Mooney probed.
"Ah," laughed Harse. "Ho! I perceive what you want. You think perhaps there is something you can use in my survival kit."
"All right, Harse," Mooney said submissively, but he did have reservations.
First, it was important to find out just what was in the kit. After that—
Well, even a man from the future had to sleep.
Mooney was in a roaring rage. How dared the Government stick its bureaucratic nose into a simple transaction of citizens! But it turned out to be astonishingly hard to turn Harse's wampum into money. The first jeweler asked crudely threatening questions about an emerald the size of the ball of his thumb; the second quoted chapter and verse on the laws governing possession of gold. Finally they found a pawnbroker, who knowingly accepted a diamond that might have been worth a fortune; and when they took his first offer of a thousand dollars, the pawnbroker's suspicions were confirmed. Mooney dragged Harse away from there fast.
But they did have a thousand dollars.
As the cab took them across town, Mooney simmered down; and by the time they reached the other side, he was entirely content. What was a fortune more or less to a man who very nearly owned some of the secrets of the future?
He sat up, lit a cigarette, waved an arm and said expansively to Harse: "Our new home."