Hardin stared at the clock as if it were a viper. What could be possibly be dangerous about it?
The clock was set on the table. The men stepped back.
«Watch," Hardin replied to everyone's unasked question.
After a few second, the clock started to melt like a Dali painting. The room gasped. It seemed to be self-destructing at first. But then the melting took on a different quality, a morphing quality. It was not collapsing into sludge; rather, it was transforming. New colors, wooden colors mixed with ink black, entered the blob of silver that it had become. The new colors overpowered the old.
And the blob began to take on organization again, purpose. It righted itself and finished its transformation.
Simply as that, an elegant, ornate wooden clock sat on the desk. A small arm swung and made it tick gracefully.
«What — what is that?» one of the Generals shouted.
«This clock is an object from my world," Hardin replied. «I recognize it. I've seen it before, here on this very base.»
«But why did it do that?» Bantam asked. «Why did it … change?»
«It would seem," Hardin said quietly, «for some reason that as yet eludes me … that your world is, by degrees, slowly transforming into my world.»