Petlyura turned. With a gesture of supremely arrogant impatience he struck with his whip at my apparatus. I was horrified. The tripod wobbled but held. ‘They’ll never guess what it is. They have no money. They can’t pay you. Take it to the French. They’ll give you what you ask.’ He was suspicious of something. He was mad.
I became confused and distracted as I attempted to right the machine before the precious vacuum tube was thrown out of alignment. But Petlyura had already done his worst. The machine would take hours to re-set. I told him nothing of that. ‘You asked me to build this.’
‘And it doesn’t work!’
‘You have not given it a fair trial.’
‘Very well. Use it now. Sweep Trukhanov.’
‘I will do my best. You have probably made it impossible...’
‘Destroy Trukhanov.’
I shrugged and pointed the projector in the general direction of the island. I began to move it as a man might move a machine gun, spraying from side to side. Nothing, naturally, happened.
Petlyura was laughing. ‘I’m in a hurry, comrade.’
I noticed from my instruments that not enough power was going through the transformer. ‘The power has been diverted. I must use the Voltaics.’ I pointed up the narrow stair to where they were arranged. ‘Someone must pull that large switch all the way down when I give the word.’
Petlyura was staring at me as if he believed himself crazy. ‘Will it work?’
‘Pull the switch!’
