his breath.

From outside in fabrication came the muffled clang of drill press and
power brake, the sounds of the night shift. He waited. Three aisles
over, something moved. Someone fumbled in the stock bins, collecting
shaped pieces of metal, grunting with the effort of piling them on the
salvage bench, now panting with impatience while assembling the parts.
There was a hammering, a fitting together, a flash of light, a humming
of power and finally a sob of relief.

Vogel's hand slipped into his coat pocket and grasped the gun. He
moved silently.

Amenth stood at the salvage bench, adjusting studs and connecting
terminals. Vogel stared at the final assembly.

It was a helmet. A large silvery helmet, connected to a nightmarish
maze of wiring, mounted on a rectangular plastic base. It hummed,
although there was no visible source of power. Amenth put on the
helmet with a feverish haste. Vogel chuckled. Amenth stood motionless.
Then as his hand darted toward a stand, Vogel said sharply, "Don't!"

Amenth stared at the gun.

"Take it off!" Vogel's voice was iron.

Amenth slowly took off the helmet. His eyes were golden with tears.
"Please," he said.

"Mars or Venus?" Vogel said. "Which?"

"N-neither. You could not grasp the concept. Let me go. Please!"

"Where?" Vogel prodded. "Another dimension?"

"You would call it that," the alien whispered. Hope brightened his
face. "You want something? Wealth? Power?"

It was the way he said the words, like a white trader offering his
aborigine captors glass beads to set him free.

Vogel nodded toward the circuit. "That hookup--you tap the
gravitational field direct? Cosmic rays?"

"Your planet's magnet force lines. Look, I'll leave you the schematic
diagram. It's simple, really. You can use it to transmute--" He
babbled on with a heartbreaking eagerness, and Vogel listened.

"In my own world," said Amenth brokenly, "I am a moron. A criminal
moron. Once, out of a childish malice, I destroyed beauty. One of the
singing crystals." He shuddered. "I was punished. They sent me
here--to the snake pit. Sentence for felony. This--" he indicated the
helmet--"would have fused three seconds after I used it. So,
incidentally, would this entire shop. I had no time to construct a
feedback dispersion."

"Tell me about your world," Vogel said.

Amenth told him.

Vogel's breath hissed softly between his teeth. All his life an
unformed vision had tormented him, driven him toward