SOJALS rating:

Awful (1/5)

I first read this in 1972 and most recently on the 3rd April 2007

Today the USA starts a radical change-over to broadcast power. No more power cables crisscrossing the country, now the power is beamed directly to the requesting devices. A tremendous step into the future.

Contemporaneously, a tornado develops in the Bermudas. It's getting very big indeed. Astoundingly big. And the rate it is growing is scary indeed. There can't be any connection with the new broadcast power system can there?

Grayle has been a resident at Caine Island Federal Penitentiary for many years. He's no trouble for the guards, he keeps quiet and of course nowadays he's an old guy. Odd then that at about the same time as the power broadcast commences and the tornado starts, and - after all the years of quietude - Grayle becomes disruptive, a serious problem for the warden.

Grayle's bout of bad behaviour does bring to light the rather surprising fact that no one knows just how long he's been in prison. Apparently he murdered a man with an axe. But the original records are missing, and he's been transferred to so many prisons over so many years. It is odd though, because it really is quite hard to find the original trial papers, at least not in the past century or so.

Well, I always found this good old-fashioned fun. Two superhumans battle for the future of the Earth. Whoops, I suppose that might have been a bit of a spoiler.