"Then he did escape from the blast," Dixon admitted reluctantly. "He must have leaped from the cart just before the concussion." Reinhart nodded. "He escaped. He got away from you--twice." He pushed the vidsender box away and leaned abruptly toward the man standing uneasily in front of his desk. "What's your name again?" "Elliot. Richard Elliot." "And your son's name?" "Steven." "It was last night this happened?" "About eight o'clock." "Go on." "Steven came into the house. He acted queerly. He was carrying his inter-system vidsender." Elliot pointed at the box on Reinhart's desk. "That. He was nervous and excited. I asked what was wrong. For awhile he couldn't tell me. He was quite upset. Then he showed me the vidsender." Elliot took a deep, shaky breath. "I could see right away it was different. You see I'm an electrical engineer. I had opened it once before, to put in a new battery. I had a fairly good idea how it should look." Elliot hesitated. "Commissioner, it had been _changed_. A lot of the wiring was different. Moved around. Relays connected differently. Some parts were missing. New parts had been jury rigged out of old. Then I discovered the thing that made me call Security. The vidsender--it really _worked_." "Worked?" "You see, it never was anything more than a toy. With a range of a few city blocks. So the kids could call back and forth from their rooms. Like a sort of portable vidscreen. Commissioner, I tried out the vidsender, pushing the call button and speaking into the microphone. I--I got a ship of the line. A battleship, operating beyond Proxima Centaurus--over eight light years away. As far out as the actual vidsenders operate. Then I called Security. Right away." For a time Reinhart was silent. Finally he tapped the box lying on the desk. "You got a ship of the line--with _this_?" "That's right." "How big are the regular vidsenders?" Dixon supplied the information. "As big as a twenty-ton safe." "That's what I thought." Reinhart waved his hand impatiently. "All right, Elliot. Thanks for turning the information over to us. That's all." Security police led Elliot outside the office. Reinhart and Dixon looked at each other. "This is bad," Reinhart said harshly. "He has some ability, some kind of mechanical ability. Genius, perhaps, to do a thing like this. Look at the period he came from, Dixon. The early part of the twentieth century. Before the wars began. That was a unique period. There was a certain vitality, a certain ability. It was a period of incredible growth and discovery. Edison. Pasteur. Burbank. The Wright brothers. Inventions and machines. People had an uncanny ability with machines. A kind of intuition about machines--which we don't have." "You mean--"