“Keena’s English improved by leaps and bounds and pretty soon she was dipping into my texts on chemistry and physics. She seemed puzzled. She told me that we were like her people a few thousand years back. Primitives. She told me a lot about her world. No cities. The houses are far apart. No work. Everyone is assigned to a certain cultural pursuit, depending on basic ability. She was a designer. In order to train herself, she had had to learn the composition of all fabricated materials used in her world.
“I took notes while she talked. When I get out of this jam, I’m going to revolutionize the plastics industry. She seemed bright enough to be able to take in the story of how she suddenly appeared in my cellar. I gave it to her slow and easy.
“When I was through, she sat very still for a long time. Then she told me that some of the most brilliant men of her world had long ago found methods of seeing into other worlds beyond their own. They had borrowed things from worlds more advanced than their own, and had thus been able to avoid mistakes in the administration of their own world. She told me that it was impossible that her departure should go unnoticed. She said that probably at the moment of her disappearance, all the resources of a great people were being concentrated on that spot where she had been standing talking to some friends. She told me that some trace of the method would be found and that they would then scan this world, locate her and take her back.
“I asked her if it would be easier if we had the gawk, and she said that it wasn’t necessary, and that if it was, she would merely go next door and see Jim Finch face to face. She said she had a way, once she looked into his eyes, of taking over the control of his involuntary muscles and stopping his heartbeat.
“I gasped, and she smiled sweetly and said that she had very nearly done it to me when I had kept her from climbing back through the gawk. She said that everybody in her world knew how to do that. She also said that most adults knew how to create, out of imagination images that would respond to physical tests. To prove it she stared at the table. In a few seconds a little Hack box slowly appeared out of misty nothingness. She told me to look at it. I picked it up. It was latched. I opened it. Her picture smiled out at me. She was standing before the entrance of a white castle that seemed to reach to the clouds.
“Suddenly it was gone. She explained that when she stopped thinking of it, it naturally disappeared, because that was what had caused it. Her thinking. I asked her why she didn’t think up a doorway to her own world and then step through it while she was still thinking about it. She said that she could only think up things by starting with their basic physical properties and working up from there, like a potter starts with day.
“So I stopped heckling Jim Finch at about that time. I was sorry, because I wanted the gawk back. Best toy I’d ever had. Once I got a look in Jim’s garage window. He’d forgot to pull the shade down all the way. He had the gawk rigged up on a stand, and had a. big arm, like the bucket on a steam shovel rigged up, only just big enough to fit through the hoop. He wasn’t working it when I saw him. He was digging up the concrete in the corner of his cellar. He was using a pick and he had a shovel handy. He was pale as death. I saw then that he had a human arm in there on the floor and blood all over. The bucket was rigged with jagged teeth. It didn’t take much imagination to figure out what Jim had done.
“Some poor innocent character in one of those other worlds had had a massive contraption come out of nowhere and chaw his arm off. I thought of going to the police, and then I thought of how easy it would be for Jim Finch to get me stuck away in a padded cell, while he stayed on the outside, all set to pull more arms off more people.”
Heater glanced uneasily at the jury. They were drinking it in.
“I told Keena about it and she smiled. She told me that Jim was digging into many worlds and that some of them were pretty advanced. I gradually got the idea that old Jim was engaging in as healthy an occupation as a small boy climbing between the bars and tickling the tigers. I began to worry about old Jim a little. You all know about that couple of bushels of precious stones that were found in his house. That’s what made him tickle the tigers. But the cops didn’t find that arm. I guess that after he got the hole dug, Jim got over his panic and realized that all he had to do was switch the gawk around and toss the arm through. Best place for old razor blades I ever heard of.
“Well, as May turned into June and June went by, Keena got more and more confident of her eventual rescue. As I learned more about her world, I got confident of it too. In a few thousand years we may be as bright as those people. I hope we are. No wars, no disease.
“And the longer she stayed with me, the more upset I got about her leaving me. But it was what she wanted. I guess it’s what I’d want, if somebody shoved me back a thousand years B.C. I’d want to get home, but quick.
“On the tenth of July, I got a phone call from Jim Finch. His voice was all quavery like a little old lady. He said, ‘Maloney, I want to give that thing back to you. Right away.’ Anything Jim Finch gave anybody was a spavined gift horse. I guessed that the gobblies were after him like Keena had hinted.
“So I just laughed at him. Maybe I laughed to cover up the fact that I was a little scared, too. What if some world he messed with dropped a future type atomic bomb back through the gawk into his lap? I told him to burn it up if he was tired of it.
“I didn’t know Jim could cuss like that. He said that it wouldn’t burn and he couldn’t break it or destroy it anyway. He said that he was coming out and throw it across the hedge into my yard right away.
“As I got to my front door, he came running out of his house. He carried the thing like it was going to blow up.
“Just as he got to the hedge, I saw a misty circle in the air over his head. Only it was about ten feet across. A pair of dark blue shiny pliers with jaws as big as the judge’s desk there swooped down and caught him by the head. The jaws snapped shut so hard that I could hear sort of a thick, wet, popping sound as all the bones in old Jim’s head gave way all at once.
“He dropped the gawk and hung limp in those closed jaws for a moment, then he was yanked up through that misty circle into nothingness. Gone. Right before my eyes. The misty circle drifted down to grass level, and then faded away. The gawk faded right away with it. You know what it made me think of? Of a picnic where you’re trying to eat and a bug gets on your arm and bothers you. You pinch it between your thumb and forefinger, roll it once and throw it away. Old Jim was just about as important to those blue steel jaws as a hungry red ant is to you or me. You could call those gems he got crumbs, I guess.
“I was just getting over being sick in my own front yard when Timmy came running over, took one look at the blood and ran back. The police came next. That’s all there is to tell. Keena is still around and Justy will bring her in to testify tomorrow.”
Bill Maloney yawned and smiled at the jury.
Amery Heater got up, stuck his thumbs inside his belt and walked slowly and heavily over to Bill.
He stared into Bill’s smiling face for ten long seconds. Bill shuffled his feet and began to look uncomfortable.
In a low bitter tone, Amery Heater said, “Gawks! Golden scorpions! Tangential worlds! Blue jaws!” He sighed heavily, pointed to the jury and said, “Those are intelligent people, Maloney. No questions!”