Tunnels 03, Freefall

spoke. "All these handles are up, which means that no connection is being made... so they're in the off position." It was as though a silent and irresistible invitation had been issued to try them. Will nodded, fascinated to see what his father was going to do next.
    Dr. Burrows was reaching for the first of the handles as Will spotted some words stenciled in red on the wall to the side of the panel. "Hey, Dad -- To be operated by authorized personnel only ," he read out quickly.
    This caused Dr. Burrows to hesitate, holding his hand a few centimeters away from the handle. He hummed undecidedly as he rubbed his thumb against his fingers.
    "Well, are we going to try it or not?" Will said.
    Dr. Burrows drew in a breath, then let it out with a contemplative hum.
    "All this looks like it came out of the ark," he said. "It probably won't work anyway... so I don't see why we shouldn't give it a shot."
    "Yeah, do it, Dad," Will urged him.
    "Yeah," Dr. Burrows echoed, although he never normally used the word. He took hold of the first handle and swung it down so it clicked firmly into place. They peered round the room, the light of Will's lantern slashing through the gloom, but nothing appeared to have changed. They could hear water dripping outside, but all else was silent.
    "Do you really think--?" Will said, as he began to ask himself if they should find out what the switches were for before they went any further.
    But Dr. Burrows had already gripped the second handle and whipped it down. There was a large blue flash ash the contacts met, and a sizzling sound. Father and son jumped back in surprise. There room was immediately flooded with illumination from an array of wall-mounted bulkhead lights.
    "Ohh, that's bright!" Will exclaimed, shielding his eyes.
    Although it took them a while to get used to the brilliance, they now had a clear view of their surroundings. Dr. Burrows tried the other switches, and found that two of the remaining three were working, as they crackled with blue sparks. On the panel above, the needles in the circular dials twitched and clicked under their hazy glass. Right in the middle of the panel, a pointer crept across a large rectangular gauge.
    "That must be the overall power level," Dr. Burrows said, wiping the dust from it.
    "How do you know that?" Will asked, fully aware that his father found any gadget more complicated than a toaster a challenge.
    "Educated guess," Dr. Burrows said with a smile. He indicated the row of figures under the needle. "This scale seems to be in megawatts, so I'm probably right."
    Will nodded as he began to study the room more closely. It had a low ceiling and unpainted concrete walls, and other than the metal table and chairs it was completely empty. "Over there," Will said, pointing. At the far end of the room, there was a door which was easily twice as wide as the one they had come through.
    "Leave it for the moment," Dr. Burrows told him, still examining the vacillating needles in the smaller dials. "This switching panel has to be decades old, so the power can't be coming from batteries or any sort of stored charge. The state of this place -- good as it is -- doesn't really lead one to believe that it's been maintained, and batteries would have run out by now. That leaves a connection to the grid above, which is also impossible, bec--"
    "Because we're too far down for that?" Will cut in.
    "Precisely," Dr. Burrows continued, scratching his whiskery chin. "So it's either geothermal or hydroelectric power. Given the water outside, I'd put my money on hydroelectric."
    "One thing's for sure, this has nothing to do with the Colony, has it?" Will asked.
    "No, it's ours. It's surface technology," Dr. Burrows said, wiping more of the dust from the dials with his thumb. "But from yonks ago by the looks of it." His hand hovered over a bank of chunky switches under the heading 'External', each labeled with a letter from A to K. "In for a penny," he declared before clicking them all on. This dial on the large central meter swerved momentarily to the left, then crawled back to the center, where it seemed to settle down again. Dr. Burrows twisted around to the dust-filmed windows. "Yes, I think that's done the trick," he muttered as they both went to the windows and saw the glow outside.
    They hurriedly exited the building through the partially opened door. Glaring lights hung down from rails strung across the roof of the cavern, revealing the full extent of the platform, and