He sighed and went on into the house. In the big walnut-paneled living room, Borden and Walter Callahan, head accountant for Borden, were playing gin rummy.
Borden looked up as he came in. «Hi, Keith. Want to take over after this game? It’s nearly finished. I’ve got some letters to write and Walter would probably as soon take your money as mine.»
Keith shook his head. «Got to do some work myself, Mr. Borden. I’m smack against deadline on the Rocketalk Department; I brought my portable and the letter file along.»
«Oh, come now. I didn’t bring you out here to work. Do it at the office tomorrow.»
«Wish I could,» Keith said «But it’s my own fault for getting behind and the stuff has to go to the printer tomorrow morning at ten sharp. They’re closing the forms at noon. It’s only a couple of hours work and I’d rather get it done now and be free this evening.»
He went on through the living room and upstairs. In his room he took his typewriter out of its case and put it on the desk. From his brief-case he took the file-folder that held the incoming correspondence addressed to Rocketalk Department or, in the case of the less inhibited letters, to The Rocketeer.
On top of the stack was Joe Doppelberg’s letter. He’d put it there because it had said Joe Doppelberg was coming to call in person and he had wanted to have it handy.
He worked paper into the typewriter and put down Rocketalk as a heading, then took a deep breath and dived in.
Well, fellow space-pilots, tonight—the night I’m writing this, not the night you’re reading it—is the big night, the big night, and the ok Rocketeer was out there to see k. And see it he did, that flash of light on the dark of the moon that marked the landing of the first successful missile launched through space by man.
He looked at it critically, then yanked the paper out of the machine and put in fresh. It was too formal, too stilted. He lighted a cigarette and wrote it again and it came out better—or worse.
In the pause while he read it over he heard a door open and close and highheeled footsteps clicking down the stairs. That would be Betty, leaving. He got up to go to the door and then sat down again. No, it would be anticlimactic to say good-bye again, now, with the Bordens and Callahan around. Much better to leave it on the note of that quick but breathless kiss and the promise of seeing him tomorrow evening.
He sighed and picked up the top letter. It said:
Dear Rocky-Tear: I shouldn’t ought to write you at all, because your last ish stinks to high Arcturus, except for the Wheeler yarn. Who ever told that mug Gormley he could write? And his space-navigation? The big bohunk couldn’t peelot a rowboat across Mud Crick on a sunny day.
And that Hooper cover—the gal was okay, more than okay, tho what gals aren’t on covers? But that thing chasing her—is it supposed to be one of the Mercurian devils in the Wheeler story? Well, tell Hooper I can think of scarier BEMs than them, cold sober, without even a slug of Venusian sappy-sap.
Why don’t she just turn around and chase it! Keep Hooper on the inside—his black and white stuff is okay—and get somebody else for covers. How about Rockwell Kent or Dali? I’ll bet Dali could make a dilly of a BEM. Get it, Rocky? Dali-dilly.
Lookit, Rocky, get the Uranian bug-juke ready and iced because I’m going to beard the lyin’ in his den, come Friday. Not coming to Spaceport N’Yawk just to see you, Rocky, don’t flatter yourself on that. But because I got to see a Martian about a dog-star anyway, I’ll be in town, and I’m going to see if you’re as ugly as they say you are.
One recent idea of yours, Rocky, is tops. That’s running half-col pix of your best and regularest correspondents with their letters. So I got a surprise for you. I’m sending mine. I was going to bring it, but this letter’ll get there before I do and I might miss an ish going to press in between.
Ennahoo, Rocky, kill the fatted moon-calf, because I’ll be seeing you Friday.
Joe Doppelberg.
Keith Winton sighed again, and picked up his pencil. He marked out the paragraph about the trip to New York—that wouldn’t interest the other readers and he didn’t want to give too many of them the idea of dropping in at the office. He could waste too much time that way.
He penciled out a few of the cornier phrases in the other parts of the letter, then picked up the snapshot that had come with the letter and glanced at it again.
Joe Doppelberg didn’t look like his letter. He was a not bad, rather intelligent looking, kid of sixteen or seventeen with a nice grin. Sure, he’d run it with the letter. Should have sent it to the photoengraver before but there was still time. He marked the copy to be set with a half-column runaround for a cut, wrote «1/2-col Doppelberg» on the back of the photograph.
He put the second page of Joe’s letter into the typewriter, thought a moment and typed at the bottom:
So okay, Doppelberg, we’ll get Rockwell Kent to do our next cover. You pay him. But as for having the glamour-gals chasing the BEMs, it can’t be done. Gals in stf are always chaste. Get it, Doppelberg? Chastechased. And that ain’t half as bad as your Dali-dilly, either.
He took the page out of the typewriter, sighed and picked up the next letter.
He finished at six, which left him an hour before dinner. He took a quick shower and dressed and there was still half an hour left. He wandered downstairs and out the French doors that led to the garden.
It was just turning dusk and the new moon was already visible in the clear sky. The seeing would be good, he thought. And, darn it, that rocket-flash had better turn out to be visible to the naked eye or he’d have to write a new opening paragraph for the Rocketalk Department. Well, there’d be time for that after nine-sixteen.
He sat down on a wicker bench beside the main path through the garden, and sniffed deeply of the fresh country air and the scent of flowers all about him. He thought about Betty Hadley, and just what he thought about her doesn’t need to be recorded here.
But it kept him happy—perhaps happily miserable would be a better description—until his mind wandered to the writer in Philadelphia and he wondered if the so-and-so was actually working on that story or was out getting plastered.
Darn it, he really needed that novel for the October book. Borden had okayed the pay in advance but just the same it had been his, Keith’s idea and Borden was going to blame him if the story didn’t materialize.
He thought about Betty Hadley again and then he thought about all the criticisms the Hooper covers had been getting and wondered if he could find a cover artist who’d be really good on both beautiful heroines and horrible monsters. Hooper was a nice guy but he just didn’t have bad enough nightmares to please the customers. Like Joe Doppelberg, most of the fans seemed to want—
The rocket, falling back to Earth, was traveling faster than sound and he neither saw nor heard it, although it struck only two yards away from him.
There was a flash.
CHAPTER II
The Purple BEM
THERE WAS NO sense of transition, of movement, nothing of lapse of time. One instant, Keith Winton had been sitting upon a wicker bench; in the same instant, it seemed, he was lying flat on his back staring up at the evening sky.
There had been the flash and this—simultaneously.
Only it couldn’t have been merely that the wicker bench had collapsed under him—or even vanished from under him—because it had been under a tree and there was now no tree between him and the sky.