"I don't know, but I think it's alien."
"I think it's a comic book. In some foreign language—or maybe in classical Greek for all we know." She pointed to an illustration. "Isn't this like the fish you caught? Of course it is. And look at the fisherman—his clothes are funny looking, but I'll bet he's telling about the one that got away."
"Damn it, don't joke! What about this?" He waved the string.
"Well, what about it?"
"It's extra-dimensional. It's...." He jerked the string with nervous repetition and, suddenly, something was in his hand. Surprised, he dropped it. It disappeared and he felt the tug on the end of the string.
"There is something!" He began jerking the string and it was there again. This time he held it, looking at it with awe.
It was neither very big nor very heavy. It was probably made out of some kind of glass or plastic. The color was dazzling, but that was not what made him turn his head away—it was the shape of the thing. Something was wrong with its surfaces. Plane melted into plane, the surface curved and rejoined itself. He felt dizzy.
"What is it, John?"
"Something—something like a Klein Bottle—or a tesseract—or maybe both of them together." He looked at it for a moment and then turned away again. It was impossible to look at it very long. "It's something built to cut through our three-dimensional space," he said. He dropped it, then tugged. The thing dropped out of sight and reappeared again, rolling up the string toward his hand.
That was when he lost control. He lay down on the floor and howled in a seizure of laughter that was like crying.