Andrews withdrew the pencil and it was complete again.
"Great Harry," he shouted. "Where did you get that?"
"That," smiled Peter, "is something out of Campbell by Edward E. Smith."
"Who?"
"Writers of science fiction that turned out millions of words dealing with strange minerals, space warps, and the like. They used to spend their leisure hours thinking up something that would outdo the other. Actually," he said, becoming serious again, "the thing was discovered in our lab during the war. We were working on a closed means of radio communication—a method of wireless connection that would not only prevent the enemy from decoding or unscrambling, but which would be impossible to detect unless you were set up properly. Too many things happened under radio-silence that a means of communication might have prevented. Anyway, in our search for a new level of communications, we got this effect."
"Seems to me that it should be good for something."
"The trouble is that it can't be made any bigger. Once that loop size is changed, the effect is no longer there. We worked on it for about a month and gave it up because there it is and that's all that could be done with it."
"How about using it to pump water out of a sinking ship?"
"Can't fasten anything to the ring," said Peter.
"But the thing that bothers me is where does it go?" asked Andrews, poking his finger through the ring and withdrawing it hastily as he saw the clean-cut cross section.