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It was her turn to be surprised. “You knew about that?”

“I saw you. I wasn’t sleeping. I was afraid to stay inside alone, so I followed you. I never told anyone.”

“But you were only nine!”

“They would have taken you away if I’d said anything.”

Mrs. Jamieson held out her hand. “Come here, son. It’s time I told you about us.”

So he sat across the kitchen table from her, and she told the whole history, beginning with Stinson sitting in the laboratory in New Jersey, holding in his hand a small cylinder moulded from silicon with controlled impurities. He had made it, looking for a better micro-circuit structure. He was holding this cylinder ... and it was a cold day outside ... and he was dreaming of a sunny Florida beach—

And suddenly he was there, on the beach. He could not believe it at first. He felt the sand and water, and felt of himself; there was no mistake.

On the plane back to New Jersey he came to certain conclusions regarding the strange power of his device. He tried it again, secretly. Then he made more cylinders. He was the only man in the world who knew how to construct it, and he kept the secret, giving cylinders to selected people. He worked out the basic principle, calling it a kinetic ordinate of negative vortices, which was very undefinitive.