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laid out upon the counter of a coin dealer he knew from the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars a bit over a pound of his find in the sand world. Along with it, he spun a deliberately vague tale of a deceased, distant relative and a modest inheritance.
    A short, paunchy, balding man, Gus Tolliver was about the age of letter carrier Bartlett, some five or six years Fitz's senior, with thirty years of enlisted army service and three wars behind him. He cursorily examined a brace of the coins picked out at random. All at once he whistled softly, glanced up enigmatically at Fitz, then pulled a thick book from a shelf behind him and began to riffle through it.
    When he at last had found the page and article for which he had been looking, he opened a drawer beneath the display case counter and lifted out a jewellers scale and its bronze weights, a loupe and a steel micrometer, along with a long, wide, thick pad of dense velvet. Thus supplied, he spread out the coins and, without a spoken word, commenced weighing and measuring and scrutinizing each of them

    with an exceeding care, referring often to the first big book, as well as to others he selected from the same shelf.
    The process took some hour or more of time, while Fitz just waited and tried to not fidget and also tried to think up some more plausible tale to spin should Tolliver demand more and more detailed information concerning the genesis of the pieces of gold and his, Fitz's, acquisition of them.
    At length, Tolliver shoved the loupe up onto his hairless forehead and slumped back on his high, padded stool, regarding Fitz with a narrow, very guarded expression.
    "You got an asking price on these, Fitz? Understand up front, though: I couldn't buy them or sell them, not around here, not in a month of Sundays. No demand, see. But I can be your agent. I got lots of contacts through ANA, see. We can work out a commissions scale."
    Fitz shrugged. "Hell, I don't know a price to ask, Gus. I never collected anything like this. What do you think they're worth?"
    The bald man cleared his throat noisily. "Weill . . . and this is purely a ballpark figure, mind you: at least fifty thousand dollars, maybe a bit more—maybe even twice that. Hell, I don't really know, Fitz. A Byzantine expert would have to see them before anybody could say for sure. Yes, they're all in damn fine shape . . . maybe too fine a shape for their age. Your uncle or whatever just may've got stuck with a passel of forgeries whenever he bought them, but I don't think so, somehow.
    "Now I know a man who could tell us—you and me—for certain sure, both the value and whether or not they're forgeries. We'd have to pay to fly him in and pay his expenses while he's here and . . . maybe

    even have to cut him in for a little piece of the action, too. But it just might be worth the cost, if you got what I think you got here, Fitz.
    "But before we go that far, Fitz, didn't your uncle ever have these appraised, at least for insurance purposes?"
    Fitz couldn't answer; he could breathe only with concentrated effort. He was glad that he was seated, for he was suddenly become as weak as the proverbial kitten. For the pound or so of old, crudely minted gold coins, he had expected and hoped to net as much as fifteen hundred dollars, though he would have settled for less ... for much less. He tried several times to speak, to answer Tolliver, but though his numb lips and tongue moved, not a sound came from his constricted throat.
    All that he could think was: Fifty to a hundred thousand dollars? Yes, fifty to a hundred thousand dollars for this paltry handful of the coins he had found in that strange world of sand and hot sun. And that leather casket back there in the cabin of that wrecked ship lying among the dunes, then, must still hold the worth of four or five million dollars!
    Tolliver hopped from his stool and rapidly rounded the counter, a look of deep concern on his wrinkle-creased face. "Fitz? Fitz, boy,