"Deal? Did I make a deal?"
"What I mean, nobody else has approached you with the idea that Earth business would get back to normal if you would deny that a practical Matter Repositor exists? You'd say I have exclusive rights to the idea?"
"Nobody has," the Ambassador said, "and I agree to give you exclusive rights."
"Good! With your signed denial, I can raise the loot. I think the N.A.M. will go for it. The campaign will have to be well-financed, you see; the amount of space the news columns will give to your denial may be as much as they gave to your original statement, but that alone won't do the job. It's much harder to kill a notion that has penetrated the public mind than it is to implant one."
The Ambassador indulged in a chuckle. "I'm beginning to see daylight. My signed denial in your hands becomes a salable piece of merchandise, worth far more than I would pay you for a few lines of copy. Well, more power to you! Would it be out of place for me to contribute some of the funds for publicizing this denial?"
"How much?" Jerry asked practically.
"Well," the Ambassador explained, "I've had nothing reposited that I could avoid. But since your planet has a monetary exchange, I had to pay for my office help, lodging, and so on. Synthesizing coinage would have been counterfeiting, which is against your laws, so I merely had a moderate amount of uncoined gold reposited, and I sell it on the regular Earth market as I need funds. Gold has no particular value on the Federated Planets, of course. I could get whatever you need, so long as it isn't enough to disrupt the economy any more than—well, than I have already. Let's limit ourselves to an amount that could be accounted for by an unusually good year in mining."
"Sold!" Jerry said happily. "I think I can struggle along on a million a month retainer. Plus the usual fifteen per cent on advertising space and printing, of course; I'll have an estimate on that for you Tuesday. Since you can finance the whole campaign yourself, we'll leave the N.A.M. out of it. That way I can spare you the humiliation of signing an outright denial. All you have to do from now on is to keep mum. Don't even admit that you're the angel financing this campaign; that would make it look phony. I'll assign you three personal public-relations men, on twenty-four-hour shift. All your public remarks are to screen through them."
"But how can I conceal my identity when I'm sponsoring the campaign?" the Ambassador objected.