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He ambled across the sun-drenched terrace, to the table where Janniver was rolling dice.
Mario reached his hands down, caught up the meaningful cubes.
Janniver looked up with puzzled eyes. Breaugh bent his straight Welsh eyebrows in the
start of a temper. Ditmar, frowning, leaned back.
"Excuse me," said Mario. "May I ask what you're rolling for?"
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Breaugh said, "A private matter. It does not concern you." "Does it concern the Chateau
d'lf?" Six eyes stared.
"Yes," said Breaugh, after a second or two of hesitation. Mario said, "I'm a friend of Roland
Mario's. I have a message from him."
"What is it?"
"He said to stay away from the Chateau d'lf; not to waste your money. He said not to trust
anyone who suggested for you to go there."
Breaugh snorted. "Nobody's suggesting anything to anybody."
"And he says he'll get in touch with you soon."
Mario left without formality, returned to where he had left Zaer. The old man with the hot
red eyes was gone.
Ralston Ebery had many enemies, so Mario found. There were a large number of
acquaintances, no friends. And there was one white-faced creature that seemed to live only
to waylay him, hiss vileness. That was Letya Arnold, a former employee in the research
laboratories.
Mario ignored the first and second meetings, and on the third he told the man to keep out
of Ms way. "Next time I'll call the police."
"Filth-tub," gloated Arnold. "You wouldn't dare! The publicity would ruin you, and you
know it, you know it!"
Mario inspected the man curiously. He was clearly ill. His breath reeked of internal decay.
Under a loose gray-brown jacket his chest was concave, his shoulders pushed forward like
doorknobs. His eyes were a curious shiny black, so black that the pupils were
indistinguishable from the iris, and the eyes looked like big black olives pressed into two
bowls of sour milk.
"There's a patrolman now," said Arnold. "Call him, mucknose, call him!"
Quickly Mario turned, walked away, and Arnold's laughter rang against his back.
Mario asked Louis Correaos about Letya Arnold. "Why wouldn't I dare have him
arrested?"
And Correaos turned on him one of his long quizzical stares. "Don't you know?"
Mario remembered that Correaos thought he was Ebery. He rubbed his forehead. "I'm
forgetful, Louis, Tell me about Letya Arnold."
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Click here to buy
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"He worked in the radiation lab, figured out some sort of process that saved fuel. We
naturally had a legal right to the patent." Correaos smiled sardonically. "Naturally we
didn't use the process, since you owned stock in World Air-Power, and a big block of
Lamarr Atomics. Arnold began unauthorized use. We took it to court, won, recovered
damages. It put Arnold into debt and he hasn't been worth anything since."
Mario said with sudden energy, "Let me see that patent, Louis."
Correaos spoke into the mesh and a minute later a sealed envelope fell out of the slot into
the catch-all.
Correaos said idly, "Myself, I think Arnold was either crazy or a fake. The idea he had
couldn't work. Like perpetual motion."
Letya Arnold had written a short preface to the body of the paper, this latter a mass of
circuits and symbols unintelligible to Mario.
The preface read:
Efficiency in propulsion is attained by expelling ever smaller masses at ever higher
velocities. The limit, in the first case, is the electron. Expelling it at speeds approaching
that of light, we find that its mass increases by the well-known effect. This property
provides us a perfect propulsive method, capable of freeing flight from its dependence
upon heavy loads of material to be ejected at relatively slow velocities. One electron
magnetically repelled at near-light speeds, exerts as much forward recoil as many pounds
of conventional fuel....
Mario knew where to find Letya Arnold. The man sat brooding day after day in Tanagra
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