“No, I think not,” said Wolfe. He laid his brief case on the corner of the desk and took the chair Mart indicated. “If I heard correctly you said, ‘not in its present form.’ I assume, then, that the mechanism has other and more adaptable forms.”
“Might be. You said it, I didn’t.”
Wolfe frowned and hunched forward a trifle in his chair. “My company is prepared to negotiate very generously with you in the utilization of this device. Naturally, you have had and will have other offers. I would like to be assured of an equal footing with others, and in turn assure you that we believe we can meet the best of them. Naturally, I say this upon the basis of our engineers’ examination of your toy. We have no doubt that it is what you say: an antigravity device.”
“I hope no one was hurt,” said Mart.
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“I say, I hope no one was hurt when you tried to scale up the mechanism in order to increase its lifting power.”
Wolfe flushed and glanced down at his hands. “We did have a small accident,” he confessed. “No one was hurt, although much valuable equipment was destroyed.”
“I’m glad that was all. You had no right, you understand, to alter this patented device for commercial purposes without due permission.”
“We have the right to make improvements with a view to obtaining our own patents!”
“Of course. Of course,” said Mart. And you were able to make such improvements, I trust?”