"Take it off!" Vogel's voice was iron.
Amenth slowly took off the helmet. His eyes were golden with tears. "Please," he said.
"Mars or Venus?" Vogel said. "Which?"
"N-neither. You could not grasp the concept. Let me go. Please!"
"Where?" Vogel prodded. "Another dimension?"
"You would call it that," the alien whispered. Hope brightened his face. "You want something? Wealth? Power?"
It was the way he said the words, like a white trader offering his aborigine captors glass beads to set him free.
Vogel nodded toward the circuit. "That hookup—you tap the gravitational field direct? Cosmic rays?"
"Your planet's magnet force lines. Look, I'll leave you the schematic diagram. It's simple, really. You can use it to transmute—" He babbled on with a heartbreaking eagerness, and Vogel listened.
"In my own world," said Amenth brokenly, "I am a moron. A criminal moron. Once, out of a childish malice, I destroyed beauty. One of the singing crystals." He shuddered. "I was punished. They sent me here—to the snake pit. Sentence for felony. This—" he indicated the helmet—"would have fused three seconds after I used it. So, incidentally, would this entire shop. I had no time to construct a feedback dispersion."