He picked up a hammer from the bench and tapped the tiny, glinting speck. The point flattened out a bit, but the thud of the hammer indicated how solidly it was stuck. Then he walked around behind the point and struck it a hard blow from the cross-section side. The hammer shivered in his hand and he dropped it, rubbing his numbed fingers with his other hand.
"Lieutenant," he said slowly, "we are up against something."
We found we could file away the metal easily enough. Sure it filed away until the file cut into empty space. But cold comfort that was. In a few hours, we knew, molecule by molecule, the screw buried in the other dimension would come oozing back, a minute but lethal speck ready to ambush the first very tall man who walked toward it.
Tall man!
That's why Leo Baxter and I had failed to find it in the first place. I had criss-crossed that room half a thousand times in my previous examinations. If I had been taller, or the speck of metal lower—
"We've got to bring Calvin Baxter back to consciousness somehow," I said. "We've got to find out how that extractor of his works."
"Right!" Jerry said, dropping his hands in resignation. We'd run out of ideas at the same time, and the senior Baxter appeared to be our only hope.
We fanned our way out of there, into the squad car, and proceeded at a gingerly five miles per hour back to headquarters. On my insistence, Calvin Baxter had been set up in a private room at the jail with Doc Thorsen in attendance. The city hospitals were so jammed with accident victims and frantic relatives that it was no place to work with a man who was our only salvation.
When I explained everything to Dr. Thorsen and told him how important it was that we bring Calvin back to consciousness he shook his head. "It might be done, but it would probably kill him—"