And he pulled out some bills. I started to push them back, for of course I wasn't going to spoil this great moment in my life by asking a traveler from the future to pay for a meal. But then I saw what he was trying to give me. I picked up the bills and stared. Marilyn's head was over my shoulder and she was staring just as hard. She took one out of my hand. "It's not real," she said. "There's not that much money in the world." She had the five. I had the ones. The five-thousand and the one-thousand-dollar bills, that is. I looked up at Solid Chuck Richards. "When you said that meal would cost twenty-five or thirty, did you mean twenty-five or thirty _thousand_?" "You reach me, man. Inflation, you know. It's terrible. I remember when a gee would keep the beat rocking in a juke palace for an hour. Now you pay half a gee a number. It's terrible." * * * * * After we explained to him that the inflation was even worse than that, he decided it was something more than terrible. It seems he hadn't paid much attention to money in his younger days, though he did recall now that when he was very small he'd been able to get a good nickel candy bar for twenty dollars, but he hadn't seen anything smaller than a hundred in some time now. "There should be a law against this sort of thing," he said indignantly. "It's enough to turn a man into an anglehead, the way they keep pushing up the price of fumes. And what they charge for Bulgy Sanders records--" He picked up the bills and looked at them. "But I think maybe we can find a way to profit on this, daddy-boy! I have a deep thought--we members of the Friday Night Bull Session and Experimentation Society will come to your restaurant and pay you five gees for a steak dinner, which is a fine price for you but very little for us. In that way, we will eat good food and you will gather a good bundle of the stuff of life." There was a thudding noise at the window. I looked over quick. Somebody was hanging on outside, off balance, as if he had been standing on a ladder outside and had fallen against the window. I ran for the door, forgetting it was a switch. But Solid Chuck Richards realized it. He dived back into his chair and called, "Reach you later, o-daddy!" He disappeared as I pulled the door open. The sudden flash as the time machine stopped operating reminded me about those switches on the door, but it was too late now. I ran out and around the side just in time to see a figure disappearing up the alley. Sure enough, there was a ladder against the window. I didn't bother chasing the man very far, because, after a fast look at him, I had a pretty good idea who it was. I'd speak to him later. * * * * *