“You can’t leave yet—you haven’t given Hewett a chance to prove his point, or even to let me explain.” Barney was angry, angry at himself, at the dying company that employed him, at the blindness of man, at the futility of man, at the fact he was overdrawn in the bank. He raced up behind L.M. and whipped the smoking Havana from his chops. “We’ll have a real demonstration, something you can appreciate!”

“They cost two bucks apiece! Give it back—”

“You’ll have it back, but watch this first.” He hurled the beer bottle to the floor and put the cigar on the platform. “Which one of these gadgets is the power control?” he asked Hewett.

“This rheostat controls the input, but why? You cannot raise the temporal displacement level without burning out the equipment—stop!”

“You can buy new equipment, but if you don’t convince L.M., you’re on the rocks and you know it. Shoot for the moon!”

Barney held the protesting professor off with one hand while he spun the power to full on and slammed the operation switch shut. This time the results were far more spectacular. The scream rose to a banshee wail that hurt their ears, the tubes glowed with all the fires of hell, brighter and brighter, while static charges played over the metal frames; their hair stood straight up from their heads and gave off sparks.

“I’m electrocuted!” L.M. shouted as, with a last burst of energy, all the tubes glared and exploded and the lights went out.

“There—look there!” Barney shouted as he thumbed his Ronson to life and held the flame out. The metal platform was empty.

“You owe me two bucks.”

“Look, gone! Two seconds at least, three… four… five… six…”

The cigar suddenly reappeared on the platform, still smoking, and L.M. grabbed it up and took a deep drag.

“All right, so it’s a time machine, so I believe you. But what has this got to do with making films or keeping Climactic off the rocks?”