"Jery!" she cried, hanging onto my arm.
"Baxter!" I yelled, stepping in front of her and flattening myself against the bars. "Give us a chance! If that damned thing triggers the parabolite, you'll go with us!"
"How little you know, Delvin," Baxter smiled. "There are any number of features of this other dimension which even your fantastic intellect has not guessed. Did it never occur to you to wonder just where I'd learned the construction of a teleportation machine?"
"I—I'd assumed you learned it somehow from the Ancients," I said. "Before they realized you intended their destruction."
"I take my hat off to you," said Baxter, with a slight nod of grudging admiration. "I didn't realize you'd thought things out quite that far."
"Hell, it was the only way you could have learned," I said. "But what's it got to do with—"
"With the fission-bomb?" Baxter said, smiling. "Why, only everything. You see, Delvin, teleported matter, in order to bypass distance, must travel in the place where there is no distance: the fourth dimension. And so, the brunt of the blast will be absorbed by the Ancients, not by me."
I heard the Martian gasp. Apparently, they weren't aware of this fact. It was more than just displacement they faced, it was death.
"Your agents," I temporized, "they'd then be using a system that transported them via radioactive chaos!"
Baxter shook his head. "Since the transfer is an instantaneous one, I rather doubt that they'd absorb any roentgens to speak of."