Heller looked into the communications room. Gods, there was an operator at every machine and they were working like crazy. Heller pointed to a young man at the end machine. "See him," he said to the crew chief. "The one in the lavender shirt. And if he can't tell you, see Mr. Epstein over at Multinational, third corridor to your right."

Heller went on. He was breasting quite a stream of clerks and callers. He arrived near the door of Multinational, marked with its big logo of an anarchist bomb.

So many people were rushing in and out that he was stalled. He finally got into a line of people waiting to go in.

It looked like he would take so long that I switched my attention to the other viewer. Krak was somewhere else. Looked like Fifth Avenue. She was going along, looking into shop windows. My attention was at once riveted. She must be going to buy something and on my Squeeza credit card. The scene had such potential havoc in it that I didn't want to look. But just as one's eyes will rivet upon an imminent disaster, I could not tear my attention away.

She passed by Tiffany's with only a casual glance and I began to breathe once more. But the way she was staring at street numbers quickened my pulse. Then she saw something ahead. It was a banner sign in a window:

Grand Opening

Post Winter Sale

FURS!

They had racks of them, visible through the window.

She went in. A clerk bustled over.

"I wonder," said the Countess Krak, "if you have something suitable for a space voyage."

I felt the blood rushing to my head! It could only mean one thing. She was doing some sort of planning about going home! Maybe they had had a huge breakthrough!

"Space voyage, madam?"

"Yes. Something soft and warm and comfortable that can be worn instead of a pressure suit."

"Oh, I am sorry, madam," began the clerk.

A tall gentleman in a pinstripe tail coat had come up. "Please answer the phone, Beevertail," he said sharply to the clerk. "Madam, I could not help but overhear your request. Beevertail is a bit new: came in with our last shipment of pelts from Canada. He would not understand that you are from NASA. Now, it just happens that we have a mink jump suit that would be just the very thing you are looking for. This way, please."

Hastily, I turned to the other viewer. Maybe Heller was making enough money now to pay for such frills as mink jump suits. Such a thing would cost a fortune! I knew by experience!

Izzy just that moment spotted Heller in the line. He jumped up. He grabbed a young clerk and shoved him bodily into the chair to handle the callers and then grabbed Heller and pulled him out of the line into the hall.

"Oh, Mr. Jet. I do apologize for keeping you wait­ing. It's because I am so inefficient."

Heller got him out of there and into a vacant space in the hall. He had a sheet of paper and showed it to Izzy, speaking very low, like a conspirator. "It's your daily broker order list. Chicago Board of Trade: Sell your 1,000 contracts of March wheat today; it is going down by market opening tomorrow by ten cents a bushel. At market opening tomorrow, sell short 1,000 contracts of corn; it is going to drop thirty cents before close. Chicago Mercantile Exchange: Get rid of all our feeder cattle today; they'll be going down to hoof level by tomorrow morn­ing. New York Commodity Exchange: Buy 2,000 contracts of gold at market opening and place a sell order at $869.15 an ounce; that's what it will hit at 3:30 tomorrow afternoon. New York Cotton Exchange: Offload every contract of cotton we have today, as the price has peaked. Got it?"

"Just a minute," said Izzy. He yelled for another clerk and gave him the list to rush to the brokers at once. Then he turned back to Heller. "Mr. Jet, I don't know how you get these lists. You must know some cow at the Chicago stockyards and the head of the Federal Reserve. Oy! Such lists! You haven't failed once in thirty days of commodity trading. You know within two, twenty-four, thirty-six hours, exactly what the market will do! You never lose! You buy, sell. Always right on the money!"

"I'm trying to make a few billion," said Heller. "We need it for the spores plant; we need it to buy Chryster back from IRS and the government; and you need it to get your plan to take over the world with corporations going."

"Yes, yes. I know that and we are already a half a billion on our way to it. But I'm scared to death. The quantities we buy are so big. If we ever missed, we'd be wiped out. I go have nightmares every night that this will turn into another Atlantic City!"

Oh, I hoped it would! This scene was giving me chills! Half a billion? That was almost twice what I had! Money is power and with enough money, Heller could succeed! All this had been going on, like an avalanche roaring at me down the mountainside, while I was just peacefully whistling.

"Be calm, Izzy," said Heller. "Be calm. Here, come with me. I've been meaning to show you because I can't be here all the time and you'll have to know how to do it."

They walked through the throng of hurrying people. Heller stopped before a blank door and took out a key. "This is the spare office I asked you to give me last month. Now, don't start screeching that I have ruined the decor or something, because I can patch up the holes in the wall and the floor and nobody will know the difference."

They went in. Heller locked the door behind him.

It was a very wide office now because some of the partitions or internal divisions had been removed and were stacked up over at the side.

A huge, long sheet of slate covered the entire far wall. It had white columns painted on it. At the tops of these columns were "Wheat," "Corn," "Soybeans," "Cattle," etc., etc.-all the various things sold on the commodity markets in terms of futures. Under each was a column of figures, very large. Over to the left were columns of times and months of contracts.

Along the far right wall, a set of ticker-tape machines stood chattering away, spewing out tape.

A stack of newspapers littered a desk.

Close to the wall opposite the huge slate stood a contraption that looked like it was built of armor steel. It had a padlock on the back and Heller unlocked it and opened the door. The time-sight!

Heller stuck his eye to the eyepiece and twiddled a side knob. I couldn't make out the numbers but they seemed to be future numbers on the slate up to, perhaps, thirty hours. At least that was what the digital in the frame was spitting as time.

"Izzy," said Heller. "This is very confidential. The public must not get possession of these. It's a navigational time-sight." "A what?"

"It reads the future," said Heller. "Right now, if that board is kept up daily, this device reads the future of that board. You can see what it will be reading this afternoon or tomorrow at specific times. It reads whatever is put on the board in the future."

"Magic!" said Izzy in tones of horror. "Divination! Oy!"

"No, no," said Heller. "It's just a machine, an inven­tion. Look into the eyepiece."

"Never!" said Izzy. "Black magic! Necromancy! My mother would never forgive me. My rabbi would go into shock! He'd revoke my bar mitzvah! One must never touch magic! Moses would roll in his grave fast enough to turn the Red Sea into buttermilk!"

"Izzy" said Heller, "it has nothing to do with magic. It's just that time is the dominant factor in this universe and forms the positions of matter in space. The machine simply operates on a feedback."

Izzy was shuddering back, afraid of his future chances in Heaven.

Heller said, "All it's reading right now is future dollar marks."

"Dollar marks?" said Izzy.

"Correct and direct," said Heller.

"Well, that puts a different value on it," said Izzy.

Heller said, "Izzy, I have to come in here twice a day and chalk up the whole board, using the data from those machines. If I get busy on something else, we lose out. I also have to read the sight and figure out what to buy and sell. And you, with your business administration knowledge, would be much better at it than I am. You could probably make the setup grind out twice as much as I do."