The Z Machine

I really thought I could just walk up and interact directly with the portal to repair it.  It never occurred to me that I'd need to use the building screen.  I think adding some dialog to one of the characters could help resolve this.  Rebuilding the portal took me waaaaaay longer than doing any of the quests!

This was very helpful.  Thanks.  Jeff, if you read this, you should have been able to rebuild the portal by walking up to it, not going through 2 extra steps.  Very confusing for me.

Found the answer after more searching of the forums.