"Certainly," I said, practising the power of positive thinking. "Now that your world-wide testing laboratories have confirmed a vague fear of mine, I can easily reverse the field of the Expendable device and create a rather low-efficiency engine that consumes the excess energy in our planetary potential."
The agent of the AEC whose name I can never remember was present along with Tony Carmen the night my assistants finished with the work I had outlined.
While it was midnight outside, the fluorescents made the scene more visible than sunlight. My Disexpendable was a medium-sized drum in a tripod frame with an unturned coolie's hat at the bottom.
Breathlessly, I closed the switch and the scooped disc began slowly to revolve.
"Is it my imagination," the agent asked, "or is it getting cooler in here?"
"Professor." Carmen gave me a warning nudge.
There was now something on the revolving disc. It was a bar of some shiny gray metal.
"Kill the power, Professor," Carmen said.
"Can it be," I wondered, "that the machine is somehow recreating or drawing back the processed material from some other time or dimension?"