by Various
"This is a cheap trick, Tom! Do you hear me? Turn that thing off at once!"
"Who, me?" Tom said innocently. "Gosh, D. O. I'm no engineer. I left instructions with the operator to keep the projector going for three hours, until sunset. Don't think I can do anything about it now."
"You'll damn well have to do something about it! You're ruining us!"
"Look at it this way, Chief. What can we lose? If anybody takes offense, we can blame it on that Hollywood gang."
"Turn that damn thing off! If that blankety face isn't out of the sky in ten minutes, you can start emptying your desk!"
Tom was a redhead. He reached over and snapped the visiphone switch before his boss could have the satisfaction. He stomped to the window, still raging at Ostreich's lack of appreciation.
But he chuckled when he saw the activity in the street. The crowds were thickening at the intersections, and a special battalion of city police were trying to keep things moving. Behind him, the visiphone was beeping frantically again.
He waited a full minute before answering, all set to snap at Ostreich once more.
But it wasn't Ostreich. It was a square-faced man with beetling brows and a chin like the biting end of a steam shovel. It took Tom a while to recognize the face of Stinson, commissioner of police.
"Mr. Blacker?"
"Yes, sir?" Tom gulped.
"Mr. Ostreich referred me to you. You responsible for that--" the commissioner's voice was choked. "--that menace?"
"Menace, sir?"
"You know what I'm talking about. We've got half a dozen CAA complaints already. That thing's a menace to public safety, a hazard to air travel--"
"Look, Mr. Stinson. It's only a harmless publicity stunt."
"Harmless? You got funny ideas, Mr. Blacker. Don't get the wrong idea about our city ordinances. We got statutes that cover this kind of thing. If you don't want to be a victim of one of them, turn that damned monstrosity off!"
The commissioner's angry visage left a reverse shadow burned on the visiphone screen. It remained glowing there long after the contact was broken.
Tom Blacker walked the carpeted floor of his office, chewing on his lower lip, and cursing the feeble imaginations of Ostreich and the rest of them. When his temper had cooled, he got sober thoughts of indictments, and law suits, and unemployment. With a sigh, he contacted the engineer on the roof of the Cannon Building. Then he went to the window, and watched Monica's thousand-foot face fade gradually out of sight.
* * * * *
At four o'clock that afternoon, a long white envelope crossed Tom's blotter. There was a check to the amount of a month's salary enclosed, and a briefly-worded message from the office of the president.
When he left the office, Ostreich's rolling phrases buzzed in his head like swarming gnats. "... a mockery of a great profession ... lowering of dignity ... incompatible with the highest ideals of ..."
At ten o'clock that night, Tom was telling his troubles to a red-coated man behind a chromium bar on Forty-ninth Street. The man listened with all the gravity of a physician, and lined up the appropriate medicine in front of his patient.
By midnight, Tom was singing Christmas carols, in advance of the season, with a tableful of Texans.
At one o'clock, he swung a right cross at a mounted policeman, missed, and fell beneath the horse's legs.
At one-fifteen, he fell asleep against the shoulder of a B-girl as they rode through the streets of the city in a sleek police vehicle.
That was all Tom Blacker remembered, until he woke up in Livia Cord's cozy two-room apartment. He moved his head and winced with the pain.
* * * * *
"Hi," the girl said.
She was smiling down at him, and for a moment, her floating face reminded Tom of the episode which had just cost him twenty grand a year. He groaned, and rolled the other way on the contour couch.
"Hair of the dog?" she said. There was a gleaming cannister in her hand.
"No, thanks." He sat up, rubbing the stiff red hair on the back of his head. One eye seemed permanently screwed shut, but the other managed to take in his surroundings. It explored the girl first, and appreciatively.
She was wearing something black and satiny, cut in the newest Dallas-approved style, with long, tantalizing diagonal slashes across the breast and hips. Her hair was strikingly two-toned, black and blonde. Her teeth were a blinding white, and had been filed to canine sharpness.
"My name's Livia," the girl said pleasantly. "Livia Cord. I hope you don't mind what I did."
"And what was that?" Tom's other eye popped open, almost audibly.
"Bailing you out of jail. Seems you got into a fracas with a mounted cop. I think you tried to punch his horse."
"Nuts. I was trying to hit him."
"Well, you didn't." She chuckled, and poured herself a drink. "You've had quite a day, Mr. Blacker."
"You said it." There was a taste in his mouth like cigar ashes. He tried to stand up, but the weight on his head kept him where he was. "You wouldn't have an oxygen pill around?"
"Sure." She left with a toss of her skirt and a revelation of silky calves. When she returned with the tablet and water, he took it gratefully. After a few minutes, he felt better enough to ask:
"Why?"
"What's that?"
"Why'd you bail me out? I don't know you. Or do I?"
She laughed. "No. Not yet you don't. But I know you, Mr. Blacker. By reputation, at any rate. You see--" She sat next to him on the couch, and Tom was feeling well enough to tingle at her nearness. "We're in the same line of work, you and I."
"Unemployment?"
"No," she smiled. "Public relations. Only I'm on the client's side of the fence. I work for an organization called Homelovers, Incorporated. Ever hear of them?"
Tom shook his head.
"Maybe you should. It's a rather important company, and growing. And they're always on the lookout for superior talent."
* * * * *
He squinted at her. "What is this? A job offer?"
"Maybe." She wriggled a little, and the slits in her dress widened just a fraction. "We've got the nucleus of a good PR department now. But with a really experienced man at the controls--it could grow enormously. Think you might be interested?"
"Maybe I would," Tom said. But he wasn't thinking about PR right then.
"Mr. Andrusco's had you in mind for a long time," Livia Cord continued. "I've mentioned your name to him several times as a possible candidate. If you hadn't been fired from Ostreich, we might have tried to tempt you away." Her fingers touched a stray lock of red hair. "Now--we don't have to be surreptitious about it. Do we?"
"No," Tom said guardedly. "I guess not."
"If you're free tomorrow, I could arrange a meeting with Mr. Andrusco. Would you like that?"
"Well ..."
"His office opens at nine. We could get there early."
Tom looked at his watch. Livia said: "I know it's late. But we could get an early start in the morning, right after breakfast. Couldn't we?"
"I dunno," Tom frowned. "By the time I get home ..."
"Home?" The girl leaned back. "Who said anything about home?"
Her bedroom was monochromed. Even the sheets were pink. At five o'clock, the false dawn glimmered through the window, and the light falling on his eyes awakened him. He looked over at the sleeping girl, feeling drugged and detached. She moaned slightly, and turned her face towards him. He blinked at the sight of it, and cried aloud.
"What is it?" She sat up in bed and nicked on the table lamp. "What's the matter?"
He looked at her carefully. She was beautiful. There wasn't even a smudge of lipstick on her face.
"Nothing," he said dreamily, and turned away. By the time he was asleep again, his mind had already erased the strange image from his clouded brain--that Livia Cord had absolutely no mouth at all.
* * * * *
It was hard to keep track of the glass-and-steel structures that had been spring
ing up daily along the Fifth-Madison Thruway. When Tom and Livia stepped out of the cab in front of 320, he wasn't surprised that the building--an odd, cylindrical affair with a pointed spire--was strange to him. But he was taken aback to realize that all sixty floors were the property of Homelovers, Incorporated.
"Quite a place," he told the girl.
She smiled at him tightly. Livia was crackling with business electricity this morning, her spiked heels clicking along the marble floors of the lobby like typewriter keys. She wore a tailored gray suit that clung to her body with all the perfection and sexlessness of a window mannikin. In the elevator, shooting towards the executive offices on the 57th floor, Tom looked over at her and scratched his poorly-shaven cheeks in wonderment.
They plowed right through the frosty receptionist barrier, and entered an office only half the size of Penn Station. The man behind the U-shaped desk couldn't have been better suited to the surroundings by Central Casting. He was cleft-jawed, tanned, exquisitely tailored. If his polished brown toupee had been better fitted, he would have been positively handsome.
The handshake was firm.
"Good to see you," he grinned. "Heard a lot about you, Mr. Blacker. All of it good."
"Well," Livia said airily. "I've done my part. Now you two come to terms. Buzz me if you need me, J. A."
John Andrusco unwrapped a cigar when she left, and said: "Well, now. Suppose we get right down to cases, Mr. Blacker. Our organization is badly in need of a public relations set-up that can pull out all the stops. We have money and we have influence. Now all we need is guidance. If you can supply that, there's a vacant chair at the end of the hall that can accommodate your backside." He grinned manfully.
"Well," Tom said delicately. "My big problem is this, Mr. Andrusco. I don't know what the hell business you're in."
The executive laughed heartily. "Then let me fill you in."
He stepped over to a cork-lined wall, pressed a concealed button, and panels parted. An organizational chart, with designations that were meaningless to Tom, appeared behind it.
"Speaking basically," Andrusco said, "Homelovers, Incorporated represents the interests of the world's leading real estate concerns. Land, you know, is still the number one commodity of Earth, the one priceless possession that rarely deteriorates in value. In fact, with the increase in the Earth's population, the one commodity that never seems to be in excess supply."
"I see," Tom said, not wholly in truth.
"The stability of real estate is our prime concern. By unification of our efforts, we have maintained these values over a good many years. But as you know, a good business organization never rests on its laurels. Sometimes, even basic human needs undergo unusual--alterations."
"I'm not following too well," Tom said frankly. "Just where does public relations come into this? I can't see much connection."
* * * * *
Andrusco frowned, but without wrinkling his serene brow too much. He went to the multipaned window and locked his hands behind his back.
"Let me put it this way, Mr. Blacker. With the Earth's population approaching the three billion mark, you can imagine that real estate is at a greater premium than ever--yes, even the remotest land areas have gained in market value. But let me ask you this. If there were only a hundred apples in the world, and you owned all of them, what would you do if you learned that someone else had discovered a fruitful orchard, which contains ten million apples?"
"I'd go out of the apple business."
"Precisely." Andrusco rocked on his heels. "In a sense, that's very much the problem that Homelovers, Incorporated may have to face in the next generation."
"Somebody swiping your apples?"
"In a way." The man chuckled. "Yes, in a way." He raised his arm slowly, and pointed to the sky. "The apples," he said, "are up there."
"Huh?" Tom said.
* * * * *
"Space, Mr. Blacker. Space is opening its doors to us. Already, the UN Space Commission has launched some two dozen manned vehicles into the outer reaches. Already, the satellite-building colony on the moon is well under way. The progress of our space program has been accelerating month by month. The expert predictions have been more and more optimistic of late. In another ten, twenty years, the solar system will be beckoning the children of Earth ..."
Tom said nothing for a while. Then he cleared his throat.
"Well ... I'm no expert on these things. But maybe the population could stand a little more real estate, Mr. Andrusco. In twenty years ..."
"Nonsense!" The voice was snappish. "The best authorities say it isn't so. There's plenty of room on Earth. But if ever a mass exodus begins--"
"That doesn't seem possible," Tom said. "Does it? I mean, only a handful of guys have ever gone out there. A drop in the bucket. I mean, Mars and all that may be fun to visit, but who'd want to live there?"
Andrusco turned to him slowly.
"The apples in the new orchard may be sour, Mr. Blacker. But if your livelihood depended on your own little stack of fruit--would you be willing to sit by and take the chance?"
Tom shrugged. "And is that the public relations job? To keep people out of space?"
"Put in its crudest form, yes."
"A pretty tough job. You know that guff about Man's Pioneering Spirit."
"Yes. But we're worried about the public spirit, Mr. Blacker. If we can dampen their ardor for space flight--only delay it, mind you, for another few years--we can tighten our own lines of economic defense. Do I make myself clear?"
"Not completely."
"Will you take the job?"
"What does it pay?"
"Fifty thousand."
"Where do I sit?"
* * * * *
By the afternoon, Tom Blacker was ensconced in a fair-sized office with vaguely oriental furnishings and an ankle-deep rug. Livia's pretty ankles visited it first.
"Here's an outline I began on the PR program," she told him briskly, dropping a sheet of paper on his desk. "I didn't get very far with it. I'm sure you can add a lot."
"Okay. I'll read it over this afternoon." He tipped the chair back. "How about dinner tonight?"
"Sorry. Busy tonight. Maybe later this week."
But it wasn't until Friday, three days later, that he saw Livia Cord again. He accomplished that by calling her in for a conference, spreading his own typewritten notes on the desk in front of him.
"Got some rough ideas drafted on the program," he told her. "The possibilities of this thing are really unlimited. Granted, of course, that there's money in this picture."
"There's money all right," Livia said. "We don't have to worry about that."
"Good. I've put down a list of leading citizens that might be enrolled as backers for anything we might come up with, people who have been outspoken about the expense or danger of space flight. We'll keep it on file, and add to it as new names crop up in the press. Then here's a listing of categories for us to develop subprograms around. Religious, economic, social, medical--Medical's good. There's a heck of a lot of scare-value in stories about cosmic rays, alien diseases, plagues, zero gravity sickness, all that sort of thing. Sterility is a good gimmick; impotence is even better."
* * * * *
Livia smiled. "I know what you mean."
"Mmm. Come to think of it, we ought to set up a special woman's-point-of-view program, too. That'll be worth plenty. Then there's the tax question. We'll have to see what we can set up in Washington, some kind of anti-space lobby. Good feature story material here, too. You know the stuff--one space vessel equals the cost of two hundred country hospitals."
"Sounds great."
"We'll have to plan on press parties, special stuff for the magazines and networks. I've got a plan for some Hollywood promotion to counteract all this Destination Space garbage they've been turning out. And as for television--"
He talked on for another hour, feeling mounting excitement for the job he was doing. Tom wasn't sure that he liked the aims of Ho
melovers, Incorporated, but the challenge was enjoyable. Even at dinner that night, in Livia's snug apartment, he rattled on about the PR program until the girl began to yawn.
The bedroom was still monochrome. Only Livia had transformed it magically into powder blue. Tom slept blissfully until morning, and went into the office that weekend for sheer love of what he was doing.
After less than a month, his efforts started producing results. On a crisp December morning, he found the following in his mail:
"EARTH SONG" A Screenplay by Duncan Devine
Roger Tenblade, a dashing young rocket pilot in the UN Air Force, yearns to join the Space Expeditionary Force now planning the first landing and colonization of the planet Mars. Despite the protest of his lovely fiancée, Diane, he embarks upon the journey. The trip is fraught with hazards, and the ship is struck by a meteor en route. Every member of the crew is killed, except Roger, who heroically brings the vessel back to home base. However, Roger is exposed to large amounts of cosmic radiation. When he is so informed by the medical authorities, he realizes that he can never make Diane a normal husband. So rather than return to her and ruin her life, he changes his identity and disappears to South America, where he takes a job as a shuttle pilot for a third-class airline.
Meanwhile, Diane marries Harold Farnsworth, scion of one of America's wealthiest families ...
Tom Blacker chuckled, and slipped the scenario back into the envelope. He marked the manuscript "O.K. for Production," and turned to the other mail.
There was the prospectus of a television series that sounded interesting. He looked it over carefully.
"CAPTAIN TERRA" Half-hour Television Series written by Craig Comfort
Captain Terra, and his Earth Cadets are dedicated to the principle of "Earth Above All" and have sworn their lives to the preservation of Earth and its peoples, and to the protection of Earth against the hostile aliens constantly threatening the planet.
Program One, Act One
Bobby, Captain Terra's youthful aide, is attacked one day by a strange creature which he describes as half-man, half-snake. He reports the incident to Captain Terra, who calls a special session of his Earth Patrol to determine how best to deal with this enemy ...
Tom read the prospectus through, and then dictated a letter to its producers to call for an appointment.