y
invention is run by compressed air?"

"I didn't say your invention was a phony," Colonel Dower said
placatingly. "I merely mentioned the Keely Motor to show you why we
want to test it out somewhere away from your laboratory. Are you
willing to go?"

"Any time you are, colonel."

A week or so later, they went out into the Mojave and set up the test.
The suitcase--

* * * * *

"... The suitcase," said the colonel, "was connected up to a hundred
hundred-watt light bulbs. He let the thing run for ten hours before he
shut it off." He chuckled. "He never would let us look into that
suitcase. Naturally, we wouldn't buy a pig in a poke, as the saying
goes. We told him that any time we could be allowed to look at his
invention, we'd be glad to see him again. He left in a huff, and that
was the last we saw of him."

"How do you explain," Thorn said carefully, "the fact that his
suitcase _did_ run all those lights?"

The colonel chuckled again. "Hell, we had that figured out. He just
had a battery of some kind in the suitcase. No fancy gimmick for
deriving power from perpetual motion or anything like that. Nope. Just
a battery, that's all."

Captain Dean Lacey was grinning hugely.

Thorn said: "Tell me, colonel--what was this fellow's name?"

"Oh, I don't recall. Big, blond chap. Had a Swedish name--or maybe
Norwegian. Sanderson? No. Something like that, though."

"Sorensen?" Thorn asked.

"That's it! Sorensen! Do you know him?"

"We've done business with him," said Thorn dryly.

"He didn't palm his phony machine off on you, did he?" the colonel
asked with a light laugh.

"No, no," Thorn said. "Nobody sold us a battery disguised as a
perpetual motion device. Our relations with him have been quite
profitable, thank you."

"I'd say you still ought to watch him," said Colonel Dower. "Once a
con man, always a con man, is my belief."

Captain Lacey rubbed his hands together. "Ed, tell me something.
Didn't it ever occur to you that a battery which would do all that--a
battery which would hold a hundred kilowatt-hours of energy in a
suitcase would be worth the million he was asking for it?"

Colonel Dower looked startled. "Why ... why, no. The man was obviously
a phony. He wouldn't tell us what the power source was. He--" Colonel
Dower stopped. Then he set his jaw and went on. "Besides, if it were a
battery, why didn't he say so? A phony like that shouldn't be--" He
stopped again