"Even with its sixhundred-thousand possible tone combinations, some never heard by human ears. You're a bug like the rest of your family for those outer-space voodoo noises your electronic dungheap makes. And you have the nerve to call it a musical instrument. None of you Rosens have an ear. I wouldn't have a Rosen electronic sixteen-hundred-dollar organ in my home if you gave it to me at cost; I'd rather have a set of vibes."

"All right," I yelled, "you're a purist. And it isn't sixhundred-thousand; it's seven-hundred-thousand."

"Those souped-up circuits bloop out one noise and one only," Maury said, "however much it's modified--it's just basically a whistle."

"One can compose on it," I pointed out.

"Compose? It's more like creating remedies for diseases that don't exist, using that thing. I say either burn down the part of your family's factory that makes those things or damn it, Louis, convert. Convert to something new and useful that mankind can lean on during its painful ascent upward. Do you hear?" He swayed back and forth, jabbing his long finger at me. "We're in the sky, now. To the stars. Man's no longer hidebound. Do you hear?"

"I hear," I said. "But I recall that you and Bob Bundy were supposed to be the ones who were hatching up the new and useful solution to our problems. And that was months ago and nothing's come of it."

"We've got something," Maury said. "And when you see it you'll agree it's oriented toward the future in no uncertain terms."

"Show it to me."

"Okay, we'll take a drive over to the factory. Your dad and your brother Chester should be in on it; it's only fair, since it'll be them who produce it."

Standing with his drink, Bundy grinned at me in his sneaky, indirect fashion. All this inter-personal communication probably made him nervous.