"No, really. You know the clocks that go out on every stellar-reporter and come back to the Institute with dope on the composition of this and that place in the Galaxy? You were advanced students, you must have sent them off every day, well, wasn't the clock always slow when it returned?" "Against the dispatching room clock, of course it was," John agreed. "And if there was enough spare material left on Earth to send people apart from emigrants, a man would be younger than his twin when he returned." "Well," I said, "that's what happens here, except that a specimen goes out off a minima plate and comes back onto the maxima plate so fast that the time component is negligible. All that happens is that it gets moved outside the local space-time reference. It doesn't exactly go anywhere, I suppose. But instead of consuming less time on this shift out and in again, the time stays constant and it reappears occupying more space. And there you are, with a magnified version of the original." There was a silence. "Have you ever put anything living on the plate, Morry?" I blushed. John had a knack of uncovering safely hidden facts. "Well, I did make a small mistake once. A grasshopper got on the plate when I wasn't looking. I was magnifying an alumino-silicate and a few seconds after I got the specimen up to size, the grasshopper appeared in the middle of it. I had to reverse the specimen back to get it out. Meant picking the crystal off the plate fast, before the insect came through, but I managed it." "Was it hurt?" "The grasshopper? No. A little stunned, maybe. But perfectly well." I went back to the plates and started another quartz grain. John, Lee and Burns sat and gabbled to each other. "If the crystal lattice was expanded to start with...." "Relative to its size, the crystal would be full of breathing holes...." "You could take in nutrient through a lattice as big as that. It would be relatively porous...." "... molecular pressure...." "... shift that battery and move the galvanometer...." "... take out most of the instruments and fake up the records from the previous trip...." "If we weren't being expelled this evening," said John. They looked at me. "Are you sure about the grasshopper, Morry?" Burns asked. I nodded. * * * * * I had no warning. I had just put a half-inch expanded grain on the minima plate, when Lee White walked onto the maxima and Burns pressed the red button. There was a flicker and White appeared, half an inch tall, in the middle of the expanded quartz crystal on the minima plate. He was able to move his arms. He seemed to be saying something that amused him. I knocked Burns away from the controls, pressed the blue button, whisked the empty crystal off the maxima plate as it came through and only just got it out of the way before Lee White reappeared on the maxima plate, his normal size again. "Well, it works," he said. "You crazy?" I yelled at him.