Sam looked puzzled. He turned the contraption over in his hands a couple of times and shifted so the light from the window fell through the spaces between the wires to better advantage.
“I suppose it’s really quite clever,” sighed Sam. “But exactly what does it do?”
“We’re tentatively calling it the Teleport,” said Mart. “I imagine you can think up a name with more sales appeal. You may remember reading about teleportation in a science-fiction magazine you mentioned when we first met.”
Sam’s face brightened. “Sure... I remember now! That’s the story where the fellow sends his girl across the country by radio and she comes out the other end twins so that everybody is happy and don’t need to fight over her any more.”
“Roughly,” said Mart. “Just roughly. So here’s what the gadget does. You see that this aluminum disk bisects the spherical cage and that a wire goes through the hole in the center of the disk. On one side there is a bead on the wire. Now I push the button at one pole of the sphere, where the cage wires come together with the single wire through the middle. Now the bead is on the other side of the disk.”
He handed the gadget back to Sam. “Try it yourself. Press the little button at the pole of the sphere.”
Sam took it again, a look of disappointment verging on repugnance showing on his face. “I don’t get it,” he said. “There’s nothing to that. Pushing a bead along the wire that goes through the hole in a piece of metal —”
“Look closely, Sam, and push the button.”
Sam did so, settling the device in a shaft of sunlight again and squinting through the wires of the cage. He pressed with his thumb. Instantly, the bead on the interior wire vanished from one side of the disk and appeared on the other.
“I still don’t see,” said Sam in disappointment. Then he stopped. “Hey, wait a minute! How did that bead get through there? There’s no hole for it to go through. The wire fills up the hole!”