The result was one of the most effective think tanks in history. They already held eight percent of the most productive patents issued in the past decade, and the best was yet to come.

The sun had dimmed. The solar system was finally settling down. The cratered sphere in the foreground was drifting closer. Its rocks had breathed forth a new atmosphere, pink in hue and not thick enough to block the topography… and as the orange-red sphere grew huge, clean white polar caps and a lacing of long gray-green lines were suddenly apparent. Two cratered moons rose over the planet’s eastern curve.

There was laughter from the carts. “ In 1877, Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli observed a network of single and double lines crisscrossing the surface of the planet. Canali means ‘channels’ or ‘grooves’ in Italian, but the word was mistranslated into ‘canals,’ which implies intelligent design… "

“Quite a show, eh?” Marty grinned in the dark: a new moon. “I want to sign up right now.”

“Get out your Mark card if you’ve got the money. They’ll be passing the hat pretty quick.” Alex continued to look at Marty’s black silhouette. “We haven’t done any mat work for over a month. Have you been working the treadmill?”

“Sure. Well, not every day.” He sighed guiltily. “Guess I’m gonna pay for that, huh?”

In about thirty-six hours Marty would be in his first Game. It was a Fat Ripper Special. The monsters chasing him would be slow, and that was as well. Alex’s assistant had been muscular when Security hired him. Muscular, hell… he had come within one point of a Bronze in judo at Mexico’s Pan-American Games in ‘36. By the time Griffin came over from Cowles Seattle in ‘49, Marty was soft, but still strong and skilled; he could wipe the floor with Griffin in a structured randori. Now Marty’s weight was seventy pounds out of control.