The Carpetbaggers

7

I left the hospital early in September. I was sitting in the wheel chair, watching Robair pack the last of my things into the valise, when the door opened. "Hi, Junior."

"Nevada! What are you doing way down here?"

"Came to carry you home."

I laughed. Funny how you can go along for years hardly thinking about someone, then all of a sudden be so glad to see him. "You didn't have to do that," I said. "Robair could have managed all right."

"I asked him to come up, Mr. Jonas. I figured it would be like old times. It gets mighty lonely out there at the ranch with nothing to do."

"An' I figured I could use a vacation," Nevada said. "The war's over an' the show's closed down for the winter. And there's nothin' Martha likes better than to do a little invalidin'. She's down there now, gittin' things ready for us."

I looked at the two of them and grinned. "It's a put-up job, huh?"

"That's right," Nevada said. He came over behind the wheel chair. "Ready?"

Robair closed the valise and snapped it shut. "All set, Mr. Nevada."

"Let's go, then," Nevada said, and started the wheel chair through the door.

"We have to stop off at Burbank," I said, looking back at him. "Mac has a flock of papers for me to sign." I might be laid up, but business went on.

Buzz Dalton had an ICA charter waiting for us at the San Diego airport. We were at Burbank by two o'clock that afternoon. McAllister got up and came around his desk when they wheeled me into his office. "You know, this is the first time I can remember seeing you sit down."

I laughed. "Make the most of it. The doctors say I’ll be moving around as good as new in a couple of weeks."

"Well, meanwhile, I'm going to take advantage of it. Push him around behind the desk, fellows. I've got the pen ready."

It was almost four o'clock when I'd signed the last of a stack of documents. I looked up wearily. "So what else is new?"

Mac looked at me. He walked over to a table against the wall. "This is," he said, and took the cover off something that looked like a radio with a window in it.

"What is it?"

"It's the first product of the Cord Electronics Company," he said proudly. "We knocked it out in the converted radar division. It's a television set."

"Television?" I asked.

"Pictures broadcast through the air like radio," he said. "It's picked up on that screen, like home movies."

"Oh, that's the thing that Dumont was kicking around before the war. It doesn't work."

"Does now," Mac said. "It's the next big thing. All the radio and electronics companies are going into it. RCA, Columbia, Emerson, IT T, GE, Philco. All of them. Want to see how it works?"

"Sure."

He walked over and picked up the phone. "Get me the lab." He covered the mouthpiece. "I'll have them put something on," he said.

A moment later, he went over to the set and turned a knob. A light flashed behind the window, then settled into a series of circles and lines. Gradually, letters came into view.