"Right!"
Channing pushed a button. There was a minute, whirring hum, a crackle of ozone, very faint, and the almost-imperceptible wave of heat from both machines. "Now," said Walt Franks, "we'll see."
He opened the cabinet and reached in with a flourish.
His face fell. It turned rosy. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing but choking sounds came forth. He spluttered, took a deep breath, and then shook his head in slow negation. Slowly, like a boy coming in for a whipping, Walt took out the judge's watch. He handed it to Don.
Don, knowing from Walt's expression that something was very, very wrong, took the watch gingerly, but quickly. He hated to look and was burning with worried curiosity at the same time.
In all three dimensions, the watch had lost its shape. It was no longer a lenticular object, but had a very faint sine wave in its structure. The round case was distorted in this wave, and the face went through the same long swell and ebb as the case. The hands maintained their distance from this wavy face by conforming to the sine-wave contour of the watch. And Channing knew without opening the watch that the insides were all created on the sine-wave principle, too. The case wouldn't have opened, Don knew, because it was a screw-on case, and the threads were rippling up and down along with the case and cover. The knurled stem wouldn't have turned, and as Channing shook the watch gently, it gave forth with one—and only one—tick as the slack in the distorted balance wheel went out.
He faced the judge. "We seem—"
"You blasted fools and idiots!" roared the judge. "Nine of them—!"
He turned and stiffly went to his seat. Channing returned to the witness chair.
"How do you explain that?" roared Judge Hamilton.