The desk was ruined anyway, so Tom ignored it for the moment. He ran a bucket of water and slid it underneath the desk just in time to catch the ultra-hot box just as it passed through the table.
While it was sizzling in the bucket of water and sending forth great clouds of vapor, Tom busied himself with the extinguisher, putting out the fire on the desk.
Tungsten!
Well, tungsten or not, it must be ruined after immersion in water after being red-hot all over. Nothing on God's green earth—
Holy entropy! He'd said that before. It presented a couple of large, bright red question marks.
One. That thing was apparently tungsten clear through. Therefore, how had the physicist cast it?
Two. Granted that thing had been cast—what in the name of howling rockets had the physicist used for the inside circuits?
And three. If running molten tungsten into the mold hadn't ruined the guts of the box, how could heat and water do anything at all?
And, disquieting thought, was the pushbutton waterproof?