And for all his present aloneness he was beginning to realize his latent powers--powers which, when fully developed, would doubtlessly bring him into contact with others like himself, with someone who could share the fierce ecstasy of probing with the consciousness to the moon, or even farther, at the speed of light at which thought moved. No, perhaps he need not always be alone....
He went out to lunch, returned, called his broker. Wythe told him there was no activity in Lawrence. The afternoon wore. A few minutes before the exchange closed the broker called.
"It's hopeless, Marty," said Wythe. "Let's sell. The price is still two twenty-five and nothing for sale. How about it? Three hundred thousand profit in one day."
It sounded attractive. Black hesitated, then thought of Lawrence, good, old would-be humanitarian and philanthropist D. V. Lawrence lying in coma. Lawrence, whose dreams were in his hands now. He had come to like Lawrence, the trail-blazer where there were so few trails to be blazed. He had to help him. If worse came to worse he would cast Ethics to the winds. He'd have to! His conscience couldn't permit him to do anything else. He would psionically persuade at least one of the other stockholders to vote Lawrence's way.
Well, at least his mind was made up. Lawrence would have his options. And with forty-nine percent of the stock between them they could gamble on getting a favorable vote.
"What about it, Marty?" the broker asked impatiently.
"Sorry," Black said. "The answer is no, Charlie! I want that stock."
Moments later his consciousness was on its way to keep the rendezvous with Joyce high in the evening sky over Oklahoma, up where the blue of the atmosphere turned to the black of infinity.
And moments later lights blazed over a table in a realty office in Los Angeles where no one sat. But pens lifted and wrote....
"_D. V. Lawrence by Martin J. Black, his attorney-in-fact._"
"_J. F. Cadigan Realty Corporation by Richard Joyce, Vice-President._"
Another pen lifted with the invisible but delicate twist of a feminine psi-touch.
"_Before me this ninth day of September in the year Nineteen Hundred and Seventy-six Anno Domini psionically appeared...._"
An oak-panelled conference room. Lawrence's first vice-president reading the proposal. The board of directors. The major stockholders. Smaller ones. Attorneys-in-fact for both Lawrence and Black.