The laboratory shook yet again. Bookcases lifted from the floor and crashed against the ceiling, spilling journals over the heaving linoleum. Glassware shattered and sprayed. Machine fragments bounced to powder, like seeds on the skin of a beating drum. Beneath a heavy table, Prof. Witkin and Dr. Rockwood braced themselves desperately against the earthquake.
“They must have put the equatorial vice in place!” Witkin shrieked to her companion. “Nothing else could create such tectonic disturbance!”
“But why? What could the Cestarrians hope to achieve?” Rockwood yelled back.
“They want to destabilize the Earth. Due to the planetary rotation, the earth is an oblate spheriod. It’s flattened at the top and bulging around the equator. Any alteration would have cataclysmic consequences. By tighting the equatorial vice, they can-”
“Oh god, no!” Rockwood gasped as he realised the invaders’ terrible purpose.
“Yes,” the professor’s face was grey and despairing. “The Cestarrians are going to make the world go round.”