Business enterprises -- Fiction; Inventions -- Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories
Feetch walked into the kitchen and carefully poured himself a drink of
water. He drank the water slowly and placed the glass on the washstand
with a tiny click. It was the tiny click that did it. Something about
it touched off the growing rage. If Piltdon were there he would have
punched him in the nose. The twenty-five years. The tricks. The threats.
Think? He'd figured the solution long ago, only he hadn't allowed
himself to see it. Not lack of brains, lack of guts. Well, he thought
grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now.
"Piltdon!" he barked. "Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's
all." He hung up.
In the same grim mood the following morning, he placed a few more calls.
* * * * *
In the same mood that afternoon he stood in the middle of his
living-room and looked at his visitors: Piltdon, Williams, the
Government man; Billings from the Van Terrel Foundation; Steiner of
Westchester University; the members of the press.
"Gentlemen," he said. "I'll make it brief." He waved the papers in his
hand. "Here is everything I know about what I call the Feetch Effect,
including plans and specifications for the New Type Super-Opener.
All of you have special reasons for being keenly interested in this
information. I am now going to give a copy to each of you, providing
one condition is met by Mr. Piltdon." He stared at Piltdon. "In short,
I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener."
Piltdon leaped from his chair. "Outrageous!" He roared. "Ridiculous!"
"Fifty-one percent," said Feetch firmly. "Don't bother with any
counterproposals or the interview is at an end."
"Gentlemen!" squawked Piltdon, "I appeal to you--"
"Stop bluffing," said Feetch coldly. "There's no other way out for
you. Otherwise you're ruined. Here, sign this agreement."
Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: "Gentlemen, will you
be a party to this?"
"Well," murmured the Government man, "I never did think Feetch got a
fair shake."
"This information is important to science," said the Van Terrel man.
After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed.
Published in the newspapers the following day, Feetch's statement read,
in part: "The motion in space and time of the singular curvilinear
proportions of the original Super-Opener combined with the capacitor
effect built up as it increased its frictional electro-static charge
in inverse proportion to the cube root of the tolerance between the
involute teeth caused an instantaneous disruption of what I call the
Alpha multi-dimensional screen. The can, being metallic, dropped
through, leaving its non-metallic contents behind. The disruption was
instantly repaired by the stable nature of the screen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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