Kingman leaned back in his chair and put both of his feet on the desk. "I don't mind telling you," he said gloatingly. "Venus Equilateral is going to have the name of having invented and developed the matter transmitter and matter duplicator. That's fine. It will carry quite an honor, that reputation, up to the time that the big crash comes, when people realize they're being trapped. Terran Electric, selling duplicators for home use at a song, will emerge as the savior of mankind. All I'm going to gain out of this is security for Mark Kingman and a big black eye for Venus Equilateral."
Channing swore. He stood up. "You fool," he snapped, "you blind, bigoted fool. A little co-operation on your part would save a lot of trouble, but you prefer to let a petty quarrel ruin the entire economic system immediately. We could work this out sensibly, Kingman. Will you help?"
"No. Nothing you can say will convince me that I'm doing wrong."
"But why fire your help? That's what is going to hurt."
"I don't need a production line full of people, Channing, to sit around and watch a duplicator turn out vacuum cleaners, complete in their packing cartons."
Channing took Kingman's under ankle where they were crossed on the edge of the desk. He lifted, and the pudgy attorney went over backwards with a roaring crash, hitting his head on the carpet and spilling over backwards out of the chair onto the floor behind his desk. He arose with a roar of hate, but the door slammed behind Channing before Kingman could become coherent.
Channing returned to Venus Equilateral immediately, a trip that took four days. In touch with events by driver beam, Don heard the news-advertising agencies announcing the Terran Electric Duplicator of a size suitable for a medium home, complete with a recording attachment and a supply of disks. Channing gritted his teeth and stepped up the drive of the Relay Girl another notch. His first query upon reaching the Station was to Wes Farrell.
"Nothing yet, Don," answered Wes. "We've been running some very interesting experiments, though."
Channing was interested in nothing but the non-duplicatable material, but he nodded. Wes Farrell's sideline experiments often paid off more than the main line of research.
"By inserting a filter circuit in the transmission beam, we can filter out other responses," said Wes. "Meaning that we can take a cube of regular iron, for instance, and run it through. The integrated iron in the receiver is pure iron, the purity of which is dependent upon the band-pass of the filter. Using alloy selectivity disks for filters in the circuits, we can make iron that is 99.99997% pure."