Chapter 4

Jim had found the additional chair and was waiting when Susan and George came in. "George, we've got the most miraculous thing to show you. We recorded this about an hour ago." Using the monster display as the screen, he replayed the man in the park with the "flying carpet."

George was a stunned as they had been. Jim then showed him the trip to the store selling the devices. "We've got to have one, but we can't think of a way to get one except steal it or negotiate with a local to buy one for us. Do you have any ideas?"

"Well, I can't think of any other options, and I don't like the idea of stealing. Do you have any prospects for a local contact?"

"No, we don't. We were hoping that you could come up with some ideas. Frankly, I don't care for the idea of going to some university-type; I don't trust them after my experience with Murchison."

"I don't blame you. And governments are not very high on my list of trustworthy prospects, either. We know absolutely nothing about their religion, so the clergy doesn't attract me. For all we know, they could be devil-worshipers who believe that the double-cross is the highest form of religious ecstasy.

"How about a small-business man. If we offered an economic incentive, he would have a reason to stay loyal. I got from Susan that their language is understandable, so maybe we could negotiate with someone."

"Daddy, that's the perfect job for you. You have years of experience negotiating deals; you should be able to handle this much better than either one of us."

"OK, I'll do it. But you two will have to help me find the right prospect.

"By the way, can you rig this gadget so that you can see all around, not just in one direction?"

"Yes, I'm sure I can. I hadn't thought of needing that. I'll start working on it while you and Susan hunt a likely prospect."

Jim's solution was to switch around the POV control so that there was a master view screen on a roll, pitch, and yaw gimbal arrangement controlled by a joystick at the main operators desk. He then set up three viewing monitors which repeated the scene shown by the master view screen. One was used by the master operator and the other two were at auxiliary desks for observers to use. He had several other schemes in mind if this didn't work out, but this was the easiest to implement on short notice.

Meanwhile, George and Susan had tracked down a likely prospect and were ready to contact him whenever Jim had the system ready. They let George practice with the controls so that he could handle the master unit directly; everybody thought that this was the best way to go. Once he was comfortable with the system, they were ready to contact their man.

They waited until the man was alone in his store before contacting him. George moved the POV into the man's line of sight and activated it for two-way communication. Obviously, the man was startled to see a TV screen suddenly appear in front of his face, but a few feet away, and show a man in very strange clothes. The man on the screen smiled and said, "I hope you can understand me, even though I speak with a very strange accent. My name is George Wilson. What is your name?"

The man was dumbfounded for a moment, then said, "My name is Asor Raddik. Yes, I can understand you if you speak slowly. I also will speak slowly."

"Thank you. Please call me George. May I call you Asor?"

"Yes, George, that is acceptable. Where are you located? You sound so strange."

"Please believe me when I tell you some very odd facts. I am talking to you from an entirely different planet. We are similar to you, but not exactly the same. We are interested in opening trade channels with your people, but we are reluctant to go through the normal contacts. Are you interested in being our agent on your planet. I can assure you that what I am asking you to do is entirely moral, ethical, and, I believe, legal. All I can guarantee is that, if you join us, you will become very rich. What do you say?"

"Yes, of course, I am interested. But how did you come to select me? I am just an ordinary business man who is not remarkable in any way."

"That is precisely why we came to you. Your selection was somewhat arbitrary; we had no way of knowing anything about you before contacting you just now. We were looking for a business man who would have a selfish interest in being loyal to us because of the riches he can get, but we need somebody whom we can trust."

"You can trust me if you can really make me rich. What do you want me to do!"

"First, we need to know what you consider to be valuable. For example, we value gold; do you use that?"

"Yes, gold is very valuable to us. Can you supply me with gold?"

"We have access to all of the gold we need, though it may sometimes take us a few weeks to get it. Next time we meet, I will give you a small piece of gold. I need you to tell me what it is worth in your economy so that we can work out a rate of exchange. Can I see you here tomorrow at this time?"

"Yes, that will be satisfactory. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Goodbye"

George cut the power and turned to the others. "I have a good feeling about this guy. He looks like the type we can use. Let's get a 1-ounce bar of gold for him to price. In fact, lets get a number of 1-ounce gold bars to keep on hand for use as we might need them."

"Oh, Daddy, you made that contact run so smoothly. I don't know how you do it, but everybody feels better after talking to you."

"Thanks, honey. You always know how to make me feel good."

"I agree, George. You handled that very well.

"Is there a suitable safe we can move out here? Would 24 1-ounce bars be enough? And can you take care of getting the bars made up?"

"Yes, I can handle all of that tomorrow before the meeting. Honey, we're going to need it eventually, anyway, so please identify more of the placer gold deposits. I don't think that we will ever need to bother with the "hard-rock" mines. Once the placer sources are gone, we can just move on to another universe."

"Hello, Asor. Here's the gold that I promised. It's as nearly 100% pure as it's possible for us to refine. Tell me what it is worth to you." George reached through the portal and dropped the small gold bar on Asor's desk.

Asor picked up the gold bar almost with reverence; he had never seen gold in this form, before. There was a small scale on his desk which he used to weigh the bar and then he did some calculations with pencil and paper. "I place the current value of this gold at 334 drings."

"We have no way of evaluating your money, yet. What is the usual pay rate for an day's work by a common laborer?"

"The minimum legal rate is 3.25 drings per hour, so that would be 26 drings per 8-hour working day. We divide the day into 24 hours, the hour into 60 minutes, and the minute into 60 seconds."

"Excellent, our time is kept in the same units as yours; that does make things a bit simpler. Our monetary unit is the dollar, which appears to value at about 2 dollars per dring.

By the way, I noticed that you used a pencil and paper to do your calculations a minute ago. Why didn't you use a personal calculator?"

"What's a personal calculator?"

"We use a personal calculator for routine mathematical calculations, instead of a pencil and paper. We all know how to do the calculations with pencil and paper, but we prefer to use a small machine, because it is so much more convenient. This is mine. As you can see, it has buttons on the front for entering the numbers and the numbers appear on this display as we punch them in. These five keys do the addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and percentage operations on the numbers. For example: 6 times 5 plus 4 minus 10 divided by 8 equals 3. Would you like to try?"

"Yes, I would. Ah, thank you. Yes, I see how it works. Oh, it even does decimals! What a wonderful invention! How much does it cost?"

"That particular calculator was given away as a door prize at a store opening, but I think that it would cost less than $2, or 1 dring, at retail. What would it be worth to your people?"