"Radiocompressors can do things--any things--without touching. Like rolling cigarettes or chopping up tobacco. The radio waves are so small they--push things." He pushed the air with his left hand. "Not just go through them." He wiggled the brittle fingers of his right. "Everyone knows that," said Miss Knox. "What you mean is that the supra-short wave has an intense direct effect on matter. It was in all the papers." "Oh, is that so? Is _that_ so? Well, you listen to me. _This_ isn't in all the papers." "All right, go on." Miss Knox struck a cigarette, which blew out. She threw it down and succeeded in lighting another. "You can fool people, also, with the same radio waves," said Boney. "You mean hide behind the door with a wave compressor and push chairs around? Like that?" "Don't be silly. Nothing like _that_. Dr. Brooks told me today, when I was sweeping his _private_ lab in the Toadstool, he told me they make one kind where if you put it on a table, say, no one can see what else is there. You could put--a cat on the table, and anyone would think it was just a table with a radio presser. Until the cat jumped off. Then you could see it." "Can it jump off?" asked Miss Knox. "Can it jump off? Did you ever see a cat that couldn't jump? And that's not all--" "Quite a trick," she said. "No trick. You could rule the world with that, ladies. Think about it. Rule the world. Got a cigarette? After all, I always get you coffee." She handed him one. Miss Erwin stared across the river. "I hope it isn't a new kind of bomb," she said. Boney pulled out a stick match and struck it on the stone lion. Cupping his hands around the flame, he lit up and walked away. * * * * * "But, Dr. Brooks, when you tell Boney things like that," said Miss Knox, "he believes them, and he quotes you like mad. Don't you care about your reputation at all?" "My dear woman," Dr. Brooks replied, "I've been interested in many things in my years, but getting my portrait in the Mushroom has never been one of them--" Mr. Barger's legs spasmed suddenly and shot straight out, jerking the covers from his fat-layered neck. But the pink shut eyelids hadn't quivered. "--and, anyway, Boney is right," Dr. Brooks finished. "Why do you think the Royalties want government control of the whole invention?" Miss Knox was tucking the covers around his warm, sticky jowls. "But he said you said--" "I said she said we said." Brooks grabbed her chin between his thumb and forefinger. "Did you know that machine on the Silvertongue roof could get at us inside our own homes?" She shook her head, swinging his arm from side to side. "If you know nothing about it, girlie, let me explain." He squeezed her chin tighter. "You saw those two men from the Christian E. Lodge Corporation--Silvertongue, that is--who came this afternoon to see Barger? The ones on motorskates?"