“You mean you can’t get anything that doesn’t exist right now where you can see it?”

“Yes.”

“In that case, catches two and three are purely academic. But what are they, anyway?”

“I can only remove about a gram of material from the past.”

A gram! A thirtieth of an ounce!

“What’s the matter? Not enough power?”

My uncle Otto said impatiently, “It’s an inverse exponential relationship. All the power in the universe more than maybe two grams couldn’t bring.”

This left things cloudy. I said, “The third catch?”

“Well.” He hesitated. “The further the two foci separated are, the more flexible the bond. It must a certain length be before into the present it can he drawn. In other words, I must at least one hundred fifty years into the past go.”

“I see,” I said (not that I really did). “Let’s summarize.”

I tried to sound like a lawyer. “You want to bring something from the past out of which you can coin a little capital. It’s got to he something that exists and which you can see, so it can’t be a lost object of historical or archaeological value. It’s got to weigh less than a thirtieth of an ounce, so it can’t he the Kullinan diamond or anything like that. It’s got to be at least one hundred and fifty years old, so it can’t be a rare stamp.”

“Exactly,” said my uncle Otto. “You’ve got it.”

“Got what?” I thought two seconds. “Can’t think of a thing,” I said. “Well, good-bye, Uncle Otto.”

I didn’t think it would work, but I tried to go.

It didn’t work. My uncle Otto’s hands came down on my shoulders and I was standing tiptoe on an inch of air.

“You’ll wrinkle my jacket, Uncle Otto.”

“Harold,” he said. “As a lawyer to a client, you owe me more than a quick good-bye.”

“I didn’t take a retainer,” I managed to gargle. My shirt collar was beginning to fit very tightly about my neck. I tried to swallow and the top button pinged off.