Jon Vance whistled thoughtfully, watching the scientist out of shiny eyes, his heavy features drawn into a frown. Then he shrugged.
"If things don't go as planned, maybe I can make a deal," he said. "After all, I always did think I'd like to be a big shot."
"You couldn't!" Sheer horror froze Martin into motionlessness.
"The hell I couldn't!" Jon Vance stooped, edged through gleaming wires, seated himself at the machine's controls.
He twisted a rheostat, closed a switch, grinned at the supine scientist. Kelvin Martin said nothing more, but there was a grim determination replacing the panic in his faded eyes.
A vacuum tube swelled with coruscating colors, and a nimbus of light grew from a lacing of wires around the edges of the machine. There was a dull throbbing in the close air, a rushing sense of the releasing of terrible, unknown power. A misty curtain seemed to be drawing tight about the machine's outline.
Then the machine was gone from its platform, and Kelvin Martin was alone in the great, bare experimental room.