A long time later he had made a new gadget. It consisted of two open coils, one quite large and one quite small. Their resemblance to each other was plain, but they did not at all resemble any other coils that had been made for any other purpose whatsoever. If they looked like anything, it was the "mobiles" that some sculptors once insisted were art.
Lon stared at his work with an air of helplessness. Then he went out again. He returned with the forked stick that had proved to be a generator. He connected the wires from that improbable contrivance to the coils of the new and still more unlikely device. The eccentrically cut tin can was in the middle, between them.
There was a humming sound. Lon went out a third time and came back with a mass of shrubbery. He packed it in the large coil.
He muttered to himself, "I'm out of my head! I'm crazy!"
But then he went to the kitchen locker. He put a small packet of frozen green peas in the tin can between the two coils.
The humming sound increased. After a moment there was another parcel of green peas--not frozen--in the small coil.
Lon took it out. The device hummed more loudly again. Immediately there was another parcel of green peas in the small coil. He took them out.
When he had six parcels of green peas instead of one, the mass of foliage in the large coil collapsed abruptly. Lon disconnected the wires and removed the debris. The native foliage looked shrunken, somehow, dried-out. Lon tossed it through the window.
He put a parcel of unfrozen green peas on to cook and sat down and held his head in his hands. He knew what had happened. He knew how.
The local flora on Cetis Gamma Two naturally contained the same chemical elements as the green peas imported from Earth. Those elements were combined in chemical compounds similar, if not identical to, those of the Earth vegetation. The new gadget simply converted the compounds in the large coil to match those in the sample--in the tin can--and assembled them in the small coil according to the physical structure of the sample. In this case, as green peas.
The device would take any approximate compound from the large coil and reassemble it--suitably modified as per sample--in the small coil. It would work not only for green peas, but for roots, barks, herbs, berries, blossoms and flowers.