main office."

"I see. Do you know anything about the denominations of the bills? Were
they marked in any way?"

Bending frowned. "I don't know. You'd have to ask Luckman about that,
too."

"Where is he now?"

"Home, I imagine. He isn't due to report for work until ten."

"O.K. Will you leave word that we want to talk to him when he comes in?
It'll take us a while to get all the information we can from the lab,
here." He looked back at the hole in the wall. "It still doesn't make
sense. Why should they go to all that trouble just to shut off a burglar
alarm?" He shook his head and went over to where the others were
working.

It was hours before the police left, and long before they were gone Sam
Bending had begun to wish fervently that he had never called them. He
felt that he should have kept his mouth shut and fought Power Utilities
on the ground they had chosen. They had known about the Converter only
two weeks, and they had already struck. He tried to remember exactly how
the Utilities representative had worded what he'd said, and couldn't.

Well, there was an easy way to find out. He went over to his files and
took out the recording for Friday, 30 January 1981. He threaded it
through the sound player--he had no particular desire to look at the
man's face again--and turned on the machine. The first sentence brought
the whole scene back to mind.

* * * * *

"Thank you for your time, Mr. Bending," the man whose card had announced
him as Richard Olcott. He was a rather average-sized man, with a
fiftyish face, graying hair that was beginning to thin, and an
expression like that of a friendly poker player--pleasant, but
inscrutable.

"I always have time to see a representative of Power Utilities, Mr.
Olcott," Bending said. "Though I must admit that I'm more used to
dealing with various engineers who work for your subsidiaries."

"Not subsidiaries, please," Olcott admonished in a friendly tone. "Like
the Bell Telephone Company, Power Utilities is actually a group of
independent but mutually co-operative companies organized under a parent
company."

Bending grinned. "I stand corrected. What did you have on your mind, Mr.
Olcott?"

Olcott's hesitation was of half-second duration, but it was perceptible.

"Mr. Bending," he began, "I understand that you have been ... ah ...
working on a new and ... ah ... radically different method of power
generation. Er ... is that substanti