or them to be crazy. Hey, Daisy! Lemme
see that beauty mask!"

But his wife, backing out of the room, hugged the package to her bosom
and solemnly shook her head.

"A hell of a thing," Gusterson complained, "not even to be able to see
what my stolen ideas look like."

"I got a present for you too," Fay said. "Something you might think of
as a royalty on all the inventions someone thought of a little ahead
of you. Fifty dollars by your own evaluation." He held out the smaller
package. "Your tickler."

"My _what_?" Gusterson demanded suspiciously.

"Your tickler. The mech reminder you wanted. It turns out that the
file a secretary keeps to remind her boss to do certain things at
certain times is called a tickler file. So we named this a tickler.
Here."

Gusterson still didn't touch the package. "You mean you actually put
your invention team to work on that nonsense?"

"Well, what do you think? Don't be scared of it. Here, I'll show you."

As he unwrapped the package, Fay said, "It hasn't been decided yet
whether we'll manufacture it commercially. If we do, I'll put through
a voucher for you--for 'development consultation' or something like
that. Sorry no royalty's possible. Davidson's squad had started to
work up the identical idea three years ago, but it got shelved. I
found it on a snoop through the closets. There! Looks rich, doesn't
it?"

* * * * *

On the scarred black tabletop was a dully gleaming silvery object
about the size and shape of a cupped hand with fingers merging. A tiny
pellet on a short near-invisible wire led off from it. On the back was
a punctured area suggesting the face of a microphone; there was also a
window with a date and time in hours and minutes showing through and
next to that four little buttons in a row. The concave underside of
the silvery "hand" was smooth except for a central area where what
looked like two little rollers came through.

"It goes on your shoulder under your shirt," Fay explained, "and you
tuck the pellet in your ear. We might work up bone conduction on a
commercial model. Inside is an ultra-slow fine-wire recorder holding a
spool that runs for a week. The clock lets you go to any place on the
7-day wire and record a message. The buttons give you variable speed
in going there, so you don't waste too much time making a setting.
There's a knack in fingering them efficiently, but it's easily
acquired."

Fay picked up the tickle