Slick pictured the aged father being reunited with the son he'd lost twenty years before, seeing the child just as he'd been at the moment of parting, with Slick playing Santa Claus in the background, sending the kid a roll of thousand-dollar bills with a pink ribbon around it for a present. It was such a touching thought that tears came to the gangster's eyes, as they did when he watched a sad movie.
He was sorry he couldn't let Porter and the boy in on his plans right now, but he wasn't ready to tip his hand.
The machine was a two-passenger job, all right. Slick could tell that the minute he saw it. There was no enclosure, just two reclining barber chairs fixed on two circular plates sunk in a platform. After the switch was set, Porter had explained, the additional weight of an occupant of the chair would complete the contact and the field would build up. Slick examined the control panel, particularly the dial, which was calibrated into twenty sections, each for a ninety-second exposure to the field.
"You did say twenty years, didn't you?" Dr. Porter asked.
"If that's the limit," Slick replied tersely, "like I heard."
"How old are you?"
"You mean can my ticker take it? Well, I'm forty-five. They tell me I don't look it." Slick was vain of his black hair, without a thread of gray in it.
"No, you don't look it. But let me take your pulse and blood pressure."