“Fifty thousand points!” Mark read under his breath. “Isn’t that wonderful!” He couldn’t remember ever having felt so elated in his life.

Penelope was shaking her head wonderingly. “That was a good act,” she said. “I’d never have had the nerve to try that myself.”

“Oh, that’s nothing.” Mark was enthusiastic. “As soon as I get fitted up with a magnelite brace so it’ll look good, I’m going to knock a piece out of that curbing, and then if I can find out who’s the registered owner of it I’ll hit him for twenty-five thousand.”

Mark got the twenty-five thousand. The owner of the sidewalk was finally convinced that Mark’s broken back was worth a lot. From then on there was no holding Mark. Pretending to act for the little man who had originally knocked him down, he located the woman who had made a raspberry in the little man’s face and collected another two thousand; the woman didn’t recognize Mark, because Mark’s features were changed a little.

Then Mark spotted two others who had made threatening noises and collected five hundred from each, and from another who expressed doubt that he was really hurt, Mark got a thousand points. There was nothing to it, really. Most people had regular beats, and all Mark had to do was sit at one side in Penelope’s wheelchair and wait for them to come by. He would have collected more if he could have remembered more faces. He saw Conley go by once a day but now he wasn’t afraid. He thought Conley looked at him disappointedly.

A couple of weeks later he got his card back from the Machine at Central and looked at it with great satisfaction. He had a hundred and thirteen thousand points to his credit. He met Penelope and they went to her apartment for dinner. Jubilantly Mark got all the fancy food⁠—even some synthetic meat⁠—that he could get on his card, and they prepared for a feast.