Wrail, "I'm damn glad to see you--or think I see you. I
don't know which. Figure you can stay and talk with me a while?"

* * * * *

"Certainly," said Manning. "That is what I came for. I want to ask your
help."

"Listen," declared Wrail, "you can't be on Earth, Manning. I say
something to you and you answer right back. That isn't possible. You
can't hear anything I say until 45 minutes after I say it, and then I'd
have to wait another 45 minutes to hear your answer."

"That's right," agreed the image, "if you insist upon talking about the
velocity of light. We have something better than that."

"We?"

"Russell Page and myself. We have a two-way television apparatus that
works almost instantaneously. To all purposes, so far as the distance
between Earth and Callisto is concerned, it is instantaneous."

Wrail's jaw fell. "Well, I be damned. What have you two fellows been up
to now?"

"A lot," said Manning laconically. "For one thing we are out to bust
Interplanetary Power. Bust them wide open. Hear that, Wrail?"

Wrail stared in stupefaction. "Sure, I hear. But I can't believe it."

"All right then," said Manning grimly, "we'll give you proof. What
could you do, Ben, if we told you what was happening on the stock market
in New York ... _without you having to wait the 45 minutes it takes the
quotations to get here_?"

Wrail sprang to his feet. "What could I do? Why, I could run the pants
off every trader in the exchange! I could make a billion a minute!" He
stopped and looked at the image. "But this isn't like you. This isn't
the way you'd do things."

"I don't want you to hurt anyone but Chambers," said Manning. "If
somebody else gets in the way, of course they have to take the rap along
with him. But I do want to give Chambers a licking. That's what I came
here to see you about."

"By Heaven, Greg, I'll do it," said Wrail. He stepped quickly forward,
held out his hand to close the deal, and encountered only air.

Manning's image threw back its head and laughed.

"That's your proof, Ben. Good enough?"

"I'll say it is," said Wrail shakily, looking down at the solid-seeming
hand that his own had gone right through.

* * * * *

November 6, 2153, was a day long remembered in financial circles
throughout the Solar System. The Ranthoor market opened easy with little
activity. Then a few stocks made fractional gains. Mining dropped
fractional