“What do you see?”
“Nothing. The sugar’s getting wet. And melting.”
“So there you are,” Galloway said expansively. Vanning gave him a brooding look and turned back to the tube. The cube of sugar was slowly dissolving and melting down.
Presently it was gone.
“Air and water are different physical conditions. In air a sugar cube can exist as a sugar cube. In water it exists in solution. The corner of it extending into water is subject to aqueous conditions. So it alters physically, though not chemically. Gravity does the rest.”
“Make it clearer.”
“The analogy’s clear enough, dope. The water represents the particular condition existing inside that locker. The sugar cube represents the workbench. Now! The sugar soaked up the water and gradually dissolved it, so gravity could pull the cube down into the tube as it melted. See?”
“I think so. The bench soaked up the… the x condition inside the locker, eh? A condition that shrank the bench—”
“In partis, not in toto. A little at a time. You can shove a human body into a small container of sulphuric acid, bit by bit.”
“Oh,” Vanning said, regarding the cabinet askance. “Can you get the bench out again?”