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bromide. Calcium bromide is an “ionic conductor,” and so conducts electricity only at relatively high temperatures.
    The purpose of the experiment was to record changes in the lattice structure of the crystal as it was heated, with a small electric current going from one face to the opposite. A special kind of electron microscope was trained on the crystal.
    There was a violent thunderstorm that night, and the laboratory lights had flickered several times, but I decided to go ahead with the experiment. The only part of the setup that was on line current was the small heating coil that encircled the crystal, which was not critical. The laboratory had an emergency generator that would go on automatically if the power failed.
    A freak discharge of lightning struck the wall of the laboratory (ignoring the lightning rod on the roof) and a brilliant blue arc enveloped the heating coil, simultaneously with the thunderclap. The lights went out and there was a strong smell of burning insulation. I felt a sharp pain in my finger but had obviously been neither burnt nor electrocuted.
    The lights came back on in another part of the laboratory-the wiring had been vaporized on my side-and I went over there to call the fire department. Once in the light, I could see that the tip of my forefinger had been sheared off. So I called a doctor as well.
    I was a little stupid from shock and got the idea that I ought to go back into the laboratory-before it burned down-and find the end of my finger, so it could be sewn back on. I found a lantern and made my way through the smoke, back to my bench.
    The heating coil was just a charred mess, but oddly enough the crystal itself seemed unharmed, glittering like a lens where it had fallen on the tabletop.
    When the lightning struck, I had been adjusting the controls of the electron microscope, so I looked for my fingertip there. I didn’t find it, but did see an amazing sight.
    A hole had been bored straight through the machine, in line with the axis of the crystal and exactly the shape of the crystal’s cross-section. At first I thought the lightning bolt had burnt through, but there was no charring or melt. That part of the electron microscope had simply ceased to exist.
    It reappeared seconds later, in midair, directly over where the crystal lay, and fell with a great clatter. Pieces of metal, electronic components, and my fingertip, all in a jumble over the table-top.
    With my good hand I retrieved the fingertip. It was frozen solid; so cold that it stuck to my skin and left a burn. The metal objects had become rimned with frost and were smoking-a kind of cold I had never seen outside of a cryogenics experiment.
    While the firemen were tearing down the wall to get to the smoldering insulation, I was calling every scientist and engineer whom I knew well enough to drag away from dinner. We met in lantern-light around the shambles of the electron microscope.
    That very evening, Theo Meyer came up with what turned out to be the correct explanation. While the doctor was tending to my wound, he said, “Tobias, you’ve invented a matter transmitter. Your finger just went to Jupiter and back.
    (-Time TFX, 16 Oct 2034, Copyright © Time Inc., 2034)
    It had gone considerably farther than Jupiter, of course. As Meyer himself was to find out, the minimum distance an object can be transported by the LMT is on the order of 10^14 kilometers, or about three parsecs. We’ll never know exactly where Tobias Levant’s fingertip went, but it was deep space.
     

10 – CHAPTER THREE
     
    It took several minutes for Jacque to force his way onto solid ground, or at least relatively solid mud. The bush he had followed for a reference mark was the only vegetation around; there was nothing nearby resembling grass or moss or even algae. From his vantage point he could see that the “forest” yonder was simply a clump of bushes slightly larger than his own bush.
    “Time for the floater,” Carol said. They had been