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Read Ebook: You'll Like It on Mars by Harris Tom W Berry D Bruce Illustrator
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You'll Like It On Mars!
Nobody could figure out how Kettering had shot his realistic scenes on Mars. His movie was just too good to be true--and much too gruesome!
I remember it all so clearly. "Get the information and you can have anything you want," Myron Ferdinand told me. He stuffed his heavy pipe with five-dollar-an-ounce tobacco and blew a heavy cloud around his heavy face. "Fail to get it, and I'll wash you out of the whole industry."
Myron meant what he said. "I'll get it," I said with beautifully faked confidence.
"Renn Kettering will be glad to see you at his party tonight," Myron grinned. "I planted a rumor that you want to leave me and go to work for him. Maneuver a private talk, get him on the subject of how he made that damned movie. Maybe he'll let something slip."
"Great idea," I said. Movie magnates always have great ideas.
"Talk to his cast. And slip off alone if you can and look his house over. I don't care what you do, but come back here with the information. And don't get big ideas on selling out to Kettering. He'd hire you to get you away from Stupendous and then dust-bin you because he couldn't trust you. You understand that, of course."
"Of course," I said. Movie magnates are always right.
"One thing more, Manny. I want you to see those steals again."
"I've seen those scenes of his about seven thousand times, Myron."
"So have I--so has the whole country--and between you and me I don't think they're as hot as they're cracked up to be. I'd have done it different. But I want you to see them just before you go to Kettering's party, to have 'em fresh in your mind. Get it?"
"Terrif idea!" I bellowed. "I didn't think of that!"
"That's why I'm president of Stupendous," said Myron.
Modest guy, Myron Ferdinand. "Right," I said, sliding toward the door.
"Remember," said Myron. "Anything you want--or on the other hand, the end of you in Hollywood."
I was at the view room. I signaled the joker in the projection booth and sat down as the first famous sequences came on the screen.
The space crew had left the ship and were in a little ravine when a bunch of tawnies came down on them. There were liver-freezing shots of the tawnies--close-ups--those could have been done with a telephoto lens. The space crew got behind some rocks, and Vance Hubbard, the film's heavy, stood up and cut loose with a blaster. The blue sparks burst and showered around the big tawny that was coming for Vance, and it howled but didn't stop. Vance hurled the gun at its big sticky mouth, and then the thing grabbed him with its front mandibles, or whatever you call them.
There was a closeup of Vance's face, scrambled with terror, about the best acting I have ever seen from Vance. And, the tawny got those yellow choppers going and minced him into little hunks.
It was all close to the camera, and about the most real thing I ever saw outside of a newsreel. Superb realism.
If I hadn't seen so many murder films and pirate films and space-monster films I suppose I couldn't have kept watching. But me and John Q. Public were just alike--calloused. Calloused or not, I still felt a cold chill or two. If the public wanted horror, this film delivered it.
There were some more hair-raising shots as the crew tried to beat off the tawnies. There was a guy who got in the way of a blaster. I wanted to think he was a rubber dummy or some kind of robot, but I couldn't convince myself. Anyway, the tawnies cleaned up. The only one who made it back to the ship was Arden Montgomery, and her legs were ripped and slashed like ragged cloth.
Then the clips were over. I sat and thought a moment. Maybe Myron had a point, watching the steals again. I had picked up an idea. It was crazy, but I needed any idea I could get hold of.
Maybe those scenes were just as real as they looked. Maybe Renn was using doubles here on Earth, and the real cast was scattered in hunks around the bleak sands of the red planet. Renn was unscrupulous enough for something like that. But could he patch up convincing doubles?
I was pretty sure doubles hadn't been used in the film, though. I knew Vance and Arden. It was them.
I kept worrying at it all the way to Renn's house party. I came up with one more idea--one I liked. Arden Montgomery was the only one in the film that escaped. If those scenes were real, she'd have scars on her legs the rest of her life. They'd be too severe to disguise completely. Arden and I had once been what they call "good friends," and tonight I would find a chance to give her legs a good, thorough lookover.
Renn met me at the door in person. On the front of his phony grin, and in the back of his mind was the possibility he might get me away from Myron. The grin didn't change the fact that Kettering has eyes like dry ice, and that the true lines of his face are about as jovial as a shock trooper's.
"Greetings, Gabe!" I chortled.
"Greetings, Gabe!"
I was about to shake hands when I yelled and jumped back about ten feet. Just behind Renn was a snarling tawny.
Renn laughed. "Little watchdog I brought back. He's a runt, you'll notice. Only about five feet high. Weighs about fifteen hundred pounds. He keeps prowlers off the grounds at night--so many people are curious these days. But don't worry, he can't get at you."
The runt was tied with steel cables about two inches thick. He was giving the cables a hard time.
"Come on in," laughed Kettering. "Those cables would hold an elephant."
"I don't see what that has to do with holding a tawny," I wheezed, "but if the rest of your guests got through, I guess I can make it."
Kettering took my arm and sort of guided me down the hall, and when we passed the tawny all those eyes or whatever they are, all over its body, glared through the fur and it leaped at me. The big choppers clacked a half inch from my ear and I felt a mandible graze my coat.
Renn guffawed. "I measured his exact reach," he said chummily. "Sorry if he scared you. A good watchdog--so many people curious these days."
That made the second time he'd said that.
I gulped a drink before I began to talk to anybody. Practically all the Important Crowd was present.... Dick Lutz, the critic; Sally Flours; Johnny Lambeck of Lambeck & Bowe, and what looked like the whole cast of "Mars Hazard." I was in luck--Arden Montgomery was there with them. I noticed she didn't have a drink, so I brought her one. "Greetings, Gabe," I smirked charmingly, and she gave me the big hello. So far, so good--she was glad to see me.
"What's new, Manny?"
"Nothing," I said, "Except I'm in love with you."
"Wonderful," she said. "I love having people in love with me."
I slid my eyes up her legs, which were exhibited considerably. No sign of scars.
"How was Mars? I hear it's dry and full of itchy green sand and the sky is a pink that'd turn your stomach. And--horrors--no bars!"
"I kinda liked the damned place. Wouldn't mind staying there."
A little voice in the back of my mind said "Hm! Something's fishy."
"I heard it was lousy," I told Arden. "Not to start an argument."
"We liked it. Can't you keep your eyeballs off my legs?"
Matter of fact, I hardly could. From looking for scars, I had passed to just looking. I tried higher up and only got absorbed again. There were some things about Arden, if you overlooked her acting, that were spectacular.
"Who's the girl lately?" she asked.
"Nobody important. Who's the boy?"
She shrugged, and her dress nearly slid off her shoulder. "Nobody important. My drink's gone. Let's go get another."
We wove around people and moved to Kettering's kitchen. It was nice to be with her again, and I could tell she thought so too. And I owed it to myself, my career, and to Myron to stay with her just a bit longer. The fact that I couldn't see any scars didn't prove there weren't any. I would try to get a chance for a more thorough check. The sense of touch versus the sense of sight.
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