Produced by Greg Weeks, Bruce Albrecht, Stephen Blundell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net [Illustration] VANISHING POINT BY C. C. BECK _In perspective, theoretically the vanishing point is at infinity, and therefore unattainable. But reality is different; vanishment occurs a lot sooner than theory suggests ..._ Illustrated by Martinez That? Oh, that's a perspective machine. Well, not exactly, but that's what I call it. No, I don't know how it works. Too complicated for me. Carter could make it go, but after he made it he never used it. Too bad; he thought he'd make a lot of money with it there for awhile, while he was working it out. Almost had me convinced, but I told him, "Get it to working first, Carter, and then show me what you can do with it better than I can do without it. I'm doing pretty well as is ... pictures selling good, even if I do make 'em all by guesswork, as you call it." That's what I told him. Y'see, Carter was one a them artists that think they can work everything out by formulas and stuff. Me, I just paint things as I see 'em. Never worry about perspective and all that kinda mechanical aids. Never even went to Art School. But I do all right. Carter, now, was a different sorta artist. Well, he wasn't really an artist--more of a draftsman. I first got him in to help me with a series of real estate paintings I'd got an order for. Big aerial views of land developments, and drawings of buildings, roads and causeways, that kinda stuff. Was a little too much for me to handle alone, 'cause I never studied that kinda things, ya know. I thought he'd do the mechanical drawings, which shoulda been simple for anybody trained that way, and I'd throw in the colors, figures and trees and so on. He did fine. Job came out good; client was real happy. We made a pretty good amount on the job, enough to keep us for a coupla months without working afterwards. I took it easy, fishing and so on, but Carter stayed here in the studio working on his own stuff. I let him keep an eye on things for me around the place, and just dropped in now and then to check up.