Halogen spotlights created a bubble of light around the building, which shone in the dark like an underwater sea station. The plant was surrounded by three-metre-high metal fencing. To get inside, you had to pass through a gate with a yellow sign. It had a skull painted on it and warned: ‘HIGH VOLTAGE. DANGER. KEEP OUT.’ In the yard around the little brick building two rows of big metal transformers were lined up and hummed like bee hives. Heaps of wires were wrapped around some ceramic electrodes and then stuck into the ground. Zombie, in his brief career as an apprentice electrician, had at most dealt with the electrical plant of Villa Giorgini in Capranica, a nine-kilowatt, three-phase system for domestic use, with a safety switch and electricity meter. Now he was faced with a real, proper miniature power station. He remembered having read something about them in the correspondence course he'd done with Scuola Radio Elettra. There were thermal power stations, hydropower and nuclear power stations.
