“Not at all,” he said, and grinned at me. “There’s a printed circuit
under the saddle. The beam powers it.”
“Printed circuit?” I said.
“Antigravity,” he said.
Brother!
* * * * *
But there wasn’t any doubt about it. Willy Dunstan, glasses and all,
really had something. He’d invented antigravity, but he didn’t see why
he should give it to the government or something, and not make any
money out of it. With the patent laws the way they are (anyhow, this is
the way he explained it to me) he probably couldn’t even get a patent
on the thing, since it was only a new application of existing art. Or
something. So he had to figure out some way of making money out of
antigravity without letting anybody know what he had.
Horseracing was the answer, of course.
Put the circuit under the saddle, using printed stuff so it doesn’t
bulk and cause embarrassing questions, power it from a pair of binocs
in the stands, and the saddle doesn’t weigh a thing. Neither does the
jockey. The horse is running free, unweighted.
No wonder the plug made time.
And no wonder Greg was excited. This was a way to win races.
* * * * *
“I wanted a trainer to avoid suspicion,” Dunstan told me. “I’ve got
to make this look good. I can talk about new scientific methods of
training to explain why my horses win.”
“Sure,” I said. I felt kind of blank.
“But I needed a man I could trust,” he said. “Greg, here, told me you
were that man.”
“What does Greg get out of it?”
“A commission from me,” he said, “for providing me with a trainer.”
I couldn’t understand why Greg would be content to take a commission
and get out. Not then, I couldn’t. I’d figured I had a pretty good
deal: no work to speak of, and a half-ownership in the surest stables
this side of Mexico City. Greg grinned at me and--God call me down for
a stupid idiot--I grinned right back.
It was a little later, when we were alone, that I managed to convince
Dunstan to hire a jockey. He was all for riding the plug himself but,
as I pointed out, he did not look like a jockey, he had no license,
and there wasn’t a chance in hell of his getting one. He agreed, and I
called in an old friend of mine named Teddy Wills to take the job. He
got one look at the plug and swore up and down that he would never be
seen in public on the thing, but I fast-talked Teddy, too, and after
all we were old friends. He trusted me.
We spent a week just getting things ready, readjusting the machine to
Teddy’s weight, and then we entered the plug (which we’d named First
Hope, after a lot of discussion) in a California race.
The odds were thirteen to one going in, and they rose right up to
thirty to one as soon as the public got a look at poor swaybacked First
Hope. They were on their way out of sight when the board closed.
I sat in the stands with Dunstan. He had money down on the race, of
course, though I didn’t; as half-owner, the profits on the stables were
half mine, and betting on the horse you train is bad luck.
* * * * *
Dunstan held the binocs. His hands shook a little and once, before the
race, he turned to me and said: “I hope nothing goes wrong,” which
frightened me a little bit stiff, since I wasn’t figuring anything
_could_ go wrong.
The starting bell went and First Hope was away, leading the pack.
Even knowing what I knew, it was hard to believe my eyes. That
horrible old plug made it in three lengths ahead of a colt with a fine
reputation, and four and a half lengths ahead of the favorite, who
ended in show position.
Naturally, there was an investigation.
But there was no real trouble. Dunstan and his “scientific methods
of training,” my honest face and the fact that there were no visible
gimmicks either on the horse or in his bloodstream or saliva convinced
the track judges. The win stayed on the books.
And we headed out of California for a Nevada track opening.
* * * * *
The reputation of good old First Hope had preceded us, of course. I
wanted Dunstan to use another nag, but he told me that building the
printed-circuit saddles was expensive in both time and money; he wanted
to barrel up a pretty large stake first, and he was keeping the other
horses, meanwhile, in reserve.
So First Hope ran again at slightly lower odds. They weren’t as much
lower as you’d think, though; people just couldn’t believe their eyes
when they saw the animal, and figured the California win had to be a
fluke.
It was no fluke. This time First Hope made four lengths in front of the
place horse, and we were well on the way to becoming rich.
We stayed in Nevada for the last race, living in the stables for fear
somebody would take a notion to examine the gimmicked saddle with more
than ordinary care. Teddy was in on the secret, of course--he had to
be, because antigravity makes you feel pretty funny, Dunstan explained.
Teddy had to know what was going on underneath him.
And he was the most worried of us all. “Something terrible’s going to
happen,” he said. “I can feel it. There’s something terrible in the
air.”
Now, living in the stables, there was only one answer to that, and
I gave it to him. But he wouldn’t be dissuaded. By this time I was
feeling pretty confident, and Dunstan, of course, was on top of the
world.
“We’ll race here tomorrow,” he told me, “and then head East for the
track openings there. Later we’ll take the Derby....”