“Take off the helmet, Fred,” Dave said. “We’ll play it straight until Stu gets the masks for us.”
Fred Folsom took off the helmet and sighed, and Dave said, “We got another problem, Jon. The death-ray gun.”
“What about it?” I said wearily.
“Cynthia says it’s impossible.”
“Cynthia is impossible, damnit. What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s supposed to burn a man to cinders. She says a weapon that small wouldn’t be capable of containing the energy necessary to...”
“Make it a larger weapon. For Christ’s sake!”
“You got that, Stu?” Dave called.
“I’ll fix it,” Stu answered. His voice was quiet, and he nodded resolutely. There was no doubt he’d fix it. Fred reached into the holster at his waist and pulled out the ultramodern death-ray gun, hefting it on his palm. He pulled the trigger, and a shower of harmless sparks drifted from the disc-surrounded spray nozzle.
“Point that the other way,” Dave said.
Fred smiled. “Dave is going Martian,” he explained. “He thinks all the props Stu rigs are real.”
“That’s the only way to direct it,” Dave said. “Let’s run it through, yes? You’re sticking around, aren’t you, Jon?”
“Like a dirty shirt,” I said.
“The letdown is all on film,” Dave explained to me. “A really nice job, Jon. I think you’ll like it. Jets blasting, all that junk. You watch it on the monitor.”
“I will,” I said.
“We pick up Marauder on a boom shot, looking straight down on him. All you see is the top of his head and his ray gun sticking out in front of him — that and the Martian sand. It’s a nice effect. Besides, we cut out the necessity of having the ship right on the set, you follow?”
“I follow.”
“After Marauder is in, we pick up Cadet Holmes. As if suddenly remembering,” Dave put his mike to his mouth and shouted, “On stage, Cadet Holmes. Let’s roll!”
I took a seat near the monitor, and watched the film of Marauder’s ship putting down on sands of Mars. I was really interested until Cynthia’s voice behind me said, “Isn’t he supposed to be braking for descent before this?”
I turned. “Hello, Professor,” I said.
“You think it’s funny,” Cynthia said, pouting. She looked pretty as hell when she pouted, and she knew it. “I’m interested in getting a good show.”
“You are getting one,” I told her. I watched the monitor as the boom camera picked up Marauder, and then Cadet Holmes came onto the screen.
“Where are their helmets?” Cynthia said. “And are they still using those stupid guns? I told Dave...”
“Stu’s working on that now. Relax, Cynthia.”
Instead of relaxing, Cynthia Finch strode away from me purposefully. She stopped alongside Dave, said a few words to him, and Dave bellowed, “Cut, cut.”
The actors slouched into weary positions while Cynthia kept chewing out Dave. Then Dave said, “Take a break, fellows,” and I heard Cynthia’s voice, close to his mike, say, “If Stu is working on it, I want to see it.”
“All right, all right,” Dave said irritably. “Come on.”
The mike picked up his voice and tossed it around the studio, and then he and Cynthia walked away from the lights and into the blackness. Marauder and Cadet Holmes had already disappeared into blackness. I lighted a cigarette, and then headed for the control booth, figuring I’d bandy a few words about with Artie Schaefer. The booth was empty when I got there, though, so I strolled out to the stairwell and looked through one of the windows at the rooftops of New York, puffing happily on my cigarette. I ground the butt out under my heel, lounged around for another ten minutes, and then went back into the studio.
Dave was fiddling around with one of the plants on the set. Stu was handing both Marauder and Cadet Holmes their new death-ray guns and face masks. Artie Schaefer was back in the booth. I took my seat near the monitor again, and that was when I spotted old Felix Nechler, the guy who used to produce Rocketeers. I got up, walked over to him, and took his hand.
“Hello, Felix,” I said, “how goes it?”
Felix was a thin man with a trim black mustache. He looked up sadly and said, “Hello, Jon. So-so, I guess.”
“Back for a looksee at the old baby, eh Felix? How long have you been here?”
“Few minutes,” Felix said, his grey eyes dull.
“Okay, we’re ready to go now,” Dave called into the mike. “You out there, Cynthia?”
“She’s not here, Dave,” I shouted.
“Scare her up, will you, Jon? She’ll want to watch this.”
“Where is she?”
“Piddling around out there someplace,” he said into the mike.
“Excuse me, Felix,” I said. “I’ll be back.”
“Sure,” Felix answered. “I was about to leave anyway.”
“Oh, stick around. You’ll enjoy it.”
Felix shrugged, the shrug plainly stating he would probably not enjoy anything produced by the woman who’d taken his job. I started off around the studio, walking past the rocket ship interior set, and then over past the Earth Control Office set, both unilluminated now. Then I strolled around back to the cubbyhole where Stu kept his props, and then over to where the flats were piled against the inside brick wall of the building.
“Cynthia?”
When I got no answer, I walked past the flats, and the first thing that hit me was the overwhelming stench, and I thought someone was burning garbage right here in the building, and I knew Cynthia would have a fit about that. I kept walking in the darkness, the stench overpowering now, and that was when I tripped and fell.
I got to my knees cursing. I reached down and groped for what I’d tripped over, and I found the stench and I found soft flesh, and I reared back in what must have been stark terror. I hit the wall, and my fingers groped for the light switch. I scraped my knuckles, finally found the switch, and flicked on the light.
Cynthia Finch lay on her back on the concrete floor.
“Douse that goddamned light!” Dave yelled into his mike.
I stood over against the wall and looked down at her. I knew it was Cynthia because of the dress. It was a blue woolen number that hugged her flesh, only now it was scorched down the front, and the fabric had browned and parted to show the blistering flesh underneath. Her face was an unrecognizable, charred, burned mass of skin and bones.
“Hey, how about it?” Dave shouted again. “We’re trying to run this through, you know.”
“Dave!” I yelled when I’d caught my breath. “Come back here! Quick!”
I didn’t move from my spot near the wall. I stood there even when I heard many running footsteps, even when I heard Dave mutter, “Oh God! Oh, holy, holy God!”
And then Marauder, and Cadet Holmes and Stu Shaughnessy and even old Felix Nechler were standing around the charred, lifeless body on the concrete floor, and Marauder took one look at the ominously cumbersome death-ray gun in his fist, and dropped it to the concrete as if it were alive.
3.
Detective-Sergeant Hilton could have been a high-priced performer on Dragnet. Perhaps he watched the show. He had an underplayed, natural delivery and an inscrutable face, and he went about his business with the calm detachment of a shoe clerk at I. Miller’s.