Allen Kim Lang

“ Formeller observed, a glint of the hunter-instinct in his eyes.
"We might even ask it questions about the world it came from!" Guenther said. "Maybe it would show its real form to us, and talk or think to us. It's already shown a lot of initiative, you know." ”

“ All observers are agreed only in that it disappears. Perhaps it leaves the coils so rapidly that it neither injures the wires nor can it be seen. Perhaps the bar passes through a temporary fissure in the three-dimensional system we perceive, falling into some yet-unconceivable other dimension. Doctor Ziegler, who first observed this effect, inclines to this latter belief." Mr. Tedder placed his fingers on the telegraph key he'd rigged up to close the circuit through his apparatus. ”

“ Mr. Coar stared toward the empty demonstration bench, wrinkled his forehead in concentration, and was again rewarded by the pot-of-geraniums-made-manifest. "See?" he asked rhetorically. "It becomes anything you want it to."
"Curious." Mr. Formeller glared toward the table. A small, orange insect appeared. The biology teacher bent over it and counted the spots on the orange anterior wings. "Six spots. A real bipunctata, of a common local variety, or I don't know my Coleoptera." An idea struck him, and he backed rapidly away from the bench. He turned to Mr. Tedder. ”

“ Tedder was glum. "It won't be back. When you think that all objects are constantly changing in space and time, you see how wonderful it is that anything ever gets anywhere. The Extra-Galactic Polymorph won't be back. Its appearance was an accident; a huge, incredible, once-in-all-history coincidence."
On the twenty-third planet of a sun of a galaxy that lay beyond the ken of even the two-hundred-inch mirror of Palomar and the giant refractors of Luna; a planet the name of which cannot be expressed in human phonetics, a Young Being in the early stages of pre-maturity chortled with its Id. ”

“ I believe that this hallucinative power, as you call it, is the logical development of protective coloration, mimicry, and similar devices used by earthly creatures to elude their enemies and to lure their prey. ”

“ Mr. Tedder wanted to give his class a good show. So, with more feeling for dramatic effect than for scientific good sense, he'd wound the three solenoids with heavy insulated silver wire rather than with the light copper wire Ziegler had reported using. ”

“ We can't handle it, and we can't let it go. We'll have to call in experts in zoology and physics...." Mr. Formeller exchanged outraged glances with Mr. Tedder "... and have them study the polymorph with the best instruments available."
"All this is very well," Mr. Formeller said, "but what I'd like to know is how this Polymorph got into your classroom, Tedder."
Mr. Tedder cautiously stepped up to the demonstration bench and took the knob of the telegraph key in his fingers. "This was the switch in a Ziegler's effect apparatus I'd set up for demonstration. I just tapped it, like this...." Mr. ”

“ One terminal of the telegraph key was still connected to the plate on the spark coil, the other wire ended in a little knot of fused silver. No, this wasn't the effect that Doctor Ziegler had reported, not at all!
To cover his confusion Mr. Tedder began to talk. "There, you've just seen the Ziegler effect in action. Explain what you've just seen and you'll be famous among men." Indeed, the cerium-iron alloy bar had disappeared; but so had 20,000 cm. of No. 40 silver wire, silk-insulated. But the boys—except, of course, Stetzel and Guenther—hadn't noticed. Mr. ”