Page:Fantastic Volume 08 Number 01.djvu/78

 "I told you this was something big," he said.

"It's big, all right," I told him. "And it's pretty illegal, too. Thanks, but I don't want to spend the next ten years in jail. I have a job, and a trade. I want to keep them."

"There's nothing illegal about it," the tall thin guy said. "By the way, my name is Dunstan. Call me Willy."

"I'm Arthur Holly," I said, "and I'm leaving. Call me a taxi."

"Don't be that way," Greg put in. "Listen to the man."

"The secret is in the binoculars," Dunstan said. "They are really a setup for beamed power transmission. It's built into the barrels of the binoculars."

I blinked. "You mean you put electricity into the horse?" I said.

"Not at all," he said, and grinned at me. "There's a printed circuit under the saddle. The beam powers it."

"Printed circuit?" I said.

"Antigravity," he said.

Brother!

But there wasn't any doubt about it. Willy Dunstan, glasses and all, really had something. He'd invented antigravity, but he didn't see why he should give it to the government or something, and not make any money out of it. With the patent laws the way they are (anyhow, this is the way he explained it to me) he probably couldn't even get a patent on the thing, since it was only a new application of existing art. Or something. So he had to figure out some way of making money out of antigravity without letting anybody know what he had.

Horseracing was the answer, of course.

Put the circuit under the saddle, using printed stuff so it doesn't bulk and cause embarrassing questions, power it from a pair of binocs in the stands, and the saddle doesn't weigh a thing. Neither does the jockey. The horse is running free, unweighted.

No wonder the plug made time.

And no wonder Greg was excited. This was a way to win races.

"I wanted a trainer to avoid suspicion," Dunstan told me. "I've got to make this look good. I can talk about new scientific methods of training to explain why my horses win."

"Sure," I said. I felt kind of blank.

"But I needed a man I could trust," he said. "Greg, 78