Kingston's question was hypothetical. Both men knew what Virginia was about to do.
"Quick!" snapped Kingston. "Stop her!"
"Check!" grunted Maddox, his hands leaping across the control panel.
From the crystal between chisel and surface plate came the beam of invisible energy that enfolded Virginia in its grasp. Unlike the slow process of her own machines, the highly efficient techniques of Earth Three effected the transfer in a matter of milliseconds.
Virginia felt the wrench of a twisted spatial continuum, felt the change as her body adjusted in level and knew briefly that somehow something had gone terribly wrong. The scene before her eyes changed like a flash-over in a moving picture and she faced Maddox and Kingston.
"No you don't," said Kingston roughly.
It was quite wrong. Her trained mind told her that in an instant. Her first brief fear had been that someone from her own world had interrupted her machinations and had grabbed her to prevent the completion of her plans. That would have been quite logical.
But the time interval had been too short. That proved to Virginia that it was not of her own world, for had there been any acceleration in the transfer process, she would have been notified. It was—to her logical mind—quite improbable that such an advance could have been made in the space-resonant techniques in the course of the few short hours during which she had been absent from her own laboratory.
Therefore, she reasoned, there was more to this than met the eye.