The first model of any invention is never the refined version. More than likely it is a rather sorry mess, containing converted parts and hand-whittled members; strewn profusely with regard only to their function, and without a single thought for the esthetic quality of placement or shining panel and meter.
Grown from a single idea, passed through the adolescent growing pains of many failures and few true advances, the finished product is an inefficient, ill-appearing semi-mediocre forerunner of the final thing. The first working model may also make its first success at some odd hour in the morning after a job of work that culminates forty or fifty solid hours -- after a few years of preliminary planning and building.
And so Joseph Kingsley yawned as he stepped back. He was waiting for the tubes to come up to working temperature. For the past twelve hours it had been just another half-hour, perhaps, and then a final bit of frustration before the trial. Kingsley refused to give up and go to bed, because success was so close.
His reward was near, now. He watched the meters indolently, smoked a cigarette until everything came to stable operating condition, then snapped the final switch with his left hand as he stared intently at a polished plate of mirror-perfect silver about three inches in diameter.
The plate was ringed by equipment of one sort or another, but Kingsley was interested only in the plate. Not the mirror image of his own face behind the plate, but in the surface of the plate itself.
Subtly it changed from a solid shining surface to a translucent film, and then it faded into a partially transparent darkness. Kingsley took a deep breath and realized that he had been holding his breath for a full minute. He shook his head quizzically and poked a pencil forward.
The culmination of months of work depended upon this moment. According to all of the laws of modern physics, the pencil should have come against the silver plate regardless of its change in color. It was not supposed to stop, yet Kingsley really did not believe that the pencil would do anything else even though he had designed the gear after making the preliminary discoveries. It was so utterly fantastic that he himself did not really believe it.
Gingerly he pushed the pencil forward and then he knew that the point of the pencil was beyond the surface of the silver plate. The plate was invisible, now, but in the three-inch expanse, Kingsley could estimate the virtual surface reasonably close. He shoved the pencil in deep; stopping only when his fingers were close to the invisible surface.
He looked at the pencil. It seemed normal enough. It was illuminated by the light in his room passing through the three-inch circle made by the silver plate. On the -- other side -- there was no light. Or not much, anyway, compared to the high level of light in his laboratory.
Joseph Kingsley withdrew the pencil and inspected it. It had not changed.
He looked through the plate. It reminded Joe of peering through a three-inch porthole from a brightly lighted room into a dimly lighted space, or perhaps looking out of his room onto the street through a three-inch hole in the wall. A street darkened by night. He could see nothing because the light in the room was too bright.
He shoved a forefinger into the circle with a cautious gesture. It might hurt; it might be dangerous. Kingsley did not know. Yet he felt nothing.
So far it was a success.
So far -- and yet so futile. It was, he thought, like having a brand new telephone on a world where there were no other subscribers. He could reach out for the world but the world could not answer. Yet, if his theory were correct, both pencil and forefinger must have been reaching and pointing for -- something, somewhere!
Joe Kingsley cranked three of the dials on the front of a panel near by. The hole changed color once during the spinning of the dials, but Joe was unable to relocate the setting. At a later date he would have calibrated them, but now they were standard dials that read from zero to one hundred and were meaningless in any terms but the percentage of half-rotation of the dial itself. Even an intrinsic zero for the equipment did not coincide with zero on the dials, because true zero required an electrical balance and not merely zero input.
According to theory, there must be somewhere a three-inch circle that looked out of a darkened spot into his laboratory.
Kingsley wanted that other circle to enter his own lab so that he could experiment with both ends.
It was a solid half-hour later before Kingsley saw the circle lighten once more and he fiddled with the dials carefully, balancing them as close to the theoretical zero as he could. The circle lightened in swoops and darkened suddenly as he fiddled, and he saw, in those swift changes, brief flashes of the laboratory, as if seen through the eye of a motion picture camera swinging madly on a boom and making wild random zoom shots.
He finally got the thing stable, then spent another half-hour fixing the circuit with fine-tuning verniers so that he could control the position of the circle. Before, a hair-breadth on the dial sent the far circle swooping beyond calculation.
The Kingsley looked through his circle at a bench on the far side of the room, where a screwdriver lay. Taking his tongue between his teeth, Joe reached into the three-inch circle before him, reached down on the bench he saw through the circle, and picked up the screwdriver.
Across the room, his hand appeared in space above the table and grasped the screwdriver. To a hypothetical observer from that vantage, it would seem as though a three-inch circle appeared in space, behind which stood Joe Kingsley and a pile of equipment. It was the opposite of Kingsley's view. Where Kingsley was looking through a three-inch hole in a wall at the outside or at the bench, the bench was oppositely looking through the same hole in the same mystical wall at Kingsley and his equipment.
Kingsley drew the screwdriver back through and looked at it. It seemed quite normal.
Then the enormity of the thing struck Kingsley, and he sat down quickly. It was too much. He had just succeeded in making a teleport, surpassing the dreams of many writers of science fiction. This was not story for the imagination, this was fact, and it was so fantastic a fact that Joe Kingsley had to rest both his mind and his body before he could continue.
He reached for a cigarette, and grunted when he found his pack empty.
It was now about four o'clock in the morning and every place he knew of closed. He wanted a smoke desperately, which desire was heightened because he had none.
Kingsley looked at the gear speculatively, and from the gear to the screwdriver he held in his hand.
If Kingsley could steer this thing, he could get cigarettes.
He turned the dials carefully, but saw the circle swoop away far too rapidly. It passed bright patches and dark spots with a kaleidoscopic rapidity and poised -- somewhere -- while Kingsley peered through it hopefully.
Not too far away were a few lonely lights that strove in sheer futility to cast illumination on a dark and sleeping countryside. Town, without a doubt, from a distance.
Again Kingsley turned the dials carefully, and the circle approached the town at an odd angle. It poised in the middle of an intersection illuminated poorly by the single light high on a pole at one corner. But on the corners of the intersection that Kingsley could see -- two were behind him through the port -- were a filling station, a drug store. Both stores were unmistakably familiar and required no more identification.
Kingsley turned the dial-vernier and the circle swooped forward and entered the drug store. Near the door Kingsley located the cigar counter, and because it was dark in the store -- the only illumination cast on the scene came from the light in Kingsley's laboratory -- Kingsley merely reached for the first pack of cigarettes he saw.
Then because Kingsley was an honest man, he fished in his pocket and dropped a quarter in the cash drawer. The ring of the cash register bell was loud in Kingsley's laboratory -- and also in the drug store.
Kingsley retreated rapidly, turning off his gear after he drew the cigarettes back into his own bailiwick. He lit one idly, paying no attention to the pack other than to strip the paper from it with a letter opener. The paper went into the wastebasket and the cigarettes went into his cigarette case.
Then Kingsley relaxed and smoked, planning his next move.
This was not hard to do. The first thing was to make a teleport with a four-foot circle so that something larger than a hand could enter it. No, the first thing was to hit the hay and get some sleep. Then would come the time to rebuild and refine.
He sighed at the equipment. It might take another couple of weeks before he could again do this. The new equipment would require cannibalization of the present gear. The salary and the appropriation of a college professor in theoretical and practical physics does not permit grand expenditures for fancy and special equipment.
First sleep. Next rebuilding. Then announcement of his success. And then to reap the profits from a machine that would make him a fortune and bring him undying fame.
Joe Kingsley was wrong. His first move should have been to inspect the package of cigarettes, instead of letting his practised fingers open them without his eyes seeing them.
That might have saved him a lot of trouble.
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