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Dinadan doesn't even bother to put his shirt back on, nor to do more than finger-comb his hair.

"Yes, right," he says, tossing the shirt aside and picking up the Atom belt on the table. "Okay, so far, most of the testing Dad's done has indicated that the belt tends to default to Katharthan-size. You can generally go smaller or larger from there, but we do not recommend trying to stop anywhere between human- and Katarthan-sized, because I do not want you to explode."

He reaches over and moves a large digital clock over to the edge of the desk. "When you shrink, I'm going to set this for fifty-five minutes. Usually it's not a problem for people who wear the belt, but I'd rather check now and find out whether you're one of the people who can't stay shrunk for an hour without problems. When the alarm goes off, we're going to drop what we're doing and see how you're feeling. Fortunately, there has always been painful sensations before the actual exploding, so if anything like that starts happening, you can just grow back up to human-sized. Okay?"