Mart nodded benignly. “Right. Do you think that might be a sort of flash in the pan gadget that would interest the small fry — and maybe their older brothers and sisters — to the tune of a couple of hundred thousand copies?”
“Yeah, I guess maybe it would sell,” Sam muttered as he continued staring into the wire framework, pressing the button at first one pole and then the other. “But there’s gotta be a hole in the disk! There’s gotta be a way for the bead to get through,” he said. “You gotta tell me!”
III.
It wasn’t expected that the Teleport would have the same magnitude of success as the rocket had enjoyed. They advertised the new toy for a dollar and placed one-inch ads in the mail-order sections of the home owners’ and mechanics’ magazines as well as the comic books. The results were better than expected.
Mart would have been content with a couple gross well placed sales. And the grapevine told him that these were made very early in the history of the Teleport. They were the ones made to the laboratories already investigating the rocket.
As soon as he was certain that the second toy was being dismantled and investigated by the right people, Mart left all details of its manufacture and sales to Sam Marvenstein and turned his attention to the third project.
He and Berk were prepared to embark upon a career of professional gambling.
As if they had not already done that some time ago — Carolyn Nagle reminded them during their endless dinnertime discussions of the project.
It would be difficult for a single gambling house to add much, percentage-wise, to the glitter of the Las Vegas night, and the Volcano Club didn’t try — not very hard anyway. There was a medium-size neon sign atop the building, supposedly reminiscent of the last days of Pompeii, with neon waves of lava washing down the sides of the darkening cone and bits of fire popping out like bright balls from the Volcano’s mouth. It was a good sign, but it had to be searched for in the ever-present glow that hung over the city like the nebulous hopes of a gambler about to make his final tilt with the one-armed bandits.
It was a little out of the way, too, being at the end of the block on Bandit Alley in an old building that used to house a drugstore. Not being gamblers by nature, Mart and Berk had not wanted to sink a lot of money into the initial project, but at the end of the first two weeks they were genuinely disappointed.