Explore "The Hellflower" by George O. Smith on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Farradyne again ignored the oddness of the sky to examine the small auxiliary panel fastened to one edge of the main control panel. It contained a small meter calibrated in arbitrary units of three colors. The needle stood high, about three-quarter scale, in the middle of the blue region. Below the meter was the toggle switch, and on either side of the switch were flat buttons, blue to the right and red to the left. Behind the panel was a metal box; emerging from the box a cable no longer than a lead pencil snaked away into the maze of wiring behind the main equipment.
He considered the thing carefully. Booby traps were unlikely, but there were destruction-charges used to prevent the capture of secret equipment.