r showed
him that the Ford was just turning the previous corner.

Bending's heavy Lincoln swung around the corner at high speed and shot
back toward the highway. At the next corner, he cut left once more, and
the mirror showed that the Ford hadn't made it in time to see him turn.

They'd probably guess he'd gone left, so he made a right turn as soon as
he hit the next street, and then made another left, then another right.
Then he kept on going until he got to the highway.

A left turn put him back on the highway, headed toward the Expressway.
The steel-blue car was nowhere in sight.

Bending sighed and headed back south towards home.

* * * * *

Sam Bending knew there was something wrong when he pulled up in front of
his garage and pressed the button on the dashboard that was supposed to
open the garage door. Nothing happened.

He climbed out of the car, went over to the door of the garage, and
pushed the emergency button. The door remained obstinately shut.

Without stopping to wonder what had happened, he sprinted around to the
front door of the house, unlocked it, and pressed the wall switch. The
lights didn't come on, and he knew what had happened.

Trailing a stream of blue invective, he ran to the rear of the house and
went down the basement stairs. Sure enough. Somebody had taken his house
Converter, too.

And they hadn't even had the courtesy to shunt him back onto the power
lines.

At his home, he had built more carefully than he had at the lab. He had
rigged in a switch which would allow him to use either the Converter or
the regular power sources, so that he could work on the Converter if he
wanted to. His basement was almost a duplicate of his lab in the city,
except that at home he built gadgets just for the fun of watching them
work, while at the lab he was doing more serious research.

He went over to the cabinet where the switch was, opened it, and punched
the relay button. The lights came on.

He stalked back up the stairs and headed for the visiphone. First, he
dialed his patent attorney's office; he needed some advice. If Power
Utilities had their hands on two out of three of his Converters, there
might be some trouble over getting the patents through.

The attorney's secretary said he wasn't in, and she didn't know if he
expected to be back that day. It was, she informed Bending rather
archly, nearly five in the afternoon. Bending thanked her and hung u