Pineroots burned brightly in the fireplace, snapping and sizzling as the blaze caught and flamed on the resin. Deep in an easy chair, Greg Manning stretched his long legs out toward the fire and lifted his glass, squinting at the flames through the amber drink.
"There's something that's been worrying me a little," he said. "I hadn't told you about it because I figured it wasn't as serious as it looked. Maybe it isn't, but it looks funny."
"What's that?" asked Russ.
"The stock market," replied Greg. "There's something devilish funny going on there. I've lost about a billion dollars in the last two weeks."
"Abilliondollars?" gasped Russ.
Greg swirled the whiskey in his glass. "Don't sound so horrified. The loss is all on paper. My stocks have gone down. Most of them cut in half. Some even less than that. Martian Irrigation is down to 75. I paid 185 for it. It's worth 200."
"You mean something has happenedto the market?"
"Not to the market. If that was it, I wouldn't worry. I've seen the market go up and down. That's nothing to worry about. But the market, except for a slight depression, has behaved normally in these past two weeks. It almost looks as if somebody was out to get me."
"Who'd want to and why?"
Greg sighed. "I wish I knew. I haven't really lost a cent, of course. My shares can't stay down for very long. The thing is that right now I can't sell them even for what I paid for them. If I sold now I'd lose that billion. But as long as I don't have to sell, the loss is merely on paper."
He sipped at the drink and stared into the fire.
"If you don't have to, what are you worrying about?" asked Russ.
"Couple of things. I put that stock up as collateral to get the cash to build the spaceship. At present prices, it will take more securities than I thought. If the prices continue to go down, I'll have the bulk of my holdings tied up in the spaceship. I might even be forced to liquidate some of it and that would mean an actual loss."
He hunched forward in the chair, stared at Russ.
"Another thing," he said grimly, "is that I hate the idea of somebody singling me out as a target. As if they were going to make a financial example of me."
"And it sounds as if someone has," agreed Russ.
Greg leaned back again, drained his glass and set it down.
"It certainly does," he said.
Outside, seen through the window beside the fireplace, the harvest moon was a shield of silver hung in the velvet of the sky. A lonesome wind moaned in the pines and under the eaves.
"I got a report from Belgium the other day," said Greg. "The spaceship is coming along. It'll be the biggest thing afloat in space."
"The biggest and the toughest," said Russ, and Greg nodded silent agreement.
The ship itself was being manufactured at the great Space Works in Belgium, but other parts of it, apparatus, engines, gadgets of every description, were being manufactured at other widely scattered points. Anyone wondering what kind of ship the finished product would be would have a hard time gathering the correct information, which, of course, was the idea. The "anyone" they were guarding against was Spencer Chambers.
"Weneed a better television set," said Russ. "This one we have is all right, but we need the best there is. I wonder ifWilson could get us one in Frisco and bring it back."
"I don't see why not," said Greg. "Send him a radio."
Russ stepped to the phone, called the spaceport and filed the message.
"He always stays at the Greater Martian," he told Greg. "We'll probably catch him there."
Twohours later the phone rang. It was the spaceport.
"That message you sent to Wilson," said the voice of the operator, "can't be delivered. Wilson isn't at the Greater Martian. The clerk said he checked out for New York last night."
"Didn't he leave a forwarding address?" asked Russ.
"Apparently not."
Russ hung up the receiver, frowning. "Wilson is in New York."
Greg looked up from a sheet of calculations.
"New York, eh?" he said and then went back to work, but a moment later he straightened from his work. "What would Wilson be doing in New York?"
"I wonder ..." Russ stopped and shook his head.
"Exactly," said Greg. He glanced out of the window, considering, the muscles in his cheeks knotting. "Russ, we both are thinking the same thing."
"I hate to think it," said Russ evenly. "I hate to think such a thing about a man."
"One way to find out," declared Greg. He rose from the chair and walked to the television control board, snapped the switch. Russ took a chair beside him. On the screen the mountains danced weirdly as the set rocketed swiftly away and then came the glint of red and yellow desert. Blackness blanked out the screen as the set plunged into the ground, passing through the curvature of the Earth's surface. The blackness passed and fields and farms were beneath them on the screen, a green and brown checkerboard with tiny white lines that were roads.
New York was in the screen now. Greg's hand moved the control and the city rushed up at them, the spires speeding toward them like plunging spears. Down into the canyons plunged the set, down into the financial district with its beetling buildings that hemmed in the roaring traffic.
Grimly, surely, Greg drove his strange machine through New York. Through buildings, through shimmering planes, through men. Like an arrow the television set sped to its mark and then Greg's hand snapped back the lever and in the screen was a building that covered four whole blocks. Above the entrance was the famous Solar System map and straddlingthe map were the gleaming golden letters:INTERPLANETARY BUILDING.
"Now we'll see," said Greg.
He heard the whistle of the breath in Russ's nostrils as the television set began to move, saw the tight grip Russ had upon the chair arms.
The interior of the building showed on the screen as he drove the set through steel and stone, offices and corridors and brief glimpses of steel partitions, until it came to a door marked:SPENCER CHAMBERS, PRESIDENT.
Greg's hand twisted the control slightly and the set went through the door, into the office of Spencer Chambers.
Four men were in the room—Chambers himself; Craven, the scientist; Arnold Grant, head of Interplanetary's publicity department,and Harry Wilson!
Wilson's voice came out of the screen, a frantic, almost terrified voice.
"I've told you all I know. I'm not a scientist. I'm a mechanic. I've told you what they're doing. I can't tell you how they do it."
Arnold Grant leaned forward in his chair. His face was twisted in fury.
"There were plans, weren't there?" he demanded. "There were equations and formulas. Why didn't you bring us some of them?"
Spencer Chambers raised a hand from the desk, waved it toward Grant. "The man has told us all he knows. Obviously, he can't be any more help to us."
"You told him to go back and see if he couldn't find something else, didn't you?" asked Grant.
"Yes, I did," Chambers told him. "But apparently he couldn't find it."
"I tried," pleaded Wilson. Perspiration stood out on his forehead. The cigarette in his mouth was limp and dead. "One of them was always there. I never could get hold of any papers. I asked questions, but they were too busy to answer. And I couldn't ask too much, because then they would have suspected me."
"No, you couldn't do that," commented Craven with an open sneer.
Inthe laboratory Russ pounded the arm of his chair with a clenched fist. "The rat sold us out!"
Greg said nothing, but his face was stony and his eyes were crystal-hard.
On the screen Chambers was speaking to Wilson. "Do you think you could find something out if you went back again?"
Wilson squirmed in his chair.
"I'd rather not." His voice sounded like a whimper. "I'm afraid they suspect me now. I'mafraid of what they'd do if they found out."
"That's his conscience," breathed Russ in the laboratory. "I never suspected him."
"He's right about one thing, though," Greg said. "He'd better not come back."
Chambers was talking again: "You realize, of course, that you haven't been much help to us. You have only warned us that another kind of power generation is being developed. You've set us on our guard, but other than that we're no better off than we were before."
Wilson bristled, like a cowardly animal backed into a corner. "I told you what was going on. You can be ready for it now. I can't help it if I couldn't find out how all them things worked."
"Look here," said Chambers. "I made a bargain with you and I keep my bargains. I told you I would pay you twenty thousand dollars for the information you gave me when you first came to see me. I told you I'd pay you for any further additional information you might give. Also I promised you a job with the company."
Watching the financier, Wilson licked his lips. "That's right," he said.
Chambers reached out and pulled a checkbook toward him, lifted a pen from its holder. "I'm paying you the twenty thousand for the warning. I'm not paying you a dime more, because you gave me no other information."
Wilson leaped to his feet, started to protest.
"Sit down," said Chambers coldly.
"But the job! You said you'd give me a job!"
Chambers shook his head. "I wouldn't have a man like you in my organization. If you were a traitor to one man, you would be to another."
"But ... but ..." Wilson started to object and then sat down, his face twisted in something that came very close to fear.
Chambers ripped the check out of the book, waved it slowly in the air to dry it. Then he arose and held it out to Wilson, who reached out a trembling hand and took it.
"And now," said Chambers, "good day, Mr. Wilson."
For a moment Wilson stood uncertain, as if he intended to speak, but finally he turned, without a word, and walked through the door.
Inthe laboratory Russ and Greg looked at one another.
"Twenty thousand," said Greg. "Why, that was worth millions."
"It was worth everything Chambers had," said Russ, "because it's the thing that's going to wreck him."
Their attention snapped back to the screen.
Chambers was hunched over his desk, addressing the other two.
"Now, gentlemen," he asked, "what are we to do?"
Craven shrugged his shoulders. There was a puzzled frown in the eyes back of the thick-lensed glasses. "We haven't much to go on. Wilson doesn't know a thing about it. He hasn't the brain to grasp even the most fundamental ideas back of the whole thing."
Chambers nodded. "The man knew the mechanical setup perfectly, but that was all."
"I've constructed the apparatus," said Craven. "It's astoundingly simple. Almost too simple to do the things Wilson said it would do. He drew plans for it, so clear that it was easy to duplicate the apparatus. He himself checked the machine and says it is the same as Page and Manning have. But there are thousands of possible combinations for hookups and control board settings. Too many to try to go through and hit upon the right answer. Because, you see, one slight adjustment in any one of a hundred adjustments might do the trick ... but which of those adjustments do you have to make? We have to have the formulas, the equations, before we can even move."
"He seemed to remember a few things," said Grant hopefully. "Certain rules and formulas."
Craven flipped both his hands angrily. "Worse than nothing," he exploded. "What Page and Manning have done is so far in advance of anything that anyone else has even thought about that we are completely at sea. They're working with space fields, apparently, and we haven't even scratched the surface in that branch of investigation. We simply haven't got a thing to go on."
"Nochance at all?" asked Chambers.
Craven shook his head slowly.
"At least you could try," snapped Grant.
"Now, wait," Chambers snapped back. "You seem to forget Dr. Craven is one of the best scientists in the world today. I'm relying on him."
Craven smiled. "I can't do anything with what Page and Manning have, but I might try something of my own."
"By all means do so," urged Chambers. He turned to Grant. "I observed you have carried out the plans we laid. Martian Irrigation hit a new low today."
Grant grinned. "It was easy. Just a hint here and there to the right people."
Chambers looked down at his hands, slowly closing into fists. "We have to stop them some way,any way at all. Keep up the rumors. We'll make it impossible for Greg Manning to finance this new invention. We'll take away every last dollar he has."
He glared at the publicity man. "You understand?"
"Yes, sir," said Grant, "I understand perfectly."
"All right," said Chambers. "And your job, Craven, is to either develop what Page has found or find something we can use in competition."
Craven growled angrily. "What happens if your damn rumors can't ruin Manning? What if I can't find anything?"
"In that case," said Chambers, "there are other ways."
"Other ways?"
Chambers suddenly smiled at them. "I have a notion to call Stutsman back to Earth."
Craven drummed his fingers idly on the arm of his chair. "Yes, I guess you do have other ways," he said.
Greg'shand snapped the switch and the screen suddenly was blank as the televisor set returned instantly to the laboratory.
"That explains a lot of things," he said. "Among them what has happened to my stocks."
Russ sat in his chair, numbed. "That little weak-kneed, ratting traitor, Wilson. He'd sell his mother for a new ten-dollar bill."
"We know," said Greg, "and Chambers doesn't know we know. We'll follow every move he makes. We'll know every one of his plans."
Pacing up and down the room, he was already planning their campaign.
"There are still a few things to do," he added. "A few possibilities we may have overlooked."
"But will we have time?" asked Russ.
"I think so. Chambers is going to go slow. The gamble is too big to risk any slip. He doesn't want to get in bad with the law. There won't be any strong-arm stuff ... not until he recalls Stutsman from Callisto."
He paused in mid-stride, stood planted solidly on the floor.
"When Stutsman gets into the game," he said, "all hell will break loose."
He took a deep breath.
"But we'll be ready for it then!"
"Ifwe can get television reception with this apparatus of ours," asked Greg, "what is to prevent us from televising? Why can't we send as well as receive?"
Russ drew doodles on a calculation sheet. "We could. Just something else to work out. You must remember we're working in a four-dimensional medium. That would complicate matters a little. Not like working in three dimensions alone. It would ..."
He stopped. The pencil fell from his finger and he swung around slowly to face Manning.
"What's the matter now?" asked Greg.
"Look," said Russ excitedly. "We're working in four dimensions. And if we televised through four dimensions, what would we get?"
Greg wrinkled his brow. Suddenly his face relaxed. "You don't mean we can televise inthreedimensions, do you?"
"That's what it should work out to," declared Russ. He swung back to the table again, picked up his pencil and jotted down equations. He looked up from thesheet. "Three-dimensional television!" he almost whispered.
"Something new again," commented Greg.
"I'll say it's new!"
Russ reached out and jerked a calculator toward him. Rapidly he set up the equations, pressed the tabulator lever. The machine gurgled and chuckled, clicked out the result. Bending over to read it, Russ sucked in his breath.
"It's working out right," he said.
"That'll mean new equipment, lots of it," Greg pointed out. "Wilson's gone, damn him. Who's going to help us?"
"We'll do it ourselves," said Russ. "When we're the only ones here, we can be sure there won't be any leak."
It took hours of work on the math machines, but at the end of that time Russ was certain of his ground.
"Now we go to work," he said, gleefully.
In a week's time they had built a triple televisor, but simplifications of the standard commercial set gave them a mechanism that weighed little more and was far more efficient and accurate.
During the time the work went on they maintained a watch over both the office of Spencer Chambers and the laboratory in which Dr. Herbert Craven worked 16 hours a day. Unseen, unsuspected, they were silent companions of the two men during many hours. They read what the men wrote, read what was written to them, heard what they said, saw how they acted. Doing so, the pair in the high mountain laboratory gained a deep insight into the characters of unsuspecting quarries.
"Both utterly ruthless," declared Greg. "But apparently men who are sincere in thinking that the spoils belong to the strong. Strange, almost outdated men. You can't help but like Chambers. He's good enough at heart. He has his pet charities. He really, I believe, wants to help the people. And I think he actually believes the best way to do it is to gain a dictatorship over the Solar System. That ambition rules everything in his life. It has hardened him and strengthened him. He will crush ruthlessly, without a single qualm, anything that stands in his path. That's why we'll have a fight on our hands."
Cravenseemed to be making little progress. They could only guess at what he was trying to develop.
"I think," said Russ, "he's working on a collector field to suck in radiant energy. If he really gets that, it will be something worth having."
For hours Craven sat, an intent, untidy, unkempt man, sunkdeep in the cushions of an easy chair. His face was calm, with relaxed jaw and eyes that seemed vacant. But each time he would rouse himself from the chair to pencil new notations on the pads of paper that littered his desk. New ideas, new approaches.
The triple televisor was completed except for one thing.
"Sound isn't so easy," said Russ. "If we could only find a way to transmit it as well as light."
"Listen," said Greg, "why don't you try a condenser speaker."
"A condenser speaker?"
"Sure, the gadget developed way back in the 1920s. It hasn't been used for years to my knowledge, but it might do the trick."
Russ grinned broadly. "Hell, why didn't I think of that? Here I've been racking my brain for a new approach, a new wrinkle ... and exactly what I wanted was at hand."
"Should work," declared Greg. "Just the opposite of a condenser microphone. Instead of radiating sound waves mechanically, it radiates a changing electric field and this field becomes audible directly within the ear. Even yet no one seems to understand just how it works, but it does ... and that's good enough."
"I know," said Russ. "It really makes no sound. In other words it creates an electric field that doubles for sound. It ought to be just the thing because nothing can stop it. Metal shielding can, I guess, if it's thick enough, but it's got to be pretty damn thick."
It took time to set the mechanism up. Ready, the massive apparatus, within which glowed a larger and more powerful force field, was operated by two monstrous material energy engines. The controls were equipped with clockwork drives, designed so that the motion of the Earth could be nullified completely and automatically for work upon outlying planets.
Russstood back and looked at it. "Stand in front of that screen, Greg," he said, "and we'll try it on you."
Greg stepped in front of the screen. The purr of power came on. Suddenly, materializing out of the air, came Greg's projection. Hazy and undefined at first, it rapidly assumed apparent solidity. Greg waved his arm; the image moved its arm.
Russ left the controls and walked across the laboratory to inspect the image. Examined from all sides, it looked solid. Russ walked through it and felt nothing. There was nothing there. It was just a three-dimensional image. But even from two feet away, it was as if the man himself stood there in all the actualityof flesh and blood.
"Hello, Russ," the image whispered. It held out a hand. "Glad to see you again."
Laughing, Russ thrust out his hand. It closed on nothing in mid-air, but the two men appeared to shake hands.
They tested the machine that afternoon. Their images strode above the trees, apparently walking on thin air. Gigantic replicas of Greg stood on a faraway mountain top and shouted with a thunderous voice. Smaller images, no more than two inches high, shinnied up a table leg.
Satisfied, they shut off the machine.
"That's one of the possibilities you mentioned," suggested Russ.
Greg nodded grimly.
Anautumn gale pelted the windows with driving rain, and a wild, wet wind howled through the pines outside. The fire was leaping and flaring in the fireplace.
Deep in his chair, Russ stared into the flame and puffed at his pipe.
"The factory wants more money on the spaceship," said Greg from the other chair. "I had to put up some more shares as collateral on a new loan."
"Market still going down?" asked Russ.
"Not the market," replied Greg. "My stocks. All of them hit new lows today."
Russ dragged at the pipe thoughtfully. "I've been thinking about that stock business, Greg."
"So have I, but it doesn't seem to do much good."
"Look," said Russ slowly, "what planets have exchanges?"
"All of them except Mercury. The Jovian exchange is at Ranthoor. There's even one out at Pluto. Just mining and chemical shares listed, though."
Russ did not reply. Smoke curled up from his pipe. He was staring into the fire.
"Why do you ask?" Greg wanted to know.
"Just something stirring around in my mind. I was wondering where Chambers does most of his trading."
"Ranthoor now," said Greg. "Used to do it on Venus. The listing is larger there. But since he took over the Jovian confederacy, he switched his business to it. The transaction tax is lower. He saw to that."
"And the same shares are listed on the Callisto market as on the New York boards?"
"Naturally," said Greg, "only not as many."
Russ watched the smoke from his pipe. "How long does it take light to travel from Callisto to Earth?"
"Why, about 45 minutes, Iguess. Somewhere around there." Greg sat upright. "Say, what's light got to do with this?"
"A lot," said Russ. "All commerce is based on the assumption that light is instantaneous, but it isn't. All business, anywhere throughout the Solar System, is based on Greenwich time. When a noon signal sent out from Earth reaches Mars, it's noon there, but as a matter of fact, it is actually 15 minutes or so past noon. When the same signal reaches Callisto, the correct time for the chronometer used in commerce would be noon when it is really a quarter to one. That system simplifies things. Does away with varying times. And it has worked all right so far because there has been, up to now, nothing that could go faster than light. No news can travel through space, no message, no signal can be sent at any speed greater than that. So everything has been fine."
Greg had come out of the chair, was standing on his feet, the glow of the blaze throwing his athletic figure into bold relief. That calm exterior had been stripped from him now. He was excited.
"I see what you are getting at! We have something that is almost instantaneous!"
"Almost," said Russ. "Not quite. There's a time lag somewhere. But it isn't noticeable except over vast distances."
"But it would beat ordinary light signals to Callisto. It would beat them there by almost 45 minutes."
"Almost," Russ agreed. "Maybe a split second less."
Greg strode up and down in front of the fireplace like a caged lion. "By heaven," he said, "we've got Chambers where we want him. We can beat the stock quotations to Callisto. With that advance knowledge of what the board is doing in New York, we can make back every dime I've lost. We can take Mr. Chambers to the cleaners!"
Russ grinned. "Exactly," he said. "We'll know 45 minutes in advance of the other traders what the market will be. Let's see Chambers beat that."
Ben Wrailwas taking things easy. Stretched out in his chair, with his cigar lit and burning satisfactorily, he listened to a radio program broadcast from Earth.
Through the window beside him, he could look out of his skyscraper apartment over the domed city of Ranthoor. Looming in the sky, slightly distorted by the heavy quartz of the distant dome, was massive Jupiter, a scarlet ball tinged with orange and yellow. Overwhelmingly luminous, monstrously large, it filled a large portion of the visible sky, a sight that brought millions of tourists to the Jovian moons each year, a sight that even the old-timers still must stare at, drawn by some unfathomable fascination.
Ben Wrail stared at it now, puffing at his cigar, listening to the radio. An awe-inspiring thing, a looming planet that seemed almost ready to topple and crash upon this airless, frigid world.
Wrail was an old-timer. For thirty years—Earth years—he had made his home in Ranthoor. He had seen the city grow from a dinky little mining camp enclosedby a small dome to one that boasted half a million population. The dome that now covered the city was the fourth one. Four times, like the nautilus, the city had outgrown its shell, until today it was the greatest domed city in the Solar System. Where life had once been cheap and where the scum of the system had held rendezvous, he had seen Ranthoor grow into a city of dignity, capital of the Jovian confederacy.
He had helped build that confederacy, had been elected a member of the constitution commission, had helped create the government and for over a decade had helped to make its laws.
But now ... Ben Wrail spat angrily and stuffed the cigar back in his mouth again, taking a fresh and fearsome grip. Now everything had changed. The Jovian worlds today were held in bond by Spencer Chambers. The government was in the hands of his henchmen. Duly elected, of course, but in an election held under the unspoken threat that Interplanetary Power would withdraw, leaving the moons circling the great planet without heat, air, energy. For the worlds of the Jovian confederacy, every single one of them, depended for their life upon the accumulators freighted outward from the Sun.
Talk of revolt was in the air, but, lacking a leader, it would get nowhere. John Moore Mallory was imprisoned on one of the prison spaceships that plied through the Solar System. Mallory, months ago, had been secretly transferred from the Callisto prison to the spaceship, but in a week's time the secret had been spread in angry whispers. If there had been riots and bloodshed, they would have been to no purpose. For revolution, even if successful, would gain nothing. It would merely goad Interplanetary Power into withdrawing, refusing to service the domed cities on the moons.
Ben Wrailstirred restlessly in his chair. The cigar had gone out. The radio program blared unheard. His eyes still looked out the window without seeing Jupiter.
"Damn," said Ben Wrail. Why did he have to go and spoil an evening thinking about this damned political situation? Despite his part in the building of the confederacy, he was a businessman, not a politician. Still, it hurt to see something torn down that he had helped to build, though he knew that every pioneering strike in history had been taken over by shrewd, ruthless, powerful operators. Knowing that should have helped, but it didn't. He and the other Jovian pioneershad hoped it wouldn't happen and, of course, it had.
"Ben Wrail," said a voice in the room.
Wrail swung around, away from the window.
"Manning!" he yelled, and the man in the center of the room grinned bleakly at him. "How did you come in without me hearing you? When did you get here?"
"I'm not here," said Greg. "I'm back on Earth."
"You're what?" asked Wrail blankly. "That's a pretty silly statement, isn't it, Manning? Or did you decide to loosen up and pull a gag now and then?"
"I mean it," said Manning. "This is just an image of me. My body is back on Earth."
"You mean you're dead? You're a ghost?"
The grin widened, but the face was bleak as ever.
"No, Ben, I'm just alive as you are. Let me explain. This is a television image of me. Three-dimensional television. I can travel anywhere like this."
Wrail sat down in the chair again. "I don't suppose there'd be any use trying to shake hands with you."
"No use," agreed Manning's image. "There isn't any hand."
"Nor asking you to have a chair?"
Manning shook his head.
"Anyhow," said Wrail, "I'm damn glad to see you—or think I see you. I don't know which. Figure you can stay and talk with me a while?"
"Certainly," said Manning. "That is what I came for. I want to ask your help."
"Listen," declared Wrail, "you can't be on Earth, Manning. I say something to you and you answer right back. That isn't possible. You can't hear anything I say until 45 minutes after I say it, and then I'd have to wait another 45 minutes to hear your answer."
"That's right," agreed the image, "if you insist upon talking about the velocity of light. We have something better than that."
"We?"
"Russell Page and myself. We have a two-way television apparatus that works almost instantaneously. To all purposes, so far as the distance between Earth and Callisto is concerned, it is instantaneous."
Wrail's jaw fell. "Well, I be damned. What have you two fellows been up to now?"
"A lot," said Manning laconically. "For one thing we are out to bust Interplanetary Power. Bust them wide open. Hear that, Wrail?"
Wrail stared in stupefaction. "Sure, I hear. But I can't believe it."
"All right then," said Manninggrimly, "we'll give you proof. What could you do, Ben, if we told you what was happening on the stock market in New York ...without you having to wait the 45 minutes it takes the quotations to get here?"
Wrail sprang to his feet. "What could I do? Why, I could run the pants off every trader in the exchange! I could make a billion a minute!" He stopped and looked at the image. "But this isn't like you. This isn't the way you'd do things."
"I don't want you to hurt anyone but Chambers," said Manning. "If somebody else gets in the way, of course they have to take the rap along with him. But I do want to give Chambers a licking. That's what I came here to see you about."
"By Heaven, Greg, I'll do it," said Wrail. He stepped quickly forward, held out his hand to close the deal, and encountered only air.
Manning's image threw back its head and laughed.
"That's your proof, Ben. Good enough?"
"I'll say it is," said Wrail shakily, looking down at the solid-seeming hand that his own had gone right through.
November6, 2153, was a day long remembered in financial circles throughout the Solar System. The Ranthoor market opened easy with little activity. Then a few stocks made fractional gains. Mining dropped fractionally. Martian Irrigation still was unexplainably low, as was Pluto Chemical and Asteroid Mining.
Trading through two brokers, Ben Wrail bought 10,000 shares of Venus Farms, Inc. when the market opened at 83½. A few minutes later they bought 10,000 shares of Spacesuits Ltd. at 106¼. The farm stocks dropped off a point. Spacesuits gained a point. Then suddenly both rose. In the second hour of trading the Venus stocks had boomed a full five points and Wrail sold. Ten minutes later they sagged. At the end of the day they were off two points from the opening. In late afternoon Wrail threw his 10,000 shares of Spacesuits on the market, sold them at an even 110. Before the close they had dropped back with a gain of only half a point over the opening.
Those were only two transactions. There were others. Spaceship Fabrication climbed three points before it fell and Wrail cashed in on that. Mercury Metals rose two points and crashed back to close with a full point loss. Wrail sold just before the break. He had realized a cool half million in the day's trade.
The next day it was a millionand then the man who had always been a safe trader, who had always played the conservative side of the market, apparently sure of his ground now, plunged deeper and deeper. It was uncanny. Wrail knew when to buy and when to sell. Other traders watched closely, followed his lead. He threw them off by using different brokers to disguise his transactions.
Hectic day followed hectic day. Ben Wrail did not appear on the floor. Calls to his office netted exactly nothing. Mr. Wrail was not in. So sorry.
His brokers, well paid, were close-mouthed. They bought and sold. That was all.
Seated in his office, Ben Wrail was busy watching two television screens before him. One showed the board in the New York exchange. In the other was the image of Gregory Manning, hunched in a chair in Page's mountain laboratory back on Earth. And before Greg likewise were two screens, one showing the New York exchange board, the other trained on Ben Wrail's office.
"That Tourist stuff looks good," said Greg. "Why not buy a block of it? I happen to know that Chambers owns a few shares. He'll be dabbling in it."
Ben Wrail grinned. "It's made a couple of points, hasn't it? It's selling here for 60 right now. In 45 minutes it'll be quoted at 62."
He picked up a telephone. "Buy all you can of Tourist," he said. "Right away. I'll tell you when to sell. Get rid of whatever you have in Titan Copper at 10:30."
"Better let go of your holdings of Ranthoor Dome," suggested Greg. "It's beginning to slip."
"I'll watch it," promised Ben. "It may revive."
They lapsed into silence, watching the board in New York.
"You know, Greg," said Ben finally, "I really didn't believe all this was true until I saw those credit certificates materialize on my desk."
"Simple," grunted Greg. "This thing we've got can take anything any place. I could reach out there, grab you up and have you down here in a split second."
Ben sucked his breath in between his teeth. "I'm not doubting anything any more. You sent me half a billion two days ago. It's more than doubled now."
He picked up the phone again and spoke to his broker on the other end.
"Unload Ranthoor Dome when she reaches 79."
Thereal furor came on the Ranthoor floor when Wrail cornered Titan Copper. Striking swiftly, he purchased the stock in huge blocks. The shares rocketedas the exchanges throughout the System were thrown into an uproar. Under the cover of the excitement he proceeded to corner Spacesuits Ltd. Spacesuits zoomed.
For two days the main exchanges on four worlds were in a frenzy as traders watched the shares climb swiftly. Operators representing Interplanetary Power made offerings. No takers were reported. The shares climbed.
Within one hour, however, the entire Wrail holdings in both stocks were dumped on the market. The Interplanetary Power traders, frantic over the prospect of losing control of the two important issues, bought heavily. The price plummeted.
Spencer Chambers lost three billion or more on the deal. Overnight Ben Wrail had become a billionaire many times over. Greg Manning added to his own fortune.
"We have enough," said Greg. "We've given Chambers what he had coming to him. Let's call it off."
"Glad to," agreed Ben. "It was just too damned easy."
"Be seeing you, Ben."
"I'll get down to Earth some day. Come see me when you have a minute. Drop in for an evening."
"That's an invitation," said Greg. "It's easy with this three-dimension stuff."
He reached out a hand, snapped a control. The screens in Wrail's office went dead.
Wrail reached for a cigar, lit it carefully. He leaned back in his chair, put his feet on the desk.
"By Heaven," he said satisfiedly, "I've never enjoyed anything so much in all my life."
A giantcylindrical hull of finest beryl steel, the ship loomed in the screen. A mighty ship, braced into absolute rigidity by monster cross beams of shining steel. Glowing under the blazing lamps that lighted the scene, it towered into the shadows of the factory, dwarfing the scurrying workmen who swarmed over it.
"She's a beauty," said Russ, puffing at his pipe.
Greg nodded agreement. "They're working on her day and night to get her finished. We may need it some day and need it in a hurry. If Chambers really gets that machine of his to rolling, space will be the only place big enough to hide in."
He chuckled, a grim chuckle, deep in his throat.
"But we won't have to hide long. Just until we get organized and then will come the time when we'll call for the showdown. Chambers will have to spread his cards."
Russ snapped the television switch and the screen went blank. The laboratory suddenly was aplace of queer lights and shadows, bulging with grotesque machines, with sprawling apparatus, a place that hinted darkly of vast power and mighty forces.
The scientist sat up in his chair. "We've come a long way, Greg. A long, long way. We have the greatest power man has ever known; we have an almost incomprehensible space drive; we have three-dimensional television."
"And," said Greg dryly, "we took Chambers to the cleaners on the market."
They sat in silence. Greg smelled the smoke from Russ's pipe, mixed with the taint of lubricant and the faint lingering scent of ionized air.
"We mustn't underrate Chambers, however," he declared. "The man made one mistake. He underrated us. We can't repeat his mistake. He is dangerous all the time. He will stop at nothing. Not even murder."
"He's going easy now," said Russ. "He's hoping Craven can find something that will either equal our stuff or beat it. But Craven isn't having any luck. He's still driving himself on the radiation theory, but he doesn't seem to make much headway."
"If he got it, just what would it mean?"
"Plenty. With that he could turn all radiations in space to work. The cosmics, heat, light, everything. Space is full of radiation."
"If it hadn't been for Wilson," Greg said, his voice a snarl, "we wouldn't have to be worrying about Chambers. Chambers wouldn't know until we were ready to let him know."
"Wilson!" ejaculated Russ, suddenly leaning forward. "I had forgotten about Wilson. What do you say we try to find him?"
Harry Wilsonsat at his table in the Martian Club and watched the exotic Martian dance, performed by near-nude girls. Smoke trailed up lazily from his drooping cigarette as he watched through squinted eyes. There was something about the dance that got under Wilson's skin.
The music rose, then fell to whispering undertones and suddenly, unexpectedly, crashed and stopped. The girls were running from the floor. A wave of smooth, polite applause rippled around the tables.
Wilson sighed and reached for his wine glass. He crushed the cigarette into a tray and sipped his wine. He glanced around the room, scanning the bobbing, painted faces of the night—the great, the near-great, the near-enough-to-touch-the-great. Brokers and businessmen, artists andwriters and actors. There were others, too, queer night-life shadows that no one knew much about, or that one heard too much about ... the playboys and the ladies of family and fortune, correctly attired men, gorgeously, sleekly attired women.
And—Harry Wilson. The waiters called him Mr. Wilson. He heard people whispering about him asking who he was. His soul soaked it in and cried for more. Good food, good drinks, the pastels of the walls, the soft lights and weird, exotic music. The cold but colorful correctness of it all.
Just two months ago he had stood outside the club, a stranger in the city, a mechanic from a little out-of-the-way laboratory, a man who was paid a pittance for his skill. He had stood outside and watched his employers walk up the steps and through the magic doors. He had watched in bitterness....
But now!
The orchestra was striking up a tune. A blonde nodded at him from a near-by table. Solemnly, with the buzz of wine in his brain and its hotness in his blood, he returned the nod.
Someone was speaking to him, calling him by name. He looked around, but there was no one looking at him now. And once again, through that flow of music, through the hum of conversation, through the buzzing of his own brain, came the voice, cold and sharp as steel:
"Harry Wilson!"
It sent a shudder through him. He reached for the wine glass again, but his hand stopped half-way to the stem, paused and trembled at what he saw.
Forthere was a gray vagueness in front of him, a sort of shimmer of nothingness, and out of that shimmer materialized a pencil.
As he watched, in stricken terror, the point of the pencil dropped to the tablecloth and slowly, precisely, it started to move. He stared, hypnotized, unbelieving, with the fingers of madness probing at his brain. The pencil wrote: