Drinking glasses

Usage examples of tumblers.

Set above the handle of the locked door were four metal tumblers, coded to some pattern, for the handle would not move at her touch although the tumblers rolled easily under her thumb.

Because she’s psychic, she actually takes pleasure when she intuits the tumblers falling into place.

Some carried raw rock from the mining vessels to the slaggers and tumblers whose chutes bristled from the side of the Platform.

The native intelligent species, Tumblers, preferred to migrate slowly along the jagged valley floors, stopping for conversations that could last months.

The belief continued to influence their behavior, so that modern Tumblers had a hearty dislike of moving about in the dark.

Those legitimate dealers—hired by the Tumblers for waste removal and treatment around their shipcity, the only densely populated area—did their utmost to regulate off-Moon availability and so keep up the price of the beautiful stones, but there was, naturally, a thriving black market fed by those fools willing to try landing where level merely implied nonperpendicular.

The Tumblers who climbed Ersh's mountain for conversation and trade had long ago accepted her proclivity for alien houseguests as a charming eccentricity and, given their inability to tell carbon-based species apart, let alone individuals, paid no attention to what kind they were.

Judging from the abundance of ritual leavings sparkling around the lower slope of the mountain, Ersh had had more Tumblers visiting than I knew.

The thought of going back to join the Tumblers horrified me, however natural their behavior.

I'd stayed hidden, afraid of the Tumblers, afraid of the darkness, afraid of letting Skalet know I'd been there.

But Tumblers are wise beings and have learned to use the sun's light to find any young who are—incompatible.

The bolts slid so fast, the tumblers spun and clicked as if a large pattern was predetermined.

Plus, I found out that the vault in the videotape—like most safes made since the 1960s—has all kinds of safeguards like nylon tumblers and sound baffles that make them pretty much impenetrable from lock-picking of this sort.

And when all the tumblers are in place… well, that’s why she laughed with such exuberance when the door swung open.

Her mind was already humming, feeling how to move the tumblers into place.