Sweet Fortune

master plan to put them into use. She had to remind herself that Dr. Edwin Bright was probably nothing more than a fast-talking salesman.
    The music swelled once more as the film came to a stirring conclusion. The lights brightened slowly in the auditorium as the film came to an end.
    “I imagine you've both got a lot of questions,” Landis said as he got to his feet.
    “Right,” said Hatch. “For starters I'd like to know how the hell this Edwin Bright came up with his time frame for the total destruction of the environment. Ten to fifteen years is a damn short prediction. Everything else I've read says we'll have longer to solve the problem than that.”
    “Good question,” Landis agreed gravely. “Let's go downstairs to the computer room and I'll show you how we do Bright's calculations.”
    Sherry Smith fell in behind Jessie as Landis led the way down a darkly paneled hallway. He paused once to open a door briefly.
    A hum of voices greeted Jessie as she glanced inside what must have originally been the mansion's formal dining room. Banks of telephones and desks were set up in a long row. They were manned by several men and women who all appeared to be in their early twenties. It was not difficult to figure out what was happening. Jessie focused on the voices of the nearest telephone operators while she scanned the room for anyone who looked like Susan Attwood.
    “Yes, sir, Mr. Williamson, we've made enormous progress and we're now dealing with a major corporation on a contract to mass-produce the machine. It will go into production next month and will be available to all of the nation's cities and towns within eighteen months. The profit potential on this is enormous. It is an affordable product and will be mass-produced. You will easily triple your investment in the next eighteen months. Can we count on your donation?”
    The operator reminded Jessie of her friend Alison, the stockbroker. She caught Hatch's sardonic eye and realized he was thinking the same thing.
    One of the other operators was selling something else.
    “As I explained,” the vivacious, earnest young woman was saying to the person on the other end of the line, “the Bright Vaporizer totally eliminates all garbage via a chemical process. The end product is pure, clean oxygen. It will eliminate the need for landfills, ocean dumping, and every other kind of garbage facility. All we need is a little more financial help from you. If you can see your way clear to donate a minimum of five thousand dollars, you will be considered a registered investor and thus a potential stockholder. You will share in the profits, which are guaranteed to double every six months for the next five years.”
    Landis quietly closed the door and went on down the hall to a stone staircase. “The original owner of the mansion had a huge basement built down here,” he explained as he started to descend the stairs. “We've turned it into our computer facility. Dr. Bright runs all of his programs on the computers you'll see here. Those programs are being constantly updated with all kinds of information, including the latest climate information and reports of accidental releases of radiation, toxic spills, and such.”
    “The programs are almost unbelievably complex,” Sherry confided. “We chart the amount of rain forest destroyed each day, the quantity of pollutants being released into the atmosphere from all major manufacturing plants around the world, as well as concentrations of natural gases from such things as volcanic eruptions. Then we do our projections, using the past several thousand years of the earth's climate history.”
    “And that's just the tip of the iceberg, as they say.” Landis smiled as he reached the bottom of the staircase and opened a door in the narrow hall. “A whole different kind of research is done to pull together all the information we can get on existing technology, including the work of small private inventors around the nation and material buried in our country's research labs.”
    Jessie heard the unmistakable high-pitched whine of computer machinery. She moved to the doorway and stood looking into the windowless room. Hatch came up behind her and studied the scene over the top of her head.
    “Hell of an operation,” he said, sounding impressed for the first time.
    That was an understatement, Jessie decided. A row of computer terminals occupied one long table. Three intent young people, who all reminded her of Alex