Weinbaum shook his head. “Sounds like a skip-tracing firm. Not an easy business, these days.”
“That’s just what I thought when I first saw their letter-head,” Dana said. “But the letter under it wasn’t one that a private-eye outfit would write. Let me read part of it to you.”
Her slim fingers burrowed in her inside jacket pocket and emerged again with a single sheet of paper. It was plain typewriter bond, Weinbaum noted automatically: she had brought only a copy with her, and had left the original of the letter at home. The copy, then, would be incomplete probably seriously.
“It goes like this: ‘Dear Miss Lje: As a syndicated video commentator with a wide audience and heavy responsibilities, you need the best sources of information available. We would like you to test our service, free of charge, in the hope of proving to you that it is superior to any other source of news on Earth. Therefore, we offer below several predictions concerning events to come in the Hercules and the so-called “Three Ghosts” areas. If these predictions are fulfilled 100
per centno lesswe ask that you take us on as your correspondents for those areas, at rates to be agreed upon later.
If the predictions are wrong in any respect, you need not consider us further.’ “
“H’m,” Weinbaum said slowly. “They’re confident cusses and that’s an odd juxtaposition. The Three Ghosts make up only a little solar system, while the Hercules area could include the entire star clusteror maybe even the whole constellation, which is a hell of a lot of sky. This outfit seems to be trying to tell you that it has thousands of field correspondents of its own, maybe as many as the government itself. If so, I’ll guarantee that they’re bragging.”