There was a grooved, saddle-shaped affair that was clearly a sort of
trigger; it could move forward or it could move back. Mooney thought
deeply for a while.
Then he sat up, held the thing carefully away from him with the pointed
part toward the wall and pressed, ever so gently pressed forward on the
saddle-shaped thumb-trigger.
The pale blue haze leaped out, swirled around and, not finding anything
alive in its range, dwindled and died.
* * * * *
Aha, thought Mooney, not everything is lost yet! Surely a bright young
man could find some use for a weapon like this which removed, if it did
not kill, which prevented any nastiness about a corpse turning up, or
a messy job of disposal.
Why not see what happened if the thumb-piece was moved backward?
Well, why not? Mooney held the thing away from him, hesitated, and slid
it back.
There was a sudden shivering tingle in his thumb, in the gadget he was
holding, running all up and down his arm. A violet haze, very unlike
the blue one, licked soundlessly forth--not burning, but destroying
as surely as flame ever destroyed; for where the haze touched the
gadget itself, the kit, everything that had to do with the man from the
future, it seared and shattered. The gadget fell into white crystalline
powder in Mooney's hand and the case itself became a rectangular shape
traced in white powder ridges on the rug.
Oh, no! thought Mooney, even before the haze had gone. It can't be!
The flame danced away like a cloud, spreading and rising. While Mooney
stared, it faded away, but not without leaving something behind.
Mooney threw his taut body backward, almost under the bed. What he saw,
he didn't believe; what he believed filled him with panic.
No wonder Harse had laughed so when Mooney asked if its victims were
dead. For there they were, all of them. Like djinn out of a jar, human
figures jelled and solidified where the cloud of violet flame had not
at all diffidently rolled.
They were alive, as big as life, and beginning to move--and so many of
them! Three--five--six:
The truck-driver, yes, and a man in long red flannel underwear who must
have been the policeman, and Uncle Lester, and the bartender's brother,
and the chambermaid, and a man Mooney didn't know.
They were there, all of them; and they came toward him, and oh! but
they were angry!