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with an argument, he lengthened his stride.
    “You’re not imposing. You’re going to expose me, remember?” Boles spoke without looking up from the arc of glowing console.
    “Expose what?” Noting that his host showed no inclination to interfere with his departure, Max hesitated. He made a gesture that encompassed most of the huge room and its inventory of shiny, blinking, humming, apparently purposeless electronics. “A failed ride proposal for Disneyland? A Westinghouse science fair entry gone mad? What’s all this supposed to be for, anyway?” He could not quite keep all the sarcasm out of his voice. “I’m assuming it’s supposed to be for
something.”
    Boles made no attempt to hide the pride he was feeling in his perceived achievement. “You will be privileged to witness the first fully scaled-up run-through of the system, Max. I really would rather that you were on the staff of
Nature
or
Scientific American
, but given some of the scuzzball would-be writer types that I’ve had to deal with these past several years, I suppose I’ll have to settle for the
Investigator.”
    “I’ll settle for coffee and Danish. I’m really sorry, but I’ve got to go, Barry.” He did not, but willing to play the game to the last move, he made a show of checking his watch.
    “You can go in a minute,” Boles told him. “This should only take a minute.”
    Max eyed the phantasmagoric farrago of indiscriminately interconnected electronics gear dubiously.
“What
should only take a minute?”
    Boles glanced up briefly from his work. “Making contact with the world next to ours.”
    “Next to ours?” Max didn’t bat an eye. He’d interviewed too many loony scientist/inventor types to be surprised by anything the affably chatty Boles had to say. “You mean, out in space?”
    “No, no.” Within the enclosed underground room both light and sound were magnified. “I mean
next to ours.
I am a great believer in the existence of parallel worlds, or paras, as I call them. Always have been. Over the past several years I have been constructing a device with which to prove my theories.”
    “Prove them, huh? Prove them how?” Max gazed yearningly at the doorway.
    “By making actual contact with one. With this.” He gestured proudly at the confabulation of disparate electronics.
    The reporter’s skepticism continued unabated. “There’s more than one?”
    “So theory insists. Hopefully we will be the first to find out.”
    Max struggled to suppress a smile. “Mind if I take pictures?”
    “Not at all.” The reporter’s sarcasm lost on him, Boles returned to work at the console. “Documentation is what I’m after.”
    As he pulled the Minox from a pocket and checked to make sure there was a full roll of film on board, Max foundhimself liking his host more and more. Nuttier than a Texas fruitcake he might be, but he was a regular guy. A dangerous opinion for a reporter to hold, he knew. It might interfere with his objectivity—though this was not really a problem in Max’s case, because he had none.
    A really colorful explosion, now, when all this expensive gear blew sky high, would make for a great shot. Trouble was, he was likely to find himself in the middle of it. Therefore, despite a missed photo op, he found himself hoping that everything would remain intact. He made a mental note to contact Southern California Edison for a copy of Boles’s monthly electric bill. It would give him a nice, absurd, appropriately mad-scientist statistic to slip into the story. One that could, for a change, be verified.
    As Boles had not warned him to keep away from any particular piece of equipment, Max roamed among the lights and sounds, snapping shots of gear he did not recognize while wondering what each piece was for. Of one thing he had no doubt, and that was the cost of the futuristic setup Boles had put together. Everything looked new, state-of-the-art, and expensive. It was all very impressive, even if it didn’t do