The first object he removed was a silver box roughly the size of a shoebox. It had an iris-like shutter in the front, and an eyepiece in the back. "Solid-state laser with viewfinder," he said helpfully. The second object resembled a compact fax machine. "Imaging system with optical and electrical probes," he said. Then he removed a third object, which was a white plastic box with cables. It was slightly smaller than the first. "Power pack," Stoll said. "Never know when you're going to have to rev up in the wilderness." He grinned. "Or on a laboratory table."

"Rev up… what?" Lang asked as he watched attentively.

"In a peanut shell," Stoll said, "what we call our T-Bird. It directs a fast laser pulse at a solid-state device, generating laser pulses. These pulses only last-- oh, about one hundred femtoseconds, which is a tenth of a trillionth of a second." He pressed a square, red button on the back of the power pack. "What you get are terahertz oscillations that wriggle around between the infrared and radio wave area of the spectrum. What that gives you is the ability to tell what's inside or behind something thin-- paper, wood, plastic, almost anything. All you have to do is interpret the change in the waveforms to tell what's on the other side. And coupled with this baby"-- he patted the imaging device-- "you actually get to see what's inside."

"Like an X-ray," Lang said.

"Only without the X's," said Stoll. "You can also use it to determine the chemical composition of objects-- for example, the fat in a slice of ham. And it's much more portable." Stoll walked over to Lang and held out his hand. "Could I borrow your wallet?" he asked.

Lang reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and handed his wallet to the scientist. Stoll placed it on the opposite side of the desk. Then he went over and pressed a green button beside the white button.

The silver box hummed for a moment, and then the fax-like device began to scroll out a piece of paper.

"Pretty quiet," Stoll said. "I was able to do this in your lab without the technician next to me hearing it."

When the paper stopped moving, Stoll retrieved it and took a quick look at it. He handed it to Lang.

"Is that your wife and kids?" Stoll asked.

Lang looked down at the slightly fuzzy black-and-white image of his family. "Remarkable," he said. "This is quite amazing."

"Imagine what you'd get if you ran the picture through a computer," Stoll said. "Cleaned up the rough edges and brought out the details."