teleporter n. 2

Doctor Grainlee was building a teleporter.

With the mind-controlled teleporters, he was able to bring to his office chairs, filing cabinets, anything…and he didn’t have to move a tentacle.

‘In a like manner, how could the alleged teleporter work? If one were to “teleport”—,’ he spit out the word as if it had a nasty taste, ‘to a greater or lesser distance from the center of our planet, energy would be gained or lost.’

Close to him stood the teleporter—the large jaunting-vehicle which could transmit the Tomorrow People and their equipment to any corner of the universe, just as swiftly as Stephen had come here from his own sitting-room.

‘Wheeler’s latest trade. It uses the same cracks in space that the isotope communicates through, only it sends matter, not light.’ They sat silent a heartbeat, then Isabel picked the sphere up gingerly, as if it might explode. ‘What does that mean precisely?’ ‘Don’t touch it,’ he warned her. She set it back on the desk. ‘For lack of a better word…a teleporter.’

Something that a day ago she would have sworn couldn’t exist. A teleporter, perhaps, or a time machine.

She stepped into the teleporter…and pulled the lever. The Garxx watched her flicker and disappear. The teleporter was empty.