Dry land, here, where there should tie nothing but a waste of waters!..

The translucent green wall in whose depths I had seen the blind fish rushing toward me. Impossible! There were scientific miracle-workers in the enemy’s ranks, but they couldn’t have hollowed out a pit such as this in mid-ocean; forced back the very ocean to create this amphitheatre, this dry plain on the Atlantic's very bottom; held back the unthinkable weight of Earth's waters by a nothingness. Incredible!..

The great plain had been cleared by the ray. The dim shapes floating high in that far-circling ellipse were pouring down the dreadful vibrations, thus holding back the sea in a marvelous green wall. I remembered the sea-monster that had dashed at me and vanished. That proved it. The dome of cloud was camouflage, or the product of the processes of destruction going on underneath: it didn’t matter. What mattered was that it was interlaced by a network of ray beams. It was an impenetrable wall, a perfect defense...

(The Zeta-Ray installation from'The Death-Cloud' by Schachner and Zagat)

A long row of giant electrode bulbs, as tall as a man, stretched before me — the source of the Zeta-ray. From here came the power that held back the waters, that bored the tunnel. A thunderous knocking shook the door. Someone at a huge switch-board turned toward me. Instantly my hand was out of my pocket, and the ray-tube leveled at the nearest bulb. I pressed the trigger. The bulb crashed. I swept down the line. Crash, crash, crash — they were all gone.