Bobby's photon gun

Bobbi’s photon gun is an ordinary toy pistol remade into a lethal device, and its confrontation with Gard shows how a seemingly familiar object can become an instrument of alien power. Connected to a radio, it threatens to open a hole in reality; when the struggle knocks the weapon off target, its green beam cuts the ceiling instead, while the radio’s destruction turns the kitchen into a scene of fire and injury.

Construction and Operation

The weapon began as a toy pistol. In the kitchen, however, it was no longer harmless: Bobbi had connected its circuitry to a boom-box radio, an improvised conversion that took her less than twenty minutes. The radio had been brought to her by Dick Allison three days earlier at her request. Its previous use was already ominous: Hank Buck had used it to send Pits Barfield away, making the combined device part of a technology that could remove a person from ordinary space.

The pistol’s power therefore depended on an assemblage rather than on the gun alone. The radio supplied the connection through which the toy’s circuitry could act, while Bobbi controlled the weapon and its aim. In her hands, an object that looked like a child’s plaything could threaten Gard with displacement to Altair-4 or somewhere else entirely. The mismatch between toy form and catastrophic function is central to the scene: the gun looks familiar, but its effects are not governed by familiar rules.

Threat in the Kitchen

Bobbi sits at the kitchen table with the pistol pointed at Gard’s chest. She has also placed two beers and a bottle of Gard’s Valium on the table, and commands him to drink. When he asks what will happen if he refuses, she threatens to turn on the radio, open a hole in reality, and send him somewhere. Gard guesses that she means Altair-4, while mentally maintaining a barrier against her probing thoughts.

The threat is not an abstract boast. Bobbi keeps the weapon trained on Gard as she explains that other channels open onto solid rock, while most lead into deep space; she and her people, despite being great travelers through the sky, have been unable to chart the destinations using their star charts. The pistol thus stands between a domestic kitchen and uncharted places beyond ordinary reach. Gard answers with a sardonic remark about teleportation and the possibility of opening a wavelength into a sun, but Bobbi laughs without lowering the gun. Her amusement does nothing to reduce the danger.

The Misfire and the Radio’s Destruction

A sudden change gives Gard his brief chance. Bobbi drops the pistol to her side in surprise, then raises it again, intending not to give him another opening. With his right hand trapped beneath the table, Gard shoves the table with his left. It strikes Bobbi’s misshapen chest just as the weapon fires. The green beam misses Gard’s chest and passes more than a foot above his shoulder, yet the skin there tingles unpleasantly beneath his shirt.

Gard twists away and drives the table into Bobbi again. Her chair rocks back and topples with her, and the beam swings upward. The shot leaves a slit in the kitchen ceiling, accompanied by a sound like splintering plywood. Even when the weapon is knocked off target, it remains dangerous: the beam is not merely a flash of light but a force that cuts into the room and makes the surrounding space unsafe.

Gard shoves the table once more. It overturns, spilling the beers, pills, and radio onto Bobbi; beer runs over her altered skin, and the radio lands in a shallow puddle. Gard’s attempt to make the radio explode succeeds in a far more destructive way than he can control. It bulges and bursts outward, throwing streaks of green fire. Bobbi’s shirt catches fire, and her screams reach Gard both through his ears and through their mental connection.

Function and Significance

The weapon’s transformation makes the ordinary materially strange. A toy pistol, circuitry, a radio, beer, and a kitchen table converge in a struggle whose stakes are no longer domestic. The gun’s power is not isolated in a polished machine: it emerges from Bobbi’s quick adaptation of available things, and the objects continue to shape events after control of the weapon falters. The redirected beam scores the ceiling; the fallen radio then becomes the source of an explosive eruption of green fire.

The scene also turns the gun from an instrument of threat into part of an escalating accident. Bobbi uses it to command Gard and threatens to send him away, but her momentary surprise gives him a chance to move the table. His physical intervention redirects the beam and overturns the radio; the ensuing burst sets Bobbi’s shirt alight. As Gard rushes toward her, he drops his .45, which fires and shatters his ankle. The photon gun is not the direct cause of that final wound, but its threat and the radio it activates set the struggle’s destructive sequence in motion. Its significance lies in that unstable chain: a toy becomes a weapon, a weapon misses, and the connected apparatus turns a kitchen confrontation into immediate danger for both Bobbi and Gard.