It covered half the ten-foot workbench, its large screen a huge, lens-like square eye as it glinted beneath the glare of the cold-cathode lights that lined the ceiling of the laboratory-like cellar.
Doug put the cooling soldering-iron back in its place. Dorothy had her Christmas camera mounted on a tripod a few feet back, "Just in case," she said, "it does something before it blows up."
Terry and Mike were silent, eyes wide, not quite behind their mother.
"We shall now," Doug said, "see if we can get a look at Hopalong Cassidy the way he looked when I was a boy. Better yet, maybe Jack Benny when he was 39 ... and Valentino...."
He closed the switch, and the cathode lights flickered, went out. There was a humming sound that seemed to come from all sides of the cellar rather than from the Contraption, and the bluish glow emanated from the square convex eye. Directly before it, they watched.
The light shimmered, gave the illusion that the Contraption itself was shimmering, fading. The work bench became indistinct.
"Doug—"
And then the workbench and the Contraption were gone, the overhead cathode tubes were gone, and daylight was filtering through a cellar window that had moved about four feet along the wall—which was now made of glass brick instead of concrete.
Doug and his wife stood rooted. Terry and Mike were gone, too.