmo’s fire and balled lightning could be seen crawling across the tree stumps and icy hillocks of the ground. Lightning bolts climbed and exploded from between hilltop and hilltop like sparks from a Jacob’s Ladder.

For some reason, none were near the Tomb itself, or near any of the knights, even though the power crackled and crawled from peak to peak and tree to tree in a wide circle all around them. The Bell was not directly above the Tombs in any case; the midpoint of the open mouth was four miles away. Four miles away was the point of discharge.

Then the bolt struck.

It hung between the instantaneously formed lake of lava below the mouth and the pattern of white and brown and black structures, buildings and factories and robotic housings, visible inside the open mouth of the Bell.

A normal lightning bolt is, at best, a foot in diameter of ionized air surrounding a thread-thin stream of electric current. This bolt was a force half a mile in diameter surrounded by a field of ions six or seven miles in diameter, and the vacuum formed by its passage caused the surrounding atmosphere to rush into the Bell mouth at twice the speed of sound.

It was brighter than the sun, bright as a nova, and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lesser lightning bolts crowded around it, writhing like dragons whirled into its midst as it appeared. It was a white fire larger than the cone formed by a tornado, and all the air between the opening of the Bell and the ground below was not merely ionized, but due to the immensity of the heat and discharge, underwent fission.

What few strands of the lightning storm that were attracted to the outer hull, of course, accomplished no effect, aside from breaking a few hundred thousand of the maneuvering jets, which spilled countless metric tons of rocket fuel into the air, which (in turn) was then ignited by the surrounding heat and electricity, and fell to earth as a rain of fire.

The main effect struck the interior. The heat of the electrical discharge formed a mushroom cloud, looking remarkably like a cnidarian itself, that went boiling upward where the lightning, or, rather, the electron-energy beam-weapon from the Earth’s outer core, had passed. In the mushroom cloud were seen falling buildings, towers, and fiery rectilinear shapes larger than castles struck from the endless interior wallscape of the Bell, looking like so many children’s blocks tossed out of the window of a burning nursery.

From their position five miles from the epicenter of the atmospheric disaster, Del Azarchel and Montrose were unharmed, but they both stood with their arms before their faces, waiting for the winds to die down, and while Del Azarchel’s suit protected him, Montrose was now sunburned along the half of his body that had been facing the event. The cnidarian on which they stood buckled and swayed. It must have had an independent or redundant means of buoyancy, however, for it stayed aloft even while every other cnidarian lifting machine, from those the size of aircraft carriers to those the size of pocket handkerchiefs, toppled with the slowness of great catastrophes toward the earth below. The smaller ones opened their mantles to act as parachute canopies, but even the smaller ones which were too high, or too near the blast, were crumpled and scuttled by the hundred-mile-an-hour winds, and sent leaf-whirling earthward.

Those directly above the lava lake, when they splashed down, sent up a wave of black ash and smoke like the smoke of an open furnace, a wall of darkness so vast that it hid the continuing destruction. Other machines, their tendrils groping and looping helplessly, were carried by the winds as they plunged down and down through thousands of feet of air, as if an army of paratroopers, and all their aircraft large and small, dove at the ground without ever once opening a parachute. The noise was not merely indescribable: Montrose’s remaining ear had failed him. To him, the scene was as silent as a dream.

Looking down, he saw at several points, about half a mile in each direction from the Devil’s Den facility, smoke arising from a line of newly formed craters encircling the whole hilltop. These were the emission points of the various fields and defensive systems designed to protect the Tombs from the discharge of its own primary earth-current beam weapon. It had been designed, of course, with the thought in mind that the roof armor and several yards of insulating bedrock would be intact; but Montrose was gratified that the four or five miles of distance, and the strength of the grounding fields, had been sufficient to spare the Tombs from echoes, reflections, and ricochets of the energy forces involved.

Montrose and Del Azarchel were low enough that the details of the Tomb corridors and chambers were clearly visible. He could see the rotund shape of Mickey the Witch, for example, seated on the throne of the burial chamber, looking upward and clapping his hands together in applause.

With his good hand, Montrose took the hip flask from the listless fingers of Del Azarchel. He shouted, “Thanks! I’ll take that drink now!”

The line of fire in his throat was warm and soothing, and he coughed helplessly. It was oak-barrel-aged Kentucky. He shouted, “Someday, you’ll have to tell me how you managed to preserve so much of the ancient world. All I got is one God’s-snotting poxy box of ciggies left, and not a single damn cigar. Smoked the last one in 7985 while I was sitting on the dead body of Coronimas. Ah! What a smoke.”

Del Azarchel was laughing. Over his implants, Montrose heard a message:

“Ah, Cowhand, always full of surprises! I think you may actually have damaged the internal works of the Tower up to three thousand feet! Since the Tower is over one hundred sixty-five thousand miles high, three thousand feet is less than a pinprick would be if you stepped on it with your big toe. If you had a big toe. Your knights are brave men. I will dedicate this lake to their memory.”

He paused, smiling a seraphic smile.

“The lake, I mean, which will be caused by the nine-mile-wide imprint when I land the foot of the Tower here, and drive the crust of the Earth downward several hundred feet below sea level.

“And, by Saint Iago! It might take the internal autorepair mechanisms of the Tower nearly, ah, twenty minutes to lower into place spare arcologies and factories from midlevel storage to the damaged section. It may take as long as half an hour. None of my people were in that tiny fragment you singed: the living quarters are above the atmosphere line.

“I am immune from any earthly force.

“But your facilities are not immune from the forces of heaven, are they? Let us see what happens when the Tower base is maneuvered over the Tombs to drop the rubble from the damage directly onto the heads of your knights and the people still sleeping in your pit, shall we?

“Come, shoot your puny little sparks again, old friend. Let us see if you can hit the maneuvering anchor asteroid. Can you make even the zenith point of a suborbital arc? Can you send lightning out of the atmosphere with your system? No? Let us see what your vaunted Tombs can do against a real … oh…”

The message over the implants trailed off, and Del Azarchel, now leaning with one boot on the edge of the cnidarian canopy, staring down, looked stricken. His face was blank and drawn, and his eyes were filled with strange sorrow. Montrose was more than puzzled, he was shocked to see such a look on the face of Del Azarchel.

Slowly and painfully (for every movement of any muscle was painful) he turned his head to see what Del Azarchel stared at.