Marc stared down at her in growing horror. A small, agonized memory screamed out of the dark inner shadows of his awareness.

"Oh, Lord!" he cried. "I'm dying!"

"And if those licensed butchers get to hacking you up, you're a goner," Toffee said anxiously. "I have the inside information. There isn't much time. I've got to concentrate like wild."

"But...!"

"Quiet!" Toffee broke in. "Please be quiet," she closed her eyes again and her lips began to move as before. "Molecules," she murmured.

Marc remained rigid at her side. Panic rose inside him and filled his throat. His impulse was to turn and run blindly—perhaps back to that dying mortal body—but his terror held him transfixed. Staring down at Toffee, he felt he might go mad in the next moment. In the next moment he was certain he had.

Just in front of Toffee, close to the mossy greenness, he caught sight of a quick flicker of light, a strange disembodied illumination that was at once its own source and product. As he watched it flickered again, grew brighter and became a steady radiance. He glanced back at Toffee, but her face had become fixed and masklike. Her lips no longer moved.

The radiance grew swiftly, to an almost unbearable brightness. In it there was a cold hard suggestion of metal. Then it began to take form and solidify. Marc blinked as the thing, whatever it was, grew slowly out of the gleaming brilliance.

First a cylinder emerged, about a foot long and four or five inches in diameter. For a moment the object seemed to have completed itself, but then, one at either end, a pair of funnel-shaped openings emerged. These completed, a small, two-way switch arrangement appeared at the top and in the center of the cylinder. After that, the radiance was gone and only the strange instrument remained, lying on the grass before Toffee as though cast there by a careless hand.

"What—!" Marc gasped.

Toffee's perky features relaxed. She opened her eyes.

"Did it turn out all right?" she asked brightly. "Is it finished?"

"Huh?" Marc asked. He pointed. "You mean that?"

 Prev. P 12/79 next