"You mean you slammed your way out with that gadget?"
"In a way. The one my father made was of course taken from me and destroyed. But I had helped him build it; I knew I could build another. But I had to steal what bits and pieces of materials I needed whenever it was possible. Sometimes I waited months for an opportunity, only to lose it at the last moment. Yet the waiting helped in its own way. Even as I slaved for them, Cragin, I thought. I figured, refigured. And when, after seven years, I had accumulated the few simple parts I needed, I knew I could build a better instrument than Fowler Griffin himself had."
"And you built it—"
"While the others slept and the guards ate. That took almost two years."
"Then?"
"I vibrated a guard into senility. He died of old age within seconds. In what simple uniform he wore and with his weapon, I bluffed my way aboard this ship in which we stand now. I had to kill a pilot and three crewmen before I was successful in tuning the key to a dimension existing in a completely different pattern of atomic vibrations. The transferal itself was instantaneous. Then on critical speeds I found my way back."
Cragin took a deep breath. "And you once told me I was impossible. But just the same I don't want to be kidded, even if you have got more circuits upstairs than I can ever be wired for. Remember I didn't pick you up going toward home. The nose of this barrel was about to do a little Barrier-busting."
The faded smile returned to Lin Griffin's age-contorted face. She had not been completely immune to the device of her own making; even her brilliance had been unable to devise a vibration scheme which would resolve to zero the reaction effects of dimension transferal through alteration of atomic vibration patterns.
"I wanted to see Earth again, Cragin. I don't know if you understand that or not. Love is a common word, but few understand it.
"Our people, advanced in scientific knowledge and wisdom as they are, had long since forgotten it when we first met. It was seldom in their past that their faith was placed wholeheartedly in it. But they're my people just as they're yours, Cragin, and I love them because they are. And that's why I'm on my way to take over the machine-planet; to destroy it. To destroy it so that it can never be replaced."