Kramer looked up at the wall speaker. “How are you going to get the people to leave Terra and come with you, if by your own theory, this generation can’t be saved, it all has to start with the next?”
The wall speaker was silent. Then it made a sound, the faint dry chuckle.
“I’m surprised at you, Philip. Settlers can be found. We won’t need many, just a few.” The speaker chuckled again. “I’ll acquaint you with my solution.”
At the far end of the corridor a door slid open. There was sound, a hesitant sound. Kramer turned.
“Dolores!”
Dolores Kramer stood uncertainly, looking into the control room. She blinked in amazement. “Phil! What are you doing here? What’s going on?”
They stared at each other.
“What’s happening?” Dolores said. “I received a vidcall that you had been hurt in a lunar explosion—”
The wall speaker rasped into life. “You see, Philip, that problem is already solved. We don’t really need so many people; even a single couple might do.”
Kramer nodded slowly. “I see,” he murmured thickly. “Just one couple. One man and woman.”
“They might make it all right, if there were someone to watch and see that things went as they should. There will be quite a few things I can help you with, Philip. Quite a few. We’ll get along very well, I think.”
Kramer grinned wryly. “You could even help us name the animals,” he said. “I understand that’s the first step.”
“I’ll be glad to,” the toneless, impersonal voice said. “As I recall, my part will be to bring them to you, one by one. Then you can do the actual naming.”
“I don’t understand,” Dolores faltered. “What does he mean, Phil? Naming animals. What kind of animals? Where are we going?”
Kramer walked slowly over to the port and stood staring silently out, his arms folded. Beyond the ship a myriad fragments of light gleamed, countless coals glowing in the dark void. Stars, suns, systems. Endless, without number. A universe of worlds. An infinity of planets, waiting for them, gleaming and winking from the darkness.
He turned back, away from the port. “Where are we going?” He smiled at his wife, standing nervous and frightened, her large eyes full of alarm. “I don’t know where we are going,” he said. “But somehow that doesn’t seem too important right now…. I’m beginning to see the Professor’s point, it’s the result that counts.”
And for the first time in many months he put his arm around Dolores. At first she stiffened, the fright and nervousness still in her eyes. But then suddenly she relaxed against him and there were tears wetting her cheeks.
“Phil … do you really think we can start over again—you and I?”
He kissed her tenderly, then passionately.
And the spaceship shot swiftly through the endless, trackless eternity of the void….
The Mind Digger
by Winston Marks
There was a reason why his scripts were smash hits—they had realism. And why not? He was reliving every scene and emotion in them!
It was really a pretty fair script, and it caught me at a moment when every playwright worth his salt was playing in France, prostituting in Hollywood or sulking in a slump. I needed a play badly, so I told Ellie to get this unknown up to my office and have a contract ready.
When she announced him on the inter-com, my door banged open and a youngster in blue-jeans, sweatshirt and a stubbly crew-cut popped in like a carelessly aimed champagne cork.
I said, “I’m sorry, son, but I have an interview right now. Besides we aren’t casting yet. Come back in a couple of weeks.”
His grin never faltered, being of the more durable kind that you find on farms and west of the Rockies. His ragged sneakers padded across my Persian, and I thought he was going to spring over my desk like a losing tennis player.
“I’m your interview,” he announced. “At least I’m Hillary Hardy, and your girl just told me you’d see me.”
“You—are Hillary Hardy?”
“In the morbid flesh,” he said jamming out five enthusiastic fingers that gulped my hand and jack-hammered until I broke his grip with a Red-Cross life-saving hold.
“Spare the meat,” I groaned. “I have to sign the contract, too.”
“I did it! I did it! They said I was crazy, but I did it the first time.”
“Did what?”
“Sold the first play I wrote.”
“This—is—your first work?”
“My very first,” he said, splitting his freckles with a double row of white teeth a yard wide. “They said I’d have to go to college, and then I’d have to write a million words before I’d produce anything worthwhile.”
If he hadn’t owned such an honest, open face I’d have thrown him out as an imposter right then. The ream of neatly typed pages on my desk would have fooled any agent, editor or producer like myself, on Broadway. The format was professional, the plot carefully constructed, the dialogue breezy as a May afternoon in Chicago and the motivation solidly adult.
“How old are you?” I asked.
“Nineteen.”
“And you’ll sign an affidavit that you wrote this play, and it’s an original work?”
“Certainly!” The smile faded a little. “Look, Mr. Crocker, you’re not just kidding about this contract, are you? Is the play really okay?”
“That,” I said trying to restrain my own enthusiasm, “is only determined on the boards. But I’m willing to risk a thousand-dollar advance on your signature to this.” I shoved the papers at him with my fountain pen on top.
He didn’t uncap the pen until he had read the whole thing, and while he pored over the fine print I had time to catch my breath.
His play competed rather well with the high average output of most professionals I knew—not exactly terrific, but a relatively safe gamble, as gambles go on the street of bright lights. Well, I made a mental note to pass the script around a bit before I signed the contract myself. After all, he might have cribbed the whole thing somewhere.
He finished reading, signed the contract and handed it back to me with an air of expectancy. I stalled, “I, uh, will have the check for you in a few days. Meanwhile, you’d better get yourself an agent and an attorney and fix up that affidavit of authorship. Normally, I don’t deal with free-lance playwrights, you see.”
“But I don’t need any agent,” he protested. “You be my agent, Mr. Crocker—” He was studying my reaction, and after a moment he said, “You still don’t quite believe that I wrote Updraft, do you, sir? Now that you’ve met me you want more time to check up, don’t you?”
I said, “Frankly, yes, Hardy. Updraft is a mature piece of writing, and unless you are a genius—well, it’s just business son.”
“I don’t blame you,” he said smiling that fresh-air smile. “And I’ll admit I’m no genius, but I can explain everything. You see, I’ve read 38 books on how to write plays—”
“Tut!” I said. “Format technique is just a fraction of producing