Explore "Invaders from the Infinite" by John W. Campbell on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"What happened to him, though? " asked Wade, bewildered. "I haven't yet figured it out. He went down in a heap, and he didn't have any power. Of course, if he had his power he could have pulled out again. He could just melt and burn all the excess rock off, and he would be all set. But his rays all went dead. And why the explosion?"
"The magnetic beam is the answer. In our boat we have everything magnetically shielded, because of the enormous magnetic flux set up by the current flowing from the storage coils to the main coil. But -- with so many wires heavily charged with current, what would have happened if they had not been shielded?