taken out on the cigar.

"Am I late?" asked Norma.

"No," said Peter in an unhappy voice. He was upset. Walter Higgins had backed this project grudgingly. He disliked the evidence of emotional entanglement between his daughter and Peter Mansfield. And instead of Norma Higgins playing it quiet and glossing over the old man's angry attitude, Norma was practically shoving her interest in Mansfield into her father's disapproving face.

"Get going," snapped Higgins from around his cigar.

Peter swallowed a large lump. From the desk he picked up a cube of metal. "This is a two inch cube of iron," he said shakily. "For the first demonstration, I will convert the cube into its radiation equivalent, send the radiation down the length of the laboratory, and reassemble it at the receiving equipment down there. Once this has been done, I have a number of other objects to transmit, in increasing complexity. For instance, there is a pair of pliers to show that alloy steels can be faithfully reproduced, and also that a moving joint can be maintained. We have a cheap alarm clock to show that the energy coiled in the mainspring can be transmitted without much loss, if any. I'll have to determine any such losses later, gentlemen. Next we will send a standard radio vacuum tube to show that not only can a whole horde of elements and compounds be transmitted, but that a vacuum can be maintained, even though the reconstruction takes place in the presence of an atmosphere. Finally—"

"Let's see the first thing first," grunted Higgins impatiently.

Peter nodded and swallowed.

"This is the transmitter-end," he said. "The thick concrete wall is to protect operator and spectators from the radiation that comes from my bombardment. The receiving end needs no such shielding because all the hard gamma that passes across the intervening space is of such a short wavelength that it passes freely without any resonant absorption or interception. Once the beam converges, all of the energy is used in reconstructing the original atom. Ergo, no free radiation."

Peter sat down at the control desk. He fiddled with switches and dials until meters read to his satisfaction. In a large plate glass mirror hung above the shield, he and the visitors could see over the concrete barrier.

From a block-shaped enclosure there came a thin pencil of bright blue ionization. The line 

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