Astounding Science Fiction (UK Edition) — page 20: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

18 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION Kingman was not a complete fool. He was a brilliant attorney, and his record had placed him in the position of Assistant Chief Attor- ney for ierran Electric, which was a place of no mean importance. He had been licked on the other fellow’s ground, with the other fellow’s tools. He picked up papers that carried, side by side, the relative assets of Venus Equilateral and Terran Electric. He studied them and thought deeply. To his scrutiny, the figures seemed about equal, though perhaps the Interplanetary Communications Co. was a bit ahead. But—he had been licked on the other fel- low’s ground with the other fellow’s tools; he thought that if he fought on his own ground, with his own tools, he might be able to swing the deal. And Terran Electric was not without a modicum of experience in the tools of the other fellow. His engineering department was brilliant and efficient, too; at least the equal of Channing and Franks and their gang of laughing gadgeteers. That not only gave him the edge of having his own tools and his own ground, but a bit of the other fellow’s instruments too. Certainly his engineering department should be able to think of some- thing good. William Cartright, business manager for Venus Equilateral, interrupted Don and Walt in a discussion. He carried a page of stock market quotations and a few hundred feet of ticker tape. Channing put down his pencil and leaned back in his chair. Walt did likewise, and said: “What's brewing?” “Something I do not like.” “So?” ‘The stock has been cutting didoes. We’ve been up and down so much it looks like a scenic railway.” “How do we come out?” “Even, mostly; but from my experience, I would say that some bird is playing hooky with Venus Equilateral, Preferred. The com- mon is even worse.” “Look bad?” : “Not too good. It is more than possible that some guy with money and the desire might be able to hook a large slice of V.E. Preferred. I don’t think they could get con- trol, but they could garner a plurality from stock outstanding on the planets. Most of the preferred stuff is in the possession of the folks out here, you know, but aside from yourself, Walt, and a couple of dozen of the executive personnel, the stock is spread pretty thin. The common stock has a lot of itself running around loose Outside. Look!” Cartright began to run off the many yards of ticker tape. “Here, some guy dumped a boatload at Canalopsis, and some other guy glommed on to a large hunk at New York. The Northern Landing Exchange showed a bit of irregularity during the couple of hours of tinkering, and the irregularity was in- creased because some bright guy took advan- tage of it and sold short.” He reeled off a few yards and then said: “Next, we have the opposite tale. Stuff was dumped at Northern Landing, and there was a wild flurry of bull-' ing at Canalopsis. The Terran Exchange was just flopping up and down in a general up- heaval, with the boys selling at the top and buying at the bottom. That makes money, you know, and if you can make the market tick your way—I mean control enough stuff ——your purchases at the bottom send the market up a few points and then you dump it, and it drops again. It wouldn’t take more than a point or two to make a guy rich, if you had enough stock and could continue to make the market vacillate.” ““That’s so,” agreed Don. “Look, Bill, why don’t we set one of our Terran agents to tinkering too? Get one of our best men to iry to outguess the market. As long as it is being done systematically, he should be able to follow the other guy’s thinking. That’s the best we can do unless we go gestapo and start listening in on all the stuff that goes‘through - the Station here.” “Would that help?” “Yeah, but we’d all land in the hoosegow — for breaking the secrecy legislation. You know. ‘No one shall... intercept... transmit ... eavesdrop upon... any message not in- tended for the listener, and . . . shall not .. . be party to the use of any information gained .. . et cetera.’ That’s us. The trouble is this lag between the worlds. They can pre- arrange their bulling and bearing ahead of time and play smart. With a little luck, they can get the three markets working just so— going up at Northern Landing; down at Terra; and up again at Canalopsis, just like waves in a rope. By playing fast and loose on paper, they can really run things hell, west, and crooked. Illegal, probably, since they eachegill no doubt claim to have all the stock in their possession, and yet will be able to sell and buy the same stock at the same time in three places.” “Sounds slightly precarious to me,” ob- jected Cartright. “Not at all, if you figure things just right. CcomiclboooksS.c©