He lumbered into the spotlight, glanced around, suddenly self-conscious.

Oxnard stretched out his right hand. “Thank you for volunteering,” he said. His palms were suddenly sweaty.

Beefy reached for Oxnard’s hand. His own heavy paw went through Oxnard’s.

The other bankers gasped. Beefy stared at his own hand, then grabbed at Oxnard’s image. He got nothing but air.

“Actually I’m ’way over here,” Oxnard said, as a couple of technicians pushed aside the screen that had hidden him from their view. He looked up from the tiny monitor he had been watching and saw the bankers, more than fifty yards across the huge empty studio. Beefy was standing under the spotlight, gaping at Oxnard’s three-dimensional image; the others were half out of their chairs, craning for a view of where Oxnard really was standing.

“How about that?” Finger crowed and started pounding his palms together. The bankers took up the applause. Even Beefy clapped, grudgingly.

Turning back to the camera, Oxnard said, “If you gentlemen will forgive my little deception, we can proceed with the show. I think you’ll find it entertaining.”

It was.

For twenty minutes, the bankers saw strange and wonderful worlds taking shape not more than ten feet before their eyes. Birds flew, mermaids swam, elephants charged at them, all with flawless three-dimensional solidity. They visited the top of Mt. Everest (a faked set from the old MCA-Universal studios), watched a cobra fight a mongoose, then went on a whirlwind tour of all the continents and major seas of the world. A beautiful chanteuse sang to them in French, a Minnesota sexual athletics class competed for originality and style. The windup was a glider flight through the Grand Canyon, while the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sang “America the Beautiful.”

“Breathtaking!”

“Perfect!”

“Awe-inspiring!”

“Terrific!”

As the lights came back up, Bernard Finger took the floor again, beaming at the four bedazzled bankers.