Samuel Mavens waited desolately for Gregory to show up. Through the window of his laboratory, he could watch as the enormous superstructure of Aladdin's Lamp continued to be constructed. It looked like a huge grey Zeppelin. Though small maneuvering thrust pods broke the smooth lines of the thing here and there, notably absent were any otherwise normal appurtenances or design features of space-worthy craft.

Sam viewed it with relative disinterest. He wiped one hand over his thinning grey scalp, wishing, not for the last time, that his wife was still with him. While she was alive, there had always been her patient ear to pour his worries into. If she were still with him, this would never have happened, and he would not be here now, struggling to free his daughter.

Sam was a doting, if busy and distracted, parent. One man could only do so much, could only be there when he was needed, so often. So now he was in this place, touching up the final engineering details for a man he hated.

Engineering wasn't his specialty, although he was the closest thing to a practical application scientist the field of quantum physics had ever produced.

He had left his post with the university only to salvage his daughter, and had ignored everything but his work and the calendar as the four-year indenture to St. Croix Ltd. worked itself to a close.

At first, the work itself had been profoundly exciting. The beings Gregory put under his scrutiny opened up a whole new mathematics of quantum theory. Some of his co-workers even said they had a language. That wasn't why he was here either.

The job had been to define how they worked. He turned to a bench where the results of his research floated, a shimmering little pyramid of energy and stabilized Bose-Einstein Condensates about two inches square. Somewhere, rotated out past the fourth and other dimensions, a construct the size of a mountain, if it could be said to have size, which in three-dimensional terms it could not, existed. This glittering object on his bench was the tip of that mountain, the only visible part.

It had not taken long to determine that the space-going entities Gregory found were cross-dimensional beings. Only a small aberration on the surface of the space/time continua marked their presence here. They existed mostly in an entirely other structure; between the Branes of Super Space, where the systems of dimension and natural law ruled.

Here, E= MC2. There, the constant speed of light (2.9979250 X 10 10cm/sec), was almost superfluous, Speed, or Velocity, being a function of time over distance. Where this construct existed, time could be said not to exist, or even to exist as a negative quantity. It all depended on other aspects, variable aspects, of this other space. So C2 = 0, (or any other figure you wished to assign it) and the equation could be written E = M, or even C2 = 2, and 2E=M. So many other ramifications, so many practical problems both solved and created.

His published interest had revolved around Quantum tunneling, the translation of matter from one place to another in zero time. This had been accomplished in labs as far back as the 21st century with muons, ions and such. However, in Super Space, where energy and matter had a more mutable relationship, and time was irrelevant, magic happened.

He hadn't duplicated the life forms themselves, of course, but recreating their matter transfer functions, that was possible.

He had built a trans-dimensional machine. From the continua's perspective, It froze time, locked matter into a non-moving picture of the vibrating strings that composed it, then superimposed the harmonic image on another point in the space-time continua and unfroze it. From a super dimensional view, it was more like lifting a Two dimensional paper dolly off a picture of a house and putting it back down in a different room on the picture.

The keys to the process were just time and power, like most sub-space manipulations. Where his device ... Construct? ... Existed, there was no 'time' function and energy wasn't a dependent variable of that place. By its independent laws of physics, energy happened when objects of Super Space impinged upon this universe. The Big Bang itself was powered by another Brane, another Cosmos, moving through Super Space, 'bumping' into ours. Anything, in moving between the Branes, created energy.

Anything in this space-time could also be imaged instantly there, and held indefinitely, to be recalled immediately, or recombined to form other structures, safely, just as long as there was a fair exchange. Nothing as would change the actual amount of matter or energy within the bubble of our universe's Brane. So the construct was, in a sense, a universe unto itself, an object of Super Space. This physical manifestation of pure mathematics was the proof of completion. It was the release from bondage he had been working for from the start. It was also the most seminal piece of physics to be realized in the last 1000 years.

Sam wasn't overly impressed with himself. He viewed it as reverse engineering. The processes already existed, as demonstrated by Gregory's pets. All he did, to his mind, was to describe it.

That monster ship out there was to be the test bed. All of that just to house this glittering smear of elsewhere, transmit sub-etheric vibrations to it and read them back out. Other people's work, based on the mathematical equations he generated and translated for them.

Lately though, he had come to think about the potential applications of his work. Such thoughts made him very, very, uneasy.

Gregory's arrival interrupted his chain of thought. St. Croix's eyes locked on the wavering mote above the test bench as soon as he entered. He crossed the room briskly to stand before it and addressed Samuel without as much as a glance in his direction.

"Is it ready?"

Sam mutely picked up a hollow egg-shaped metallic shell from the bench and fitted it around the glowing pyramid, snapping on a relay affixed to its exterior. The egg now floated where the energy construct had been. Sam pointed to contact strips on either side of the egg.

"It connects up at the sides. The shell generates a plasma cage, allows it to be moved about, and translates instructions into and out of the node."

Sam took the egg and moved it to another part of the bench where a brace of thick cables terminated in a pair of connector strips. These he fitted to the sides of the egg. To the right of the egg was a platform on which rested a small shiny metallic cube, about an inch square. An empty twin of the stage was positioned just left of the device.

"This demonstration is of course relatively simplified. On the stage is a block of pure sodium that was previously scanned. The system defines the scan area in four dimensions and works out the functions that need to be fed into the node. All of that comprises the bulk of the equipment in the ship your engineers are constructing," noted Sam, nodding towards the looming form on the shipyard floor, "as are the transform computers, spatial translators, and so forth. Even the data cables installed in the full system are ten inches thick and super-cooled, because so much data is transferred, even just for the processes that occur outside the node.

"The templates for this test sample of sodium have already been processed and stored. You will hear some noises during the test. Don't let it bother you. They are caused by air displacement, since the templates for the test don't include the gases, dust, whatever else is on the platforms. The ship's systems are more ... complete."

Sam threw a toggle, there was a stereo firecracker bang, and the cube disappeared from the left stage, to reappear on the right. "It is the same cube. If I analyzed it spectrographically, microscopically, chemically, or any other way, believe me it's not a duplicate cube, it is the same cube."

"Sodium is atomic number 11 on the element chart, has an ionization potential of 5.138 electron volts, an atomic radius of 1.86 Angstroms and a density of 0.97 grams per cubic centimeter. It is now time for the second demonstration."

Sam reached above the test-bench and switched on a monitor. A star field view filled the screen."That is a view transmitted from a fixed probe about a quarter of a light-year from here. The transmitter is a quantum band radiator, so the image you see is real time."

Sam flipped a second switch. There was a second, louder bang. The cube on the right hand stage disappeared, and a smaller silvery cube appeared on the left hand stage. Simultaneously, the view on the monitor turned white, then gradually returned to the planetarium-like scene shown earlier. A few thousand years ago, Sam mused, I would have been considered the ultimate Alchemist for demonstrating this, or hung for being a sorcerer.

Sam nodded to the smaller cube.

"That is a block of aluminum, atomic number 13, but with a density of 2.71 grams per centimeter, atomic radius of only 1.43 angstroms and an ion potential of 5.984 electron volts. It is smaller, because it is the result of the energy of the bulkier sodium sample. The flash on the monitor was where I released the remainder energies, since there is no exact match between any given mass of aluminum and sodium. The excess was used to create photons and other radiations to account for the difference. Any amount of vibratory energy translated through our continua has to be accounted for. Heat and light are the easiest, least troublesome ways of accounting for the remainders. End of demonstration."

Gregory looked very pleased,then thoughtful. "How fine a control can I get over the transmutation functions?"

Sam shrugged. "The stoichiometry of the process, how much of what makes how much of something else, is built into the system. If it wasn't perfect, the transmutations couldn't take place at all. You would not have enough, or rather propper information to feed into the node to initiate an operation. The rest depends upon how detailed the templates are. That's what the sixty tons of plasma state computers aboard the Aladdin are for.

"The ship has other experimental systems designed into it," continued Samuel."There's a reader on the control console where you can scan in specially prepared CAD files, the object files for screws, springs,steel beams and such, modified to contain information on themo-molecular composition of each object in the database, so that an adequate mass source could be transmuted directly into a structure defined by the CAD drawing."

Gregory's attention seemed to wane, and he began checking his watch reflexively as Sam continued on.

"One of your engineers came up with that idea. You are limited by storage and how detailed your files are, of course. You need a design for what you build, and must have an adequate source of existing mass. There's probably enough computing power on board to hold information to construct a large shed, or a small complex device like a clock or a motor. Simple shapes of almost unlimited size. It would take a good deal of time to build an adequate bank of information to do anything really complex, unless you built it module by module. There is no theoretical limit on how detailed the structure can be."

Once more a bitter thought intruded. This would guarantee me a Nobel prize and a permanent place in the history of science anywhere else, - and yet he stands here impatiently nodding his head, and glancing at his watch.

"The process basically takes a holographic image of the vibratory energy of the super string and ring patterns in the object's defined area of space time, as seen in fifth through eleventh dimensional terms, and institutes that vibration pattern, in Super Space, outside our continua, or in this case, the transform energy equivalent pattern. A sympathetic vibration of that pattern is then translated back through the Brane, at whatever four dimensional space/time you wish.

"The structuring system is just for experimental purposes. The real strength of this assembly is as you requested. To extract, move, and modify existing matter in no-time."

"But the armament and defensive capabilities...," blustered Gregory.

Sam scowled. Was there nothing that impressed this man? "Yes, yes. They are there, integrated into the console. Real space opera stuff, since they amount to very primitive transformations. A very small amount of mass is grabbed up and transmuted into energy, 100 percent conversion. Your choices can include any form of weak or strong nuclear force, gravitation, or electromagnetic energy. Cosmic radiation, neutron streams, even lightning if you like. Pick a destination, and... Well,just like on the monitor. You can specify its shape, or at least the area of release, say a plane or globular area. A pea-sized piece of iron has an energy potential equivalent to that released by a 300-megaton nuclear device, since there is no loss or partial conversion. I only worked on the math routines. Your technical staff came up with all the nasty applications. I want nothing to do with it. Talk to them. I set up enough of a practical demonstration here to provide you with proof of my completion of contract, that's all. Now release me and my daughter!"

Gregory shook his head. "Not until all this is set up aboard Aladdin's Lamp, and we can test it out completely. I could keep you for the full duration the court specified, you know. You will be released after her maiden voyage, not before. I will have engineering come collect you and this...thing," he said, pointing to the egg-shaped device, "to see to its proper installation." With that, Gregory turned and left. Samuel watched him leave, and then pulled open a drawer.

Another egg rested in the drawer, slightly, but not noticeably, different. He also removed a small box upon which protruded a tiny red button. He walked to the egg floating inside the tangle of cables on the test bench, removed it and freed the scintillating energy structure it contained. Then he encased it in the other egg shape and stashed the original container back in the drawer. You won't have this to play with one moment longer than it takes me to free my daughter, you bastard.

He scribbled a note on a small square of paper and took both the note and box over to another platform on the test bench, placed them on it, and threw a small toggle. After a few minutes, both items vanished with a bang. Sam walked over to a small closed-circuit screen set like a shrine in the corner of the lab, Gregory's only accommodation to Sam's constant requests to see his daughter. The monitor showed the interior of her small room.

I have to find a way to get in touch with her, he thought. Gregory will never let us go. He will kill us both first. He must think me dense, to believe he would trust me walking around with his proprietary technology lodged in my head. There must be someplace where Sienna would be sure to look. Then he saw the small puzzle box he had bought for her on her 15th birthday sitting on the dresser.