Scott arrived at his office later that day to find Felix working at a computer with Stephanie and Larry leaning over his shoulder.
    "What about this one?" the feline ex-villain inquired.
    "I don't know, I mean, he's actually kind of a nice guy...."
    Scott rapped on the door frame.
    "Oh, why, hello Scott. How are you?" a slightly disconcerted Larry asked, recovering his balance.
    "I've got a question for you guys," he replied, closing the door and drawing the shades.
    "Why don't we go into the conference room, then?"
    "Sounds good."
    "Stephanie, we'll see you in a minute."
    "She might want to be there for this," Scott told them.
    "Oh. Okay." She looked puzzled, but came along with the rest of them.
    "About that ruby," Scott began, once they were all settled at the table.
    "Ye-es...." Larry gave him an inquiring look.
    "Do you know if it's really a ruby, or if it's one of those stones that Dr. Rushdie built?"
    There was a long quiet moment.
    "Why don't we take a look at it?" Larry pulled a small box out of his pocket and removed the stone they had stolen at the Halloween party. "I suppose it could be."
    "The Whip had one. We went out—there was nobody there, but they turned on all the defenses, so we got to play with those. And under his place there's a really big pneumatic car link that ended up at an underground grotto, where he had one that exchanged itself with a submarine, so he could get away through the underground rivers. But apparently at some point he retreated into the space on the other side and died there."
    "Poor Clark," Larry remarked with a shake of his head.
    "I haven't gotten all the way through the diary he was writing in there, but apparently it was probably about twenty years ago."
    "We only went after this because, well, obviously you know our targets are all people who have things that were stolen. The woman who had this, Lisa Nod, had picked it up on the black market, it had been stolen. It's one of those gemstones that have passed through a lot of hands over the last thirty years, there is no clear title to it. She knew it was stolen when she purchased it, and there's no law against stealing from a thief...."
    "Well, there kind of is, but that's okay."
    "Not in a moral sense," he replied, unruffled. "Besides, it's not as if she could claim it."
    "Not that she's going to report it. 'My stolen goods were stolen from me,' not going to look good on the police report, I understand," Scott assured him.
    "Mr. Mort had similar pieces of European artwork that he'd had stolen for him over the years."
    "We don't even need to discuss the League of Nations weapons depot."
    Felix gave him a sharp look. "League of Nations weapon depot?"
    "Oh, I read through your notes," Stephanie admitted sheepishly. "Well you weren't around, so I figured I'd just go somewhere and... you know, get Paul's attention."
    "You didn't hear about this one?" Larry said. "She locked him up in a room that was set to explode."
    "You're a wonderful young woman, did you know that?" Felix smiled like a cat.
    Scott nodded. "Turned off all the alarms, lured him in, left, locking the door behind her, turning all the alarms back on, on the way out."
    "She's come a long way, hasn't she?" Larry beamed.
    "What did these things do?" she asked, looking at the ruby.
    "There's actually two of them that are identical," Scott began. "The way Mr. Mariner was explaining it to me, they're on opposite sides of a dimensional pocket. When you say whatever the command phrase is, the two jewels swap places, and whatever's currently attached to them swaps itself in or out of the pocket."
    "Oh. Okay." She frowned, trying to follow.
    "He had a submarine, and if you said the command word the submarine went away and it was just the gem there. One of the ways to test it is, does it float? I don't know if that was a product only of the one that the Whip had."
    "We can certainly do a buoyancy test. Stephanie, could you get some water please?" Larry requested.
    "Sure."
    "The one the Whip had floated. It's a sample of one, not great data, but it's not a bad starting point."
    Stephanie returned with a cup of water, and Larry dropped the ruby in. It floated.
    "We seem to have stolen an extradimensional artifact," he observed. "And I merely thought we were going after a valuable piece of jewelry. Thought it would look good on Stephanie as a choker...."
    "I have a limited aesthetic sense, but I'm getting there," Scott admitted. "The problem is that the command phrase could be almost anything, in which case whatever's on the other side—"
    "Which could also be almost anything."
    "—will suddenly flip in."
    Larry brightened. "Everyone stand back, I have to try something, I have to. Say you!" he said to the stone. "No, that didn't work."
    Just as well. "In some ways you might have saved that young woman's life," he realized. "She could have ended up sort of like Clark did, which was apparently sitting in another dimension until they desiccated away."
    "Okay... well, it seems as if we're suddenly in possession of a priceless artifact," Larry announced.
    "Yeah, apparently there's only about half a dozen of them."
    "And now that we're virtually legitimate honest citizens, I find that I don't know what to do with a priceless artifact." He looked distinctly nonplussed.
    "Something will come to you, Larry," Felix assured him dryly.
    "Oh, I'm sure it will, I'm sure it will. My own pocket theater...."
    "Does anybody know who ended up with Rushdie's journals? 'Cause apparently they can be reprogrammed...."
    "Hmm... Felix, get to work," Larry suggested.
    "'Felix get to work?' I'll have you know Larry, that if suddenly a pyramid appears in the middle of the city, that will be your fault," Scott informed him sotto voce.
    "But my theater! He wouldn't!"
    "So, it floats?" Stephanie gave the stone a last look and shrugged. "Okay. Coffee, anybody?"
    "By the way, do we have a soundproof box?" Scott asked.
    "I'll go order one," Larry said immediately, understanding the dangers in having the thing around when they didn't know what might trigger it.

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