Collected Stories

Hydra

Donald Westlake is one of the best and most popular mystery novelists in the U.S., creator of the Dortmunder gang and such books as HOT ROCK. BANK SHOT and JIMMY THE KID. He writes an occasional short story, and we’re delighted to offer this one.

“I’m afraid that’s the church again,” Carrie Morton said. “Greg, push on.”

“That’s all right, I like it,” Fay White told her, being polite, but Greg Morton had already pushed the bar on the slide projector — chip-clock — and after a brief interval of rectangular white, the wall reblossomed into yet another view of the same small concrete-block church roughly painted in pastels, glistening like a week-old wedding cake in the bright southern sun.

“Oh, dear,” Carrie said. “Too many of the same picture. But I just loved that church.”

“I’d be fascinated by those colors, too,” Fay said, hating herself for her spineless politeness but helpless to change her manner. A dozen years ago in college it had been like this, Carrie blithe and uncaring while Fay smiled and said it was all right; and now here they were again, just the same.

Chip-chip-chip-chip — “The people are so primitive,” Carrie said, as Greg struggled with the machine and they all stared at the white-again wall. “They’re alleged to be Christians, but what went on in that building seemed awfully jungle-jungle to me.”

Then why not photograph that, Fay thought, sipping gamely at her pre-dinner drink. She and Carrie and Greg all held tiny glasses of a heavy, too-sweet South American liqueur the Mortons had brought back, while Fay’s husband, Reed — no spineless politeness for him — sat contentedly with a glass of beer. I wish I were more like Reed, Fay thought. Self-confident and serene. I wish liked my friends more.

Clock. Four smiling children shyly posed in that same harsh sunlight beside a rusted, springless, dark green American car. “So childlike,” Carrie said, comfortably smiling.

“Well, they’re children,” Fay said, looking at the vulnerable little faces, the knobby brown knees.

“No, all of them, I mean.” Carrie laughed. “Such sweet people, but so naïve!”

“Ripe for agitators,” Greg said.

The picture on the wall trembled, and Fay frowned at the children. A withered arm? And wasn’t that — “Wait!” she said, but chip-clock, and they were looking now at a placid man walking down a dirt road, a large earthenware jug balanced on his shoulder. The road was dry and dusty, the land to both sides a sunbeaten brown. “Oh, it’s Hoo-lee-oh!” Carrie said happily.

“Was that— Was one of those—” Fay looked across the projector’s beam at Carrie, blond and sweet and recently maternal. “Was one of those children blind?”

But Reed was saying. “Agitators. Greg? Down there, too?”

“It’s the same old story,” Greg said, while Carrie turned her open smiling face to listen. “The big American company comes in, brings prosperity, jobs, consumer goods, education — medical care, for Christ’s sake — and the first thing you know the locals think it’s all theirs.”

“Hoo-lee-oh was our houseboy,” Carrie said, smiling at Fay. “I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is, being where there’s no servant problem.”

“Hoo-lee-oh?”

Carrie spelled it out, and it turned out to be Julio. “He made the most delicious wine,” Carrie said, “and used to bring us just jugs of the stuff. Not grape wine, from flowers or something. I never could understand how he grew anything at all — just look at the ground. When I think of my poor little kitchen garden; hopeless, tomatoes like acorns.”

“Miserable soil,” Greg said, “but naturally the politicals carried on all the time about pollution.”

“It’s the same up here,” Reed said. “Love Canal, all that. Mountains out of molehills.”

“Exactly,” Greg said. “People make mistakes, we’re all human, but you’d think it was deliberate. We aren’t barbarians, for Christ’s sake.”

Fay twisted around to look at Greg. “I read about some valley in Brazil,” she said, “where there’s so much industry now, so much pollution, nothing grows anymore. And birth defects, and—”

Greg nodded, mouth expressing disapproval. “The dead valley, I know. Believe me, the politicals beat us over the head with that one, even though it isn’t American companies, it’s all multinationals, European, South American. But they did go too far there, no question, we all know there have to be some controls. But what we have to realize, every one of us right here in the U.S.A., the world is going to pass us by.”

“I don’t follow,” Reed said.

Chip-clock. Julio and his jug became a very pregnant Carrie, in voluminous white top and pink slacks, blooming and beaming in front of their neat white modular company cottage. In the background, black lines like the smoke in a child’s drawing squiggled upward from the tall metal stacks. “I wore pink the whole time,” Carrie said, “so I’d have a girl.”

“Vickie’s such a little doll,” Fay took her.

Greg was saying to Reed, “If it weren’t for U.S. government regulations, PetChem wouldn’t have moved down there back in the sixties. I’m all for the environment — I mean, for Christ’s sake, we all breathe the same air — but you’ve got to weigh the factors. These countries in the south, they want our business, they’re ready to make an accommodation.”

“How far along were you?” Fay asked.

“Six months.” Carrie smiled dreamily, reminiscently, at the image of her pregnant self. “I carried so big, for a while I thought I was having triplets.”

“Of course, they breed like rabbits,” Greg said, “so they hardly show. The women. Walk along the road, you wouldn’t know they were pregnant at all. Squat, and poof.”

Laughing, Carrie said. “It’s not quite that easy.”

“Still,” Fay said, “I don’t suppose prenatal care is exactly up to our standards.”

“One reason we’re back,” Greg said. Chip-clock. “Also, we wanted Vickie born in the U.S.A.”

“That’s the company lake,” Carrie said.

The people along the shore were of no clearly defined types. “Even in bathing suits,” Fay said, “Americans look like Americans.”

Carrie said, “Remember the summer we both took cabins on Lake Monequois? Doesn’t it look like that?”

“Except for the volcanoes.”

“Maybe we can do the lake again next summer,” Carrie said. “Now that we’re back.”

“You can’t swim there anymore. They say it’s algae or something.”

“Oh, too bad.” Bur Carrie’s smile remained sunny, and she said, “Well, there’s still the ocean.”

Reed said, “Is that your Julio again? Are all those kids his?”

“I told you so,” Greg said, “like rabbits. Of course, we had to let the locals use the company lake. I mean we’re democratic, for Christ’s sake.”

A child behind Julio was crawling toward the water. Fay said, “Where’s his legs?”

Chip-clock. “What?” Greg said.

“Nothing. Never mind.” Fay frowned at the white wall.

Carrie said, “That’s the end of that box, honey.”

Greg’s watch was a masterpiece of several technologies. Consulting it, he said, “Seven fifty-three, dear. You wanted to know.”

“Oh, my goodness.” Carrie’s long legs had been curled beneath her while they watched the slides; now she unlimbered and rose, saying, “Dinner’s in five minutes. Later on, if we feel like it, we can look at the rest.”

Greg said, “Maybe that’s enough for tonight. One of the best things about being back, we’ve left all those hassles behind.”

Fay said to Carrie, “Can I help?”

“Oh, no, just relax.”

But of course Fay didn’t. Leaving Greg and Reed to talk about government restrictions, she followed Carrie to the kitchen, where small red lights on various machines gave assurance that the meal was coming along. Carrie said, peering through the oven window, “Lord, this is one thing I’m glad to get back to. Modem appliances.”

“Didn’t the company housing have all that?”

“Microwave? Are you kidding?” Lifting a pot lid, releasing a pillow of vegetable-scented steam, Carrie said, “All you get there is the basics. A tiny Italian refrigerator, barely enough ice cubes for two people — Do you know, if you had friends over for dinner, they’d bring their own ice cube trays? Honestly.”

“Other company people, you mean.”

“Who else was there? Fay, I can’t tell you how much we missed you and Reed.”

“We’re glad you’re back,” Fay said. And it was true. The uneasiness and discontent were all on Fay’s side, and pointless. Carrie was her best friend, since college, since they’d been dating the boys who were now their husbands. “Very happy you’re back,” Fay said, and impulsively kissed Carrie’s smooth, round cheek.

There really was nothing for Fay to do in the kitchen, and very little even for Carrie. The machines had everything under control. Having rime. Fay went through the bedroom into the bath to refresh her makeup and wash her hands. Returning, she passed what had been Greg’s den and was now the nursery, and movement caught her eye. Vickie was awake.

The baby had been asleep earlier, when they’d ail come in to look at her. Now Fay stepped into the nursery, half-lit by a small table lamp, and leaned over the crib to smile down at Carrie’s child.

Vickie was fair, like her mother, with wide-set eyes and pug nose. Her eyes were closed, but her pudgy hands and feet were moving, in that aimless way of infants learning their bodies. Light gleamed on her soft stretching throat.

Perhaps sensing Fay’s presence, the baby abruptly opened her eyes and gazed upward with intense concentration. Beautiful green eyes, darker than jade. Then the wide mouth opened and the baby gave a gassy smile, complete with bubbles.

It’s a trick of the light. Fay thought, but it wasn’t. Holding tight to the side of the crib, she watched Vickie laugh. We think we’re safe, she thought. We move the danger far away where it can only hurt people we don’t care about, and we stay here safe. But it’s coming, anyway.

In the doorway, Carrie said, “Fay? Dinner.”

I can’t let her guess I know. Fay thought, but when she turned the truth must have been plain in her eyes because Carrie, smiling with some irritation, said, “Oh, you noticed.”

“Carrie.”

“It’s nothing, it’s nothing.” Taking Fay’s arm, walking her out to the master bedroom, Carrie said, “There’s a company doctor knows all about it, there’s a little operation when Vickie’s just a bit older, there won’t be a trace.”

“A company doctor? This has happened before?”

“And they’re all just as healthy and happy as can be,” Carrie said, smiling her contented smile. “Come along to dinner.” She leaned close, the smile turning confidential. “But don’t mention it to anyone, all right? I mean, it’s going to be fixed.”

“Oh, no. I wouldn’t.”

And she wouldn’t. Following Carrie to the dining room, Fay knew she would never mention it to a soul. But she would remember. Clear in her mind’s eye it would remain, the vision of Vickie, the wide-set deep green eyes, the little pug nose, the forked tongue.

The World’s a Stage

“We’d better be getting our act together and taking it on the road,” said ensign Benson, “or we’ll be stuck on this planet forever.”

From the beginning of Time, Man has been on the move, ever outward. First he spread over his own planet, then across the Solar System, then outward to the Galaxies, all of them dotted, speckled, measled with the colonies of Man.

Then, one day in the year eleven thousand four hundred and six (11,406), an incredible discovery was made in the Master Imperial Computer back on Earth. Nearly 500 years before, a clerical error had erased from the computer’s memory more than WOO colonies, all in sector F.U.B.A.R.3. For half a millennium, those colonies, young and struggling when last heard from, had had no contact with the rest of Humanity.

The Galactic Patrol Interstellar Ship Hopeful, Captain Gregory Standforth commanding, was at once dispatched to re-establish contact with the Thousand Lost Colonies and return them to the bosom of Mankind.

The two tramps, picturesquely filthy, sat by the side of the road in the dusty sunshine. They were dressed in more rags than seemed absolutely necessary given the mildness of the weather, and while one of them mused upon life more or less audibly, the other removed a battered, scruffy boot and frowned mistrustfully into it, as though expecting to find something alive in there. He sighed. He blew into the boot. He sighed. He put the boot on. He took it off again. He turned to his musing, muttering companion and said, “Didi?”

“Yes?”

“What do we do now?”

“We wait.”

A kind of inner earthquake of frustration vibrated through the tramp holding the boot. With a repressed scream, he cried, “For what?”

“For him,” Didi said. “He promised he’d meet us here, and we’re supposed to wait until—” He broke off, gazing upward past his friend’s filthy forehead.

“Well?” asked the other. “Go on, go on.”

“Oh, my gosh,” said Didi His voice, his manner, even his facial appearance, all had changed.

“What is it?” asked his friend, turning to look.

The two tramps stared upward at the slowly descending spaceship, a great silver corncob lowering through the empty air. “It’s Godot,” Didi whispered in awe. “He finally got here.”

Inside the spaceship, 27 birds watched Pam Stokes, astrogator, beautiful and brainy but blind to passion, play with her ancestral slide rule. The birds were all stuffed and wired to their perches around the Hopeful’s command deck, and from the expression in their glass eyes, they didn’t like it a bit. Or perhaps what they didn’t like was the sight of Captain Gregory Standforth disemboweling yet another bird on the control panel. Indigo ichor oozed through the dials and switches into the panel’s innards, where it would make a mysterious bad smell for the next several weeks.

A tall, skinny, vague-eyed, loose-wired sort of fellow, Captain Standforth was the seventh consecutive generation of Standforths to spend his life in the service of the Galactic Patrol and the first to be terrible at it. Much was expected of a Standforth, but in this case it was expected in vain. The captain had had no choice other than to follow the family footsteps into the patrol, and the patrol had had to take him, but neither had profited. All the captain wanted was to pursue his one passion, taxidermy — the stuffing of birds from everywhere in the universe — while all the patrol wanted was to never see or hear from him again

Thump. “Ouch!” said the captain. As vermilion blood mixed with the indigo ichor, he put his cut varicolored finger into his mouth, said, “Oog,” took it out again and made a bad-taste grimace. “Nn.” Turning to Pam, he said, “What was that thump? Made me cut myself.”

“Subsidence,” she said, rapidly whizzing the slide rule’s parts back and forth. “By my calculations, ground level must have eroded seven millimeters in the last half-chiliad. Therefore, the ship’s computer switched off engines before we actually—”

“Half-chiliad?” asked the captain. “What’s a half-chiliad?”

“Five hundred years. So that’s why we thumped when we landed.”

“Landed? You mean we’ve arrived somewhere?”

“Yes, sir.”

Captain Standforth looked around at his birds. They looked back. “I wonder where we are,” he said. “I wonder what kind of birds they have here.”

“Wardrobe! Wardrobe!”

“Now what?”

“My wings keep falling off.”

“All right, I’ll get my needle and thread.”

He’s an airhead, Ensign Kybee Benson thought, raging murderously within while he struggled to appear calm and composed without. A clot head, a bonehead, a meal-head. Chowderhead, fathead. Muttonhead. No, he’s worse than all of those — he’s a Luthguster.

The Luthguster in question, Councilman Morton Luthguster of the Supreme Galactic Council, sealed on the other side of Ensign Benson’s desk, went obliviously on with his question. “Why name an entire planet after an actor? A planet called J. Railsford Farnsworth is ridiculous.”

“In the first place,” Ensign Benson said, swallowing brimstone, “the planet is named Hestia IV, since it is the fourth planet from its sun, Hestia. The colony’s full name is the J. Railsford Farnsworth Repertory Company.”

Councilman Luthguster shook his jowly head. “Damn-fool name for a place,” he insisted “Detroit, now, that’s a name. Khartoum. Reykjavik. But J. Railsford Farnsworth Repertory Company?”

A tap at the frame of the open office door was followed by the cheerful, optimistic, shiny young face of Lieutenant Billy Shelby, Hopeful’s second in command, who said, “We’ve landed, sir. We’re on the ground.”

“I know what landed means,” Ensign Benson snapped. “I felt the bump. And when I’ve finished explaining the situation to the councilman, we’ll be along.”

“OK,” Billy said happily. “We’ll be waiting at the air lock. At the door.”

“I know what an air lock is.”

Billy cantered off, and Ensign Benson returned to his task. As social engineer, an expert in comparative societies, he had the job of giving Councilman Luthguster the necessary background on each colony they visited. “When this sector of the universe was colonized,” he explained, “a special cultural fund was set up to bring the arts to the far-flung outposts of Man. A theatrical troupe from Earth was offered its own settlement and a subsidy and was meant to tour the other colonies with a repertory of ancient and modern drama. Of course, contact was lost almost immediately, so the troupe never got its transportation and therefore never toured. There’s no guessing what it’s become by now.”

Luthguster pursed fat lips. “So who is this fellow J. Railsford Farnsworth?”

“Founder of the repertory company. The actor-manager-director of the troupe.”

“Do you mean,” Luthguster demanded, puffing out like an adder, “that I shall be expected to discuss affairs of state with an actor?”

“I don’t think so,” Ensign Benson said. His face was expressionless, but his tense hand had crushed the plastoak arm of his chair. “J. Railsford Farnsworth would be about five hundred and forty-three by now, and that’s old even for an actor.”

Gathered around the air lock were two thirds of the Hopeful’s complement: Captain Standforth, Astrogator Stokes, Lieutenant Shelby and Chief Engineer Hester Hanshaw, a stocky, blunt woman with a stocky, blunt manner, who was saying, “I didn’t like that thump. Bad for the engines.”

“I didn’t like it, either,” Captain Standforth told her. “Made me cut myself.” He showed her the scratched finger.

Hester, the closest thing they had to a ship’s doctor, frowned at the scratch a millisecond, then said, “Paint a little anti-rust compound on it Be good as new.”

Bemused, the captain gazed at his finger. “Are you sure?”

Ensign Benson and Councilman Luthguster joined the group, and Billy armed the councilman with his microphone. “It’s all set,” he said. “Just talk straight into it.”

“Fine.”

“Not yet,” Ensign Benson said.

The councilman stepped out onto the small platform suspended halfway up the side of the ship, and his amplified voice rolled out over a dusty landscape reminiscent of certain sections of eastern Oklahoma in early June: “Citizens of J. Railsford Farnsworth Repertory Com— Aak!”

Inside the ship, Ensign Benson frowned. “Aak?”

Councilman Luthguster bundled hastily back into the ship like a stockbroker into the bar car. “Those aren’t peopled They’re, they’re things!”

“Stop talking into the microphone,” Ensign Benson said.

Billy looked out the air lock. “Oh, wow! Cute bug-eyed monsters!”

“What?” Stepping impatiently out onto the platform, Ensign Benson found himself gazing down on as motley a collection of creatures as ever was lit by the same sun. Nonhuman to a fault but, as Billy had said, cute. There were tiny round puffballs with human legs and wings and yellow wigs over fairy faces. Fall, androgynous sprites in tights. Hoppers with humps. And in front of them stood a beautiful womanoid with gauzy wings and a gauzy gown and long, pointed cars, and a big, hairy manoid with a great purple cloak and long feet that curled up into spirals at the end.

Loudly enough for Ensign Benson to hear, the manoid addressed the womanoid: “I’ll met by moonlight, proud Titania.”

In the doorway, the captain said, “That one over there looks like a bird, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, I don’t think so, Captain,” said Billy.

“What, jealous Oberon!” the woman was bellowing. “Fairies, skip hence: I have forsworn his bed and company.”

“I will not talk to things!”

“Tell that nitwit,” Ensign Benson said over his shoulder, “to stop talking into the microphone.”

Below, half the thingummys and jigmarigs were skipping away, while the womanoid frowned up at Ensign Benson. “Fairies, skip hence,” she repeated, even more loudly. “That’s you, buster!”

Ensign Benson called, “Where are the human beings around here?”

“Nowhere in A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” jealous Oberon told him, apparently exasperated.

“I will not talk to things!”

“All right,” disgusted Oberon said, “let’s go, troupe.” As his whatsits and flumadiddles obediently sloped off, he turned back to call, “And I suppose that spaceship of yours is an example of kitchen-sink realism!”

The entire crowd shuffled away. They appeared to be removing wings and heads and appendages as they went, almost as though they were costumes; and 40 feet from the ship, they stepped around a curtain of air, one after the other, and disappeared.

Ensign Benson blinked. “Oh, boy,” he said.

The captain and Billy came out onto the platform, the captain saying, “Where did everybody go?”

“Um,” said Ensign Benson.

“Those were really keen creatures,” Billy said.

“And what a beautiful day,” the captain said, gazing skyward, stepping back from the ship the better to view the empyrean. “Is it morning here or after— Aak!”

“Another aak,” Ensign Benson moodily said, watching the captain tumble down the stairs to land in a dusty heap at the bottom.

“Kybee, look!” said Billy.

Ensign Benson followed Billy’s pointing finger. There in the middle of the field, an invisible curtain of air was lifting to reveal what seemed to be a house with its side wall torn away. In the kitchen, a woman wearing a slip stood wearily at her ironing board. In the living room, a man in a tom T-shirt sprawled on a sofa and drank beer.

Captain Standforth had picked himself up and was brushing himself off. Ensign Benson started down the ladder, intent on finding out what was going on here, and Billy came after. Above, Pam Stokes and Hester Hanshaw came tentatively out to the platform, Pam looking at the oddly sliced house and saying, “Did they miss a mortgage payment?”

Hester said, “Maybe all their weather comes from the other side.”

“Are the things still out there?”

“They’re gone, Councilman Luthguster,” Pam said. “You can come out.”

“Tell him to leave the microphone inside,” Ensign Benson called up the ladder, then said to the captain, “Let’s go find out the story here.”

“I suppose we have to.”

The captain and the ensign and Billy crossed the dusty field, meeting part way a frazzled woman wearing many frilly-but-worn garments and carrying a carpetbag. Smiling rather maniacally at Billy and speaking with an almost impenetrable Southern accent complicated by many odd little pauses, she said, “Ah have… all-wuz depended… on the… kahnd-ness of stranjuhs.”

“Me, too,” said Billy.

“As for me,” said Ensign Benson, “I’ve never depended on the kindness of strangers. Seems to work better somehow.”

In the living room, the man burped and yelled, “Stella!”

The frazzled woman stopped, frowned at Ensign Benson and said, completely without accent or affectation, “Say. What’s your story?”

“That’s what I meant to ask you,” Ensign Benson said. “What’s your story?”

“A Streetcar Named Desire, of course.”

Billy said, “What’s a streetcar?”

“I’ll tell you what my desire is,” Ensign Benson said, but the captain got there first, stepping forward to say, “Madam, if you please, take me to your leader.”

“Us,” said Ensign Benson.

“Oh, that story,” said the woman.

Royal-blue carpet with the Presidential seal in the middle. Large wooden desk, flanked by flags. The Oval Office.

Coming around his desk, smiling, hand outstretched, the President of the United States greeted the people from Earth. “Welcome back. Your safe return from barren Aldebaran has ignited the spirit of mankind. Welcome home to Earth.”

“Actually, Mr. President,” Councilman Luthguster said, puffing himself up, “we’re from Earth, and we wish to—”

“Well, of course you are,” the President said. Picking up a document from his desk, he said, “I have a proclamation here in honor of your voyage and return. ‘Whereas, in the course of human events…’ ”

Through the window behind the desk, the Washington Monument could be seen; but through the open doorway to the left, the same old dusty plain was visible. A group of people in overalls and sweat-bands wheeled a Trojan horse by. Two women in straw hats and tuxedos bucked and wung the other way.

The proclamation ran its course. At its finish, Councilman Luthguster squared his round shoulders and said, “Mr. President, I am empowered by the Galactic Council—”

Approaching Ensign Benson, the President firmly shook his hand and said, “Captain, your voyage into the unknown makes this the most important day in all creation.”

“Sir,” said Captain Standforth, “I’m the captain.”

“You,” the President reminded him, “are the captain’s best friend.” Turning to Pam Stokes, he said, “And you are the ship’s biologist.”

“Actually,” Pam said, “I’m the astrogator. I don’t think we’d need a biologist on a—”

“Of course you do.” Irritation seeped through the Presidential manner. “How else do we discover the killer virus that’s taken over the crew’s bodies?”

“Wait a minute,” Ensign Benson said. “You aren’t the President: you’re pretending to be the President. This is a play!”

“Well, of course it is!” the President cried. “And this is the worst rehearsal I have ever participated in!”

Luthguster harrumphed. “Do you mean to say,” he demanded, “that you are not empowered to deal on a primary level with a plenipotentiary from Earth?”

Frowning, the President said, “Have you come unglued, fella?”

Ensign Benson muttered, “Director — no. Producer — no.” Snapping his fingers, he said to the President, “Take me to your stage manager.”

The man sat atop a six-foot wooden ladder. Behind him were three rows of kitchen chairs, several occupied by solemn-faced people wearing their Sunday best. The man on the ladder said, “I’m the stage manager here. I guess I know just about everything there is to know about our town…”

The captain and the crew sat by the side of the dusty road. Billy took his boot off and looked in it. Councilman Luthguster, marching back and forth, announced, “This is absurd! These people can’t spend all their time play acting. They must have a government, an infrastructure. How do they get their food?”

“Of Mice and Men for an extended run,” suggested Ensign Benson.

Across the way, out in the middle of an empty field, a group of men in togas strolled out from behind an invisible curtain of air and began declaiming at one another. They all stood with one foot in front of the other. “That’s the part that bugs me the worst,” Ensign Benson said. “How do they appear and disappear like that?”

“Scrim,” said Hester.

Ensign Benson gave her an unfriendly look. “What?”

“I know what a scrim is,” Billy said. “We had one in the theater in college. It’s a big mesh screen. You paint a backdrop on it and hang it across the front of the stage. If you shine a light in front, you see the painting but you can’t see the stage. If you shine the light in back, the painting disappears and you see the stage.”

“Close but no pseugar,” said Hester. “That’s the original, old-fashioned kind of scrim, but then a way was found to alter air molecules so light would bend around them. Now a scrim is a curtain of bent molecules. You put it around a set and it shows you what’s beyond it. They used to use one in field questions for the S.E. degree, but of course it’s old-fashioned now.”

“Science is wonderful,” Ensign Benson said bitterly as he watched the men in togas disappear again behind their curtain of bent molecules.

“None of which solves,” Councilman Luthguster reminded them, “the problem of how to get in touch with whoever runs this blasted colony I’ll do no more play acting!”

Standing, the captain said, “Well, Hestia’s going down; there’s no more to do today. We’ll get an early start tomorrow.”

“Wasn’t it right here?” the captain asked.

“I thought,” said Pam vaguely, “it was more over that way, by those little trees.”

“There weren’t trees there before,” Ensign Benson said. “Those are cardboard, part of a set.”

“I am uninterested in sets,” the councilman said. “Totally uninterested. What I want is my room on the ship.”

“What I want,” said Hester, “is the bathroom on the ship.”

“Well, yes,” said Luthguster.

The little group stood on the plain, looking around. The captain said, “It was just— It was right around— I know it was over here somewhere.”

A man dressed in the front half of a horse costume came striding purposefully by, carrying the horse’s head under his arm. Billy said, “Excuse me. Have you seen our spaceship?”

“What?” The horseman looked around, then said, “Oh, right. They struck that set.” And he walked on.

“Struck?” echoed the captain. “Struck?”

“Theatrical term,” Pam told him. “It means to dismantle a set and take it oil the stage.”

“You can’t dismantle a spaceships,” the captain said. “Not in half an hour.”

“No,” Ensign Benson said, through clenched jaws. Smoke seemed to be coming out of his ears. “But you can put a curtain around it.” Glaring at Hester as though it were her fault, he said, “Our ship is surrounded by your goddamn bent molecules!”

Darkness fell, a bit at a time. “I think,” said the captain inaccurately, “I think we’ll just have to sleep on the ground.”

“Like camping out!” said the irrepressible Billy.

“Without the camp,” added the repressive councilman.

The captain said, “We’ll each have to find a declivity to sleep in.”

“I’ll need two declivities,” said Hester.

“Amen,” said the councilman.

“Kybee,” Pam said, “this is my declivity.”

“It’s important to retain our body heat,” Ensign Benson explained, trying to hunker down beside her.

“Thank you, Kybee,” Pam said, “but I’m really quite warm enough sleeping by myself.”

“You would be,” Ensign Benson muttered, thumping off across the darkling plain and all at once running into a spider web. “Ptchah!” he cried, flailing at the web, then realized it wasn’t a web at all. It was a, it was some sort of, it felt like a thin sheet or a—

Curtain.

“Oh, boy,” Ensign Benson said. Feeling the material with both hands, maintaining a lot of body contact with this drapery, he sidled along to the right, noticing how clothlike it was, giving when he pressed but resisting when he pressed too hard. Somewhere there would be, there had to be, an opening.

There. His right hand slipped off the curtain’s edge and fell forward against unresisting air, and all at once, instead of Hestia’s dull but protracted set, he was looking at somebody’s drawing room.

Comedy-of-manners time. A sofa centered, telephone on stand to its left. Several upstage doors for slamming. Occasional furniture along the walls. Steady, not-too-bright light, source uncertain.

Ensign Benson stepped through the break and inspected more closely. Windows fakes with painted views. Bookcase a painted facade. Telephone nonoperative. Water in ashtray, soap on mirror. Some sort of mottled obscurity high above blocking the sky. Sofa real and soft.

Turning about, he looked through the curtain of bent molecules at his shipmates settling down for the night on the dusty ground, like a small herd from some endangered species. Tell Pam about the sofa? Surely she wouldn’t mind sharing it. On the other hand, there was the rest of the crew.

Ensign Benson sighed. Pushing open the flap, he called, “Everybody! I found us a room.”

Hestia rose like thunder out of the horizon across the way. “I hear thunder,” Pam said, sitting up on the sofa, squinting in the rosy light, looking tousled and adorable and unavailable.

The other Earthlings, less adorable, rose from their beds of chair cushions and window draperies. “Rain,” grumbled Ensign Benson, stretching his stiff, sore back. “Just to make things perfect.”

But there was no rain, and when the thunder stopped, it became obvious that the sound had actually been some sort of approaching motor. For a few seconds the Earthers waited in silence, contemplating their morning mouths, and then an upstage door opened and a heedless young couple in evening dress-black tie for him, green flapper outfit for her — entered and slammed the door. “Tennis, anyone?” cried the boy, with a big toothy grin; then, as he reacted to the scene onstage, his grin became a toothless O of shock. “Lor!” he breathed.

The girl stared about in disbelief. “Well, I never!” she said, in character.

Captain Standforth clambered stiffly from his settee, saying, “Pm terribly sorry. Is this your place?”

The young man stared about in well-bred horror. “Look what you’ve done,” he said, “to this set.”

“We’ll fix it right up,” Billy promised, fluffing the pillow that had been his sole companion on the floor.

“I’ve a good mind,” the young man said angrily, “to report you to, report you to…”

Ensign Benson and Councilman Luthguster both leaned eagerly toward him. “Yes?” asked the councilman. “Yes?”

“To the agency!”

“Of course!” cried Ensign Benson.

The vehicle was a four-wheeled open land traveler with a simple metal-pipe frame and three rows of bucket seats. While the Earthfolk piled atop one another in the back — Pam deflecting Ensign Benson’s attempt to pile atop her — the annoyed thespians sat in front, the male kicking the engine to life and hunching over the handle bars. “We’ll see about this,” he said, and off they lurched.

Up a dusty slope they went and over the ridge and down the long, dusty road toward the settlement, a cluster of small buildings along an X of two streets.

“That’s the colony,” said Ensign Benson, staring around Hester’s shoulder. “Where we landed was nothing but an outdoor—”

“Rehearsal hall,” said Billy.

“They figured,” Ensign Benson said, “we were just actors, rehearsing a—”

“Space opera,” said Billy.

“Shut up, Billy,” said Ensign Benson.

Meanwhile, up front, the girl was pleading their case to her companion. “They’re just trying to attract attention,” she said. “Come on, Harv, you and I aren’t above stunts like that ourselves to get a part. They’re just between gigs, that’s all.”

“Then let ’em go to Temp, like the rest of us.”

“Come on, Harv, don’t be a producer.”

By then they were in the middle of the most utilitarian town the Earth people had ever seen. The buildings were drably functional and lacking in ornamentation, with none more than two stories high. Other stripped-down land travelers moved back and forth, and the several pedestrians, male and female, were mostly dressed in plain, drab jump suits. The few people in costume — a cowboy, a striped-pants diplomat, a belly dancer — stood out like parakeets in a field of crows.

The land traveler stopped. Reluctantly, the driver said, “All right, get out. I won’t report you.”

“Gee, thanks!” said Billy, bounding over the rail.

The others followed, and Ensign Benson said, “Where’s the agency?”

“Don’t milk the joke, fella,” the driver said and accelerated away But his girlfriend, behind his back, pointed and gestured toward a nearby gray-metal building, then waved a good-luck goodbye.

“She was nice,” Billy said.

“I’ve never dealt with agents before,” Luthguster said, frowning at the building. “Only principals.”

Ensign Benson stared at him. “You only deal in principles? Come along, Councilman; this I have to see.”

J. RAILSFORD FARNSWORTH SUCCESSORS — TALENT AGENCY read the inscription on the frosted fiber of the door. The Earthians filed into a small, bench-lined room personed by a feisty receptionist. “Well, look at what the omkali dragged in,” she said, surveying the bedraggled Terrans.

Hester glared at the girl. “Get smart with me, snip,” she said, “and I’ll breathe on you.”

“Harridan,” commented the receptionist calmly, flipping through a card file on her desk. “Battle-ax. Dyke. Sorry, got nothing for your type at the moment. We have your photo and resume on file?”

“Girlie,” Hester said, leaning over the desk, “if I had my socket wrench, I’d unscrew your head.”

“Just a minute, just a minute,” said Ensign Benson, interposing himself. “Is the boss here?”

The girl frowned at him, then smiled. “Oh, yes. You’re the captain.”

“That’s right, and he’s my best friend. Is the chief in?”

“You mean — the agent?”

“The man in charge,” said Councilman Luthguster.

The girl looked dubious. “Who shall I say is calling?”

The councilman drew himself up to his full round. “The Earth,” he said.

The girl looked him up and down. “I won’t argue,” she said.

Framed autographed photos — glossy 8 x 10s — covered every inch of wall space in the small windowless room. The rolltop desk was picturesquely old and battered, the wastebasket overflowing, the Leatherette sofa sagging, the two client chairs tired and gnawed.

So was the agent. A short and stocky man in a wrinkled jump suit with sleeve garters, he looked harried, sympathetic and negative. “I’m sorry, group,” he said. “I can’t tell you anything more than my girl did. Space opera just doesn’t move right now. How about a family drama?” Pointing to Billy, he said, “You could be the secret-faggot younger son.”

“Gee,” said Billy, “I don’t know.”

“Well, you do know the alternative,” the agent said. “If you’re not in rehearsal, you have to sign up with Temp. When something comes up that suits you, we’ll be in touch. In the meantime, don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

“Who’s Temp?” Ensign Benson asked. “Is he in charge here?”

The agent offered a brief smile, knowing, condescending and a bit irritated. “Don’t audition with me pal,” he said.

Councilman Luthguster said, “I assure you, my friend, continued play acting is the farthest thing from my mind. I am here representing the Galactic Council, and I wish to—”

“Oh, please,” the agent said, becoming really annoyed. “If you people don’t get out of here at once, I’ll put your photos and résumés in the inactive file and you’ll be permanently on Temp.”

“Go ahead,” Ensign Benson said.

The agent blinked at him. “What?”

“My name is Kybee Benson. I am not the captain and I don’t have a best friend; and if my picture is in your files, you’re a magician.”

“That goes for me double,” said Hester. “And I’m not a dyke.”

Ensign Benson stared at her. “You aren’t?”

“Wait a minute,” the agent said. Doubt curdled his face. “Who are you people?”

“A mission from Earth,” Ensign Benson said.

“Representing the Galactic Council,” Councilman Luthguster added.

“And I’m sorry to bother you,” Captain Standforth said, “but your people struck our ship.”

“So Temp is temporary employment,” Ensign Benson said, “and it’s the source for all the necessary labor in the colony.”

“That’s right.” The agent and the Earthpersons sat around a long table in a conference room. A secretary had distributed coffee and note pads and pencils and now sat poised to one side with her memo pad open.

“And,” Ensign Benson went on, “for the past five hundred years, you’ve been in rehearsal.”

“The assumption has always been,” the agent said, “that sooner or later, our transportation would arrive. ‘The show must go on eventually’ is our national motto. So we keep a group of shows ready to perform, the choice of which ones being based on popular vole. There’s a certain understandable growing negativity about space opera, which is why you’ve been having so much trouble.”

“Well, our troubles are over now,” Billy said, beaming at every body.

“Ours, too,” the agent said. Eagerly he leaned forward. “What’s our first stop on the tour?”

The captain said, “Tour?”

“It’ll make a difference,” the agent explained, “as to which plays we carry. You wouldn’t do Lysistrata in Gayville, for instance.”

“Sir,” said Luthguster, “you have misunderstood. We are an introductory mission representing the Galactic Council in this reabsorption of—”

“You mean, you aren’t our transportation?”

“Certainly not,” Luthguster said. “I assure you, sir, I am neither a play actor nor a tour director. I am—”

“In terrible trouble,” the agent finished. To his secretary — who had stopped note taking, the better to look shocked and horrified — he said, “Erase that bit, Emily, and don’t breathe a word of this to anyone.”

“Oh, sir,” breathed Emily, with all the despairing fervor of any showbiz secretary ordered not to gossip.

The captain said, “Really, uh, your Honor, I’m sure we can arrange all the transportation you need.”

“I’m delighted and relieved to hear it,” the agent said. “When?”

“In two or three years,” Luthguster told him. “Five at the very most.”

The captain said, “All we need is to get to the ship and—”

“Impossible,” the agent said.

“I knew there had to be a kicker,” Ensign Benson said. “What is it?”

The agent pressed all his fingers to his chest in the time-honored agent’s gesture of innocence. “Bubee,” he said, “do I know where your ship is? No. Certain members of the rep company do. If you go to the rep company and tell them you’re here in a spaceship after five hundred years but you’re not their transportation, do you know what they’ll do?”

The Earth party shook its heads.

“Lynch you,” said Emily bitterly. She was shredding her pencil.

“Very probably,” said the agent.

Ensign Benson said, “Do you mean we can’t get our spaceship back because, if people know it’s real but not your damn tour bus, they’ll blame us?”

“I couldn’t have phrased it better myself,” the agent said. “Remember, five hundred years is a long rehearsal.”

Emily, sniffling solemnly over her note pad, murmured, “But what else could we have done? We never knew when…”

“Yes, Emily,” the agent said sympathetically.

Councilman Luthguster said, “But this is terrible; I can’t arrange for transportation or trade agreements or development aid or anything until I’m back in the ship.”

“But how to get there,” Pam said. “That’s the problem.”

All nodded dolefully. But then Billy leaped to his feet, his fresh face eager and alight. “Say, gang!” he cried. “Why don’t we — I dunno — put on a show?”

And what a show! Dorothy and the Wizard of J. Railsford Farnsworth Repertory Company, and Selected Shorts. The agent helped arrange for cooperation from the craft guilds, and the sounds of cheerful hammering and more cheerful whistling rose up from the stage carpenters building the sets. Backdrops were flown, specialty acts were auditioned and Ensign Benson took to wearing jodhpurs and an ascot. Councilman Luthguster sang the bass notes, Billy gave pep talks from the tops of ladders and the captain flew squadrons of stuffed birds. The crew spent hours in the wardrobe shed, sequences from other shows were freely borrowed and even Emily chipped in, writing lyrics.

Curtain up!

“Somewhere over the welkin, skies are green…”

“Of thee I sing, hyperspace! Summer, autumn, winter, spring, hyperspace!”

“Toto, I don’t think we’re on Alpha Centauri anymore.”

“Heigh-ho! Heigh-ho! It’s off to J. Railsford Farnsworth Repertory Company we go!”

“Whatever Toto wants, Toto gets.”

“Hee, hee, hee! And I’ll get that little dog, too!”

“Toto! Toto!”

“Dingdong, the dingbat’s dead!”

“Ignore the man behind that curtain!”

The finale! A scrim parted and a gasp went up from the audience as Hopeful appeared, gleaming in the Hestia light. Dorothy (Pam), the Cowardly Lion (the captain), the Scarecrow (Ensign Benson), the Tin Person (Hester), the Wizard (Councilman Luthguster) and Toto (Billy) marched, singing, toward their ship.

Along the way, the agent shook Councilman Luthguster’s hand. “Hurry back,” he said. “We’ll take lunch.”

Klonk-klonk, up the yellow-metal ladder. Snuck went the air-lock door. Sssssssssummmmmmmmm went the spaceship, up, up and away.

“What stage effects!” marveled the cheering throng. “What magic! What realism! What a finish!”

What — no encore?