Harry hadn't time to answer.

"What'll this cost?" I snapped.

"Roughly, 15 to 18 thousand," Dex replied.

"What?"

With fine impartiality, they ignored me completely. Harry continued, as though without interruption, "Ye-es, I guess a compressor-and-coolant system could be arranged ..."

We broke up at 6 A.M. I took one of my pills, frowning at the bottle. Seemed to be emptying fast. Sleepily, I shook the thought off and faced the new day—little knowing the opposition had managed to skizzle us again.

The last displays were moons of Jupiter and Saturn; it was impossible to recreate tortured conditions of the planets themselves. Saturn's closest moon, Mimas, was picked.

Our grand finale: landing on Mimas with Saturn rising spectacularly out of the east. Mimas is in the plane of the rings, so they couldn't be obvious. We'd show enough, however, to make it damned impressive, and explain it by libration of the satellite.

The mechanics of realistically moving Saturn was rougher than a cob. And that's where the opposition fixed us. They claimed there wasn't enough drama in the tour. Let it end with a flash of light, a roar, and a meteor striking nearby.

The roar came from us. Mimas had no atmosphere—how could the meteor sound off or burn up? We finally compromised, permitting the meteor to hit.

We'd decided early the customers couldn't walk through. Mel first, Harry, then Dex, together produced an electric-powered, open runabout. The cart ran on treads in contact with skillfully hidden tracks, for the current channel. A futuristic touch, that—we'd say the cart ran on broadcast power.

The power source provided cart headlights, and made batteries unnecessary for the guide's walkie-talkie and the customers' helmet receivers.

Mimas' last section of track was on a vibrating platform. The cart tripped a switch; when the meteor supposedly hit, the platform would drop and rise three inches, fast, twisting while it did—"enough," Mel said grimly, "to shake the damned kishkas out of 'em!"

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