Oxnard remembered how nice everyone had been to him’ the first time he had visited Titanic, eighteen months earlier. They had all been very polite, very enthusiastic, had even pronounced laser and holographic correctly, although they never quite seemed to grasp the difference between a hologram and a holograph. He had first met Las Montpelier then, and had been ushered into Finger’s lofty sanctuary, right here in this same room. Finger wasn’t looking like Cary Grant in those days and his comment on Oxnard’s invention was:

“Stop wasting my time with dumb gadgets! What we need is a show with growth potential. Spinoffs, repeats, byproducts. This thing’s a pipedream!”

That was eighteen months ago. Now Finger was saying:

“Every major network has three-dee shows on the air! All top ten series are three-dees! People are standing in line all over the country to buy three-dee sets. And what have you and the other flunkies and drones working for me produced? Nothing! No-thing: Not a goddamned thing.”

Finger was perspiring now. The sculptured planes of his face were glistening and somehow looked as if they might be beginning to melt. He touched another button on his desk and the faint whir of an extra air blower sounded from somewhere in the padded ceiling.

“I had to go out myself and find the inventor of the three-dee process and personally coax him to come here and consult with us,” Finger said, his voice sounding at once hurt and outraged.

It was almost true. The woman, whose name Oxnard still couldn’t recall, had called him and said, Mr. Finger would like to meet with him. When Oxnard reminded her that they had met eighteen: months earlier, the woman had merely smiled on the phone screen and suggested that the future of her career depended on getting him into Finger’s office. Oxnard reluctantly agreed to a date and time.