I was beginning to get a trifle impatient. All those folk tales I had heard about the Mafia were getting more distant. "See here, Carmen, I could lie to you and say they went into the prehistoric past and you would never know the difference. But the truth is, I just don't know where the processed material goes. There's a chance it may go into the future, yes. But unless it goes exactly one year or exactly so many years it would appear in empty space ... because the earth will have moved from the spot it was transmitted. I don't know for sure. Perhaps the slight Deneb-ward movement of the Solar System would wreck a perfect three-point landing even then and cause the dispatched materials to burn up from atmospheric friction, like meteors. You will just have to take a chance on the future. That's the best I can do."
Carmen inhaled deeply. "Okay. I'll risk it. Pretty long odds against any squeal on the play. How many of these things can you turn out, Professor?"
"I can construct a duplicate of this device so that you may destroy the unwanted corpses that you would have me believe are delivered to you with the regularity of the morning milk run."
The racketeer waved that suggestion aside. "I'm talking about a big operation, Venetti. These things can take the place of incinerators, garbage disposals, waste baskets...."
"Impractical," I snorted. "You don't realize the tremendous amount of electrical power these devices require...."
"Nuts! From what you said, the machine is like a TV set; it takes a lot of power to get it started, but then on it coasts on its own generators."
"There's something to what you say," I admitted in the face of his unexpected information. "But I can hardly turn my invention over to your entirely persuasive salesmen, I'm sure. This is part of the results of an investigation for the government. Washington will have to decide what to do with the machine."
"Listen, Professor," Carmen began, "the Mafia—"
"What makes you think I'm any more afraid of the Mafia than I am of the F.B.I.? I may have already sealed my fate by letting you in on this much. Machinegunning is hardly a less attractive fate to me than a poor security rating. To me, being dead professionally would be as bad as being dead biologically."