Suddenly he leaped back a foot, his hands lifted as if he had touched a
hot surface. His face was white, his eyes were wide open, and he was
breathing hard. His body was trembling as if he were deadly frightened.
Zip shot forward, pushing his way through the crowd to reach Mark.
"What is it, Mark? What's wrong?" His voice was urgent.
"The power plant-it's thousands of years old!" Mark wasn't looking at
Zip-he was still looking forward, as if his eyes were being drawn to
the controls. "Pressing this button..." he stopped and swallowed hard,
and blinked twice. "Pressing this button is the last step in activating
the rest of the power plant. It should give us the power we need,
but-but it's clear that it hasn't been activated for thousands of
years. There's no way to tell whether it's safe. This is a complicated
system. If something is wrong," Mark slowly turned to face Zip, "If
something is wrong, if a bolt has slipped into the wrong place, if
Zimbardo bypassed a vital circuit somewhere, or if a conduit is stopped
up anywhere, all the energy this plant can produce could blow back at
us. The entire works could explode into a million pieces."
Zip looked at the floor for an instant, then looked up again and stared
directly into Mark's eyes. "You're right, Mark; but there's no other
choice.
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