“Professor Hewett,” Barney said, pushing L.M. forward, “This is the man I talked to you about, none other than the head of Climactic Studios himself, Mr. L.M. Greenspan.”

“Yes, of course, come in…” The professor blinked fishily behind his round glasses and stood aside so they could enter.

Once the door was closed behind his back L.M. sighed and surrendered, allowing himself to be led down a flight of squeaking stairs into the basement. He halted abruptly when he caught sight of the banks of electrical equipment, the festooned wires and humming apparatus.

“What is this? It looks like an old set for Frankenstein.”

“Let the professor explain.” Barney urged him forward.

“This is my life work,” Hewett said, waving his hand roughly in the direction of the toilet.

“What kind of life work is that?”

“He means the machines and apparatus, he’s just not pointing very well.”

Professor Hewett did not hear them. He was busy making adjustments at a control board. A thin whining rose in pitch and sparks began to fall from a hulking mass of machinery.

“There!” he said, pointing dramatically—and with considerably more accuracy this time—at a metal platform set on thick insulators, “That is the heart of the vremeatron, where the displacement takes place. I will not attempt to explain the mathematics to you, you could not possibly understand them, or go into the complex details of the machine’s construction. I feel that a demonstration of the vremeatron in operation will be wisest at this point.” He bent and groped under a table and brought out a dusty beer bottle that he put on the metal platform.

“What is a vremeatron?” L.M. asked suspiciously.

“This is. I shall now demonstrate. I have placed a simple object in the field which I shall now activate. Watch closely.”