At nine o'clock Monday morning, he was clumsy from pure, weariness when he began to fit the outer case on the thing he'd worked so long to complete. The hand-weapon in his dream undoubtedly flung bullets through a rifled bore penetrating the very center of the multiple core. The design of the hand-weapon ruled out any possibility of a considerable recoil. It wasn't built to allow the hand to take a recoil. So there must be no recoil. On that basis, Burke had made what finally amounted to a thick rod some six inches long and two in diameter. With the casing in place, it was absolutely solid. There was no play for the windings to expand into. He blinked at it. Common sense said he ought to put it aside and test it when his mind was not nearly numb from fatigue.
Then Sandy came into the constructions shed, looking for him. She'd arrived for work and seen his car outside the shed. Her expression indicated several things: a certain uneasiness, and some embarrassment, and more than a little indignation. When she saw him unshaven and wobbly with weariness, she protested.
"Joe! You've been working since Heaven knows when!"
"Since I left you," he admitted. "I got interested."
"You look dreadful!"
"Maybe I'll look worse after I try out this thing I've made. I'm not sure."
"When did you eat last?" she demanded. "And when did you sleep?"
He shrugged tiredly, regarding the thing in his hands. He'd had enough experience contriving new things to know that no theory is right until something that depends on it has been made and works. He tended to be pessimistic. But this time he thought he had it.
"Is this working night and day a part of your reaction to those signals?" asked Sandy unhappily. "If it is—"
"Let's try it," Burke interrupted. "It's something I worked out from the dream. Now I'll find out whether I'm crazy or not—maybe." He drew a deep breath. He had a sudden, deep and corrosive doubt of things which didn't make sense, like space signals and magnets which weren't magnets because they were capable of negative self-induction. "If this shows no sign of working, Sandy...."