Valentine's Day scifi romance story..."Gray Flannel Armor"

"My name is Thomas Hanley, and my case history is of particular interest to anthropologists, sociologists, and students of the bizarre. In its humble way, it serves as an example of one of the more obscure mating customs of the late 20th century."

Below is the radio script followed by an audio presentation and some comments.

X Minus One's Gray Flannel Armor

January 9th, 1958

SOUND:

HIGH-PITCHED ELECTRONIC HUM ... JOINED BY ELECTRONIC BEEPING IN AGREEMENT WITH COUNTDOWN

ANNOUNCER:

Countdown for blast-off. X minus five, four, three, two. X minus one. Fire.

SOUND:

A MOMENT'S SILENCE ... THEN ROCKET SHIP BLASTS OFF

MUSIC:

BUILDS VERTIGINOUSLY TO A CLIMAX ... THEN IN BG

ANNOUNCER:

From the far horizons of the unknown come tales of new dimensions in time and space. These are stories of the future, adventures in which you'll live in a million could-be years on a thousand maybe worlds. The National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation with Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine, presents -- (HEAVY ECHO) X Minus One!

MUSIC:

TO A CLIMAX ... THEN OUT

ANNOUNCER:

Tonight, "Gray Flannel Armor." But first -- hear this!

Everyone knows about and admires Bob Hope's frequent globetrotting trips to entertain our servicemen in far-flung corners of the Earth. But have you ever wondered what it would be like to actually travel halfway around the world with one of America's greatest comedians, accompanied by an all-star troupe of entertainers? Well, this past Christmas, Bob Hope and company set out on a twelve-day tour of the Far East, entertaining servicemen in Honolulu, Okinawa, Korea and Japan -- and NBC's "Monitor" went along, with microphones open all the way. This weekend, you'll find yourself a voyager on this exciting trip, along with Bob, Jayne Mansfield, Hedda Hopper and Jerry Colonna as "Monitor" broadcasts highlights from "Operation: Entertainment." And this is only part of the top variety of information and entertainment "Monitor" brings you all weekend long beginning Friday night. So start your weekend right with "Monitor" on Friday night and stay with "Monitor" all weekend long for celebrities, music, news and sports over most of these same NBC Radio stations.

MUSIC:

FOR AN INTRODUCTION ... THEN OUT BEHIND--

ANNOUNCER:

Now, "X Minus One" and Part One of "Gray Flannel Armor."

HANLEY:

(NARRATES) My name is Thomas Hanley and my case history is of particular interest to anthropologists, sociologists and students of the bizarre. In its humble way, it serves as an example of one of the more obscure mating customs of the late twentieth century.

To begin with, I own several gray flannel suits and many slim neckties with regimental stripes. Millions of us roam the streets of our great cities -- footsteps firm and hurried, eyes front, voices lowered -- dressed to the point of invisibility. (CONSPIRATORIALLY) But inside -- inside -- I fairly seethed with romantic ideas -- of swinging cutlasses, of beautiful damsels, their hair shimmering in the moonlight. In short -- let's face it -- I was a romanticist.

But romance is a commodity difficult to come by in the great cities. Life is too impersonal, too busy, too standardized. This particular Friday night, I returned from my office to my one-room apartment and prepared to face another long, dull weekend. Then the doorbell rang.

SOUND:

DOORBELL RINGS ... HANLEY'S FOOTSTEPS TO DOOR WHICH OPENS

MORRIS:

Good evening, Mr. Hanley.

HANLEY:

Uh, if you're collecting for something, come back after payday.

MORRIS:

My friend, I'm Joe Morris, a representative of the New York Romance Service, main offices in the Empire State Building and branches in all five boroughs, Westchester and New Jersey.

HANLEY:

You must have the wrong party.

MORRIS:

Oh, no, Mr. Hanley. We're out to serve lonely people -- and that means you! Don't deny it, now. Why else would you be sitting home on a Friday night?

HANLEY:

Well, the fact is--

MORRIS:

You're lonely. And it's our business -- and our pleasure -- to serve you.

HANLEY:

(BEAT) To serve me with what?

MORRIS:

A bright, sensitive, good-looking fellow like yourself needs girls.

HANLEY:

Girls?!

MORRIS:

Nice girls. Now, these young ladies I was referring to, Mr. Hanley, are not, er, uh-- professionals. They're sweet, normal, romantically-inclined young ladies. But they are lonely. There are many lonely girls in our city, Mr. Hanley.

HANLEY:

Oh, yes. Yes, I suppose there are. Funny, you never think of it that way. I mean, if you're not a girl.

MORRIS:

True, true. Now the purpose of the New York Romance Service is to bring young people together under suitable circumstances.

HANLEY:

Oh! Oh, I see. A kind of a-- (CHUCKLES) You'll pardon the expression, a kind of "friendship club"?

MORRIS:

I should say not. We at the New York Romance have done what should have been done years ago. We've applied scientific precision and technological know-how to a thorough study of the factors essential to a successful meeting between the sexes.

HANLEY:

Factors? What factors?

MORRIS:

The most vital ones, my friend, are spontaneity and a sense of fatedness.

HANLEY:

Oh, well, spontaneity and fate are contradictory terms.

MORRIS:

Certainly. Romance, by its very nature, must be composed of contradictory elements. We have graphs to prove it.

HANLEY:

Are you saying that you sell romance?

MORRIS:

The very article. The pure and pristine substance itself. Mind you, I didn't say love. I didn't say common animal passion. I said romance. The missing ingredient, Mr. Hanley, in modern society -- the spice of life, the vision of all the ages. That is what we sell.

HANLEY:

Uh, very interesting. If I'm ever in the market, I'll get in touch with you.

MORRIS:

Oh, now, just a minute, sir. Try our system for a few days absolutely free of charge. Here. Put this in your lapel.

HANLEY:

Oh? Well, what--? Well, what is this thing? It looks like a small transistor radio with a tiny video eye.

MORRIS:

As it happens, it is a small transistor radio with a tiny video eye.

HANLEY:

Oh? What does it do?

MORRIS:

You'll see. Just give it a try. Remember, romances sponsored by our firm are fated, spontaneous, aesthetically satisfying and morally justifiable.

HANLEY:

Well, uh-- All right, Mr. Morris. I'll accept the free trial offer. Er, wear this in my lapel, you say?

MORRIS:

In the lapel.

HANLEY:

Uh huh. Well, all right. There it is.

MORRIS:

(MOVING OFF) Happy romance, Mr. Hanley!

MUSIC:

ROMANTIC ... TO A FINISH

ANNOUNCER:

You're listening to "The Gray Flannel Armor," tonight's attraction on "X Minus One."

Are you able to brush your own teeth? Not everyone can. Not a man whose arms have been crippled by polio. There are thousands of disabled polio survivors who must depend on someone else to help them perform the simplest, most personal act. With your help, many polio victims can learn how to be independent. Right now there are one hundred thousand survivors of crippling polio who need help. They need your dimes and dollars to pay for expensive care and equipment. Your contributions will provide trained hands to teach a polio survivor how to live with his disability. Thanks to you, a polio-scarred life will once again seem worth living. Remember, your generosity is the one hope of thousands for whom Salk vaccine came too late. Join the Nineteen Fifty-Eight March of Dimes. Won't you right now send your dimes and dollars to your local March of Dimes headquarters?

MUSIC:

FOR A PLEASANT INTRODUCTION ... THEN IN BG, FADES OUT BY [X]

ANNOUNCER:

Now, "X Minus One" brings you Act Two of "Gray Flannel Armor."

HANLEY:

(NARRATES) After Joe Morris left me, I took off my gray flannel jacket and examined the small device attached to my lapel. It had no knobs or controls. It didn't seem to do anything at all. I shrugged, put my jacket on again, tightened the Windsor knot in my tie, and went for a walk.

It was a clear, cool night. Like most nights in my life, it was a perfect time for romance. Around me lay the city, infinite in its possibilities and rich in its promise. [X]

SOUND:

CITY TRAFFIC BACKGROUND ... HANLEY'S FOOTSTEPS IN AGREEMENT WITH FOLLOWING--

HANLEY:

(NARRATES) But it was devoid of fulfillment. Nothing ever happened. I passed lighted apartment buildings and thought of the women behind the high, blank windows, looking down and seeing a lonely walker on the dark streets. Wondering about me, maybe -- as I was wondering about them.

RADIO:

Nice to be on the roof of a building, to look down on the city.

SOUND:

FOOTSTEPS STOP BEHIND--

HANLEY:

Huh? Huh? Who said that? I - I wonder-- Ohhh, sure. Heh! This transistor thing. (TO RADIO) Hey, er, what was that you said about a roof? (NO ANSWER, TO HIMSELF) Oh. I guess it isn't two-way. Well, it's not a bad idea, though. Would be kind of pleasant to look down on the city lights.

SOUND:

FOOTSTEPS RESUME

RADIO:

No.

SOUND:

FOOTSTEPS STOP

RADIO:

Not that one.

HANLEY:

Well, what's wrong? (REALIZES, AMUSED) Oh. Oh, sure. Wrong building.

SOUND:

FOOTSTEPS RESUME

HANLEY:

Uh, ya mean this one over here? (NO ANSWER, TO HIMSELF) Oh. No answer again.

SOUND:

FOOTSTEPS WALK UP STEPS

HANLEY:

Well, must be the right one this time. Least, I hope so.

MUSIC:

BRIEF BRIDGE ... THEN IN BG, OUT BY [X]

HANLEY:

(NARRATES) I walked into the lobby and I remember thinking how you had to hand it to New York Romances. They seemed to know what they were doing. I took the self-service elevator to the top floor. From there, I walked up a flight of stairs to the roof. [X]

SOUND:

FOOTSTEPS WALK UP STAIRS TO SQUEAKY DOOR WHICH OPENS ... DISTANT CITY TRAFFIC BELOW ... HANLEY'S FOOTSTEPS ON ROOF ... THEN IN AGREEMENT WITH FOLLOWING--

HANLEY:

(EXHALES, TO HIMSELF) Well, the air smells good up here, at least.

RADIO:

No. Not that side. The west side.

HANLEY:

Okay. I hope you know what you're doing. I certainly don't. Heh. If this turns out to be some sort of joke, I'll-- (INHALES, SURPRISED, DELIGHTED, OVERCOME) Ohhhh.

1ST GIRL:

(SWEETLY) Hello?

HANLEY:

Oh, I'm, uh-- I'm sorry. (CHUCKLES NERVOUSLY) I didn't mean to intrude.

1ST GIRL:

You're not intruding.

HANLEY:

Well, I - I didn't see you at first -- there in the shadows.

1ST GIRL:

I know.

RADIO:

The lights. Mention the lights.

HANLEY:

Huh? Oh, um-- (TO 1ST GIRL) Those - those lights. The lights of the city down there? They're beautiful.

1ST GIRL:

Yes. Like a great carpet of stars. Or - or spear points in the gloom.

RADIO:

Like sentinels keeping eternal vigil in the night.

HANLEY:

(ROMANTIC) Like sentinels keeping eternal vigil in the night.

RADIO:

Take her in your arms.

HANLEY:

(ROMANTIC) Take her--

1ST GIRL:

What?

HANLEY:

Uh-- (CHUCKLES NERVOUSLY) Nothing. Nothing; a mistake. Uh-- (ROMANTIC) Come here to me.

1ST GIRL:

(WHISPERS, ECSTATIC) Yes. Yes.

MUSIC:

BRIEF ROMANTIC BRIDGE ... THEN IN BG, OUT BY [X]

HANLEY:

(NARRATES, UNDER A ROMANTIC SPELL) As she was melting in my arms, I caught sight of the small transistor set pinned to her shoulder strap.

(SNAPS OUT OF IT, UNROMANTIC) The one exactly like the one in my lapel! Ya can't help feeling a little odd about a romantic meeting set up and sponsored by transistor radios. I could visualize a million young men in gray flannel suits roaming the streets in response to barely-heard commands from a million tiny radios.

(SIGHS) I tried to forget my doubts. [X]

SOUND:

CITY TRAFFIC BACKGROUND ... HANLEY'S FOOTSTEPS IN AGREEMENT WITH FOLLOWING--

HANLEY:

(NARRATES) The next night, I took another walk and found myself in a slum section of the city. I decided I'd made a mistake and started to turn around.

RADIO:

Why not walk on?

HANLEY:

Hm? (SKEPTICAL) You want me to walk down this alley? Oh, well.

SOUND:

HANLEY'S FOOTSTEPS START DOWN ALLEY, THEN STOP BEHIND--

2ND GIRL:

(YELLS, FROM OFF) Help! Help!

HANLEY:

(STARTLED, TO HIMSELF) Oh - oh-- Good night! Two muggers after a girl. I - I'd better look for a policeman.

RADIO:

Why do that? You can handle them.

RADIO:

No, no, no. A policeman can do it a lot better.

2ND GIRL:

(YELLS, FROM OFF) Help! Help!

RADIO:

No, you must do it. Now.

HANLEY:

(STAMMERS) But there's two men! They're probably armed.

2ND GIRL:

(YELLS, FROM OFF) Save me! Help!

RADIO:

You can do it.

HANLEY:

(RELUCTANT) Oh-- Oh, well. Here goes.

SOUND:

HANLEY'S FOOTSTEPS CHARGE DOWN ALLEY ... HANLEY SCUFFLES WITH TWO MEN DURING FOLLOWING--

MAN:

No, you don't!

HANLEY:

Now, wait a minute--

2ND GIRL:

Let me go! Let me go!

HANLEY:

(HEROIC) Wait. I'll save you! Let go of her, you rats! There! Take that! And that!

SOUND:

TWO MEN GROAN DURING ABOVE AND RUN OFF

HANLEY:

(CALLS AFTER THEM) Ah! That'll teach you to harm a helpless girl! (EXHALES, RELIEVED)

2ND GIRL:

(ECSTATIC) Oh! You - you saved me. You saved my life!

RADIO:

I had to come.

HANLEY:

(BREATHY) I - had to come.

2ND GIRL:

(INTENSE) Yes, I know.

RADIO:

Take her in your arms.

HANLEY:

(WHISPERS) Yes, I know.

MUSIC:

ROMANTIC ACCENT ... THEN IN BG, OUT BY [X]

HANLEY:

(NARRATES) I swept her into my arms and we embraced there in the darkened alleyway. As I held her close, my cheek brushed a shining jewel in her raven-black hair. (INCREASINGLY UNROMANTIC) I had to look twice to recognize it but, sure enough, it was a tiny transistor receiver just like mine.

I was suddenly angry! Oh, the girl was lovely. There was no denying that! And the circumstances were undeniably romantic until you realized that it was all a kind of cheap play. (DISGUSTED) Fated and spontaneous! That was a joke!

Angrily, I tore the transistor from my lapel and threw it into the nearest garbage can. I stalked away into the night hardly realizing where I was going. I didn't really wake up until I reached the waterfront.

SOUND:

WATERFRONT BACKGROUND ... SHIP'S HORN, ET CETERA

HANLEY:

(NARRATES) I stood there looking at the oily black water and let the brackish-scented breeze fan my face. [X] And then, unexpectedly, I was aware of another person nearby. The moon slid from behind a cloud and her auburn-tinted hair caught its light and held it for a moment. She turned her face toward me with frank curiosity. But, this time, there was no transistor radio to throw me a cue. I didn't need one. (TO 3RD GIRL) It's a - nice night.

3RD GIRL:

Maybe. Maybe not.

HANLEY:

Uh, the beauty is there -- if you care to see it.

3RD GIRL:

What a strange thing to say.

HANLEY:

Is it? Is it really so strange? Is it strange that I'm here at this very moment -- and that you're here, too?

3RD GIRL:

Perhaps not. No, perhaps not.

HANLEY:

Let me look at you. (BEAT) Oh, you're really beautiful, you know.

3RD GIRL:

(PLEASED) Am I?

HANLEY:

You know you are.

3RD GIRL:

(SIGHS)

HANLEY:

(SIGHS) You're - you're lovely.

3RD GIRL:

Do you really like me?

HANLEY:

Like you? If I could only tell you--

3RD GIRL:

Oh, I'm so glad. You see, I'm your free introductory romance, given you as a sample by Greater Romance Industries--!

HANLEY:

What?!

3RD GIRL:

-- with home offices in Newark, New Jersey. You see, only our firm offers romances which are truly spontaneous and fated.

HANLEY:

Spontaneous and fated?!

SOUND:

HANLEY'S HURRIED FOOTSTEPS AWAY BEHIND--

3RD GIRL:

Due to our technological researches, we are able to dispense with such clumsy apparatus as transistor radios and-- (CALLS) Sir?! Where are you going?!

MUSIC:

ACCENT ... THEN IN BG, OUT BY [X]

HANLEY:

(NARRATES) I was sick and disgusted. After that, there were several other attempts to get in touch with me but I ignored them. I wanted no more to do with the romance game.

In a couple of days, I called up a twittering aunt of mine and she arranged a blind date for me with the daughter of one of her oldest friends. The blind date was a nice, friendly girl with plain, mousy brown hair. We were introduced in my aunt's living room and we sat out on her sun porch and talked. [X]

4TH GIRL:

So you're Tom Hanley?

HANLEY:

Yeah, yeah, I, uh, guess I am.

4TH GIRL:

Your aunt has told me a lot about you. You work in advertising, don't you?

HANLEY:

Yes, yes, that's right. Um, uh-- Madison Avenue.

4TH GIRL:

Oh, I think that's thrilling. Advertising, I mean. It's such an - an interesting field.

HANLEY:

Well -- heh! We, uh-- We like to think so.

4TH GIRL:

Yes, I imagine you do all right.

HANLEY:

Uhhhh-- Seems like, uh-- it's warmer this evening, doesn't it?

4TH GIRL:

Oh, yes, it is. Although I don't mind the cooler weather so much. Lots of people complain about it, but I don't mind.

HANLEY:

Well, uh, I don't either, I guess. Heh. As long as - you're dressed for it.

4TH GIRL:

(LAUGHS) Yes, I suppose that's the secret.

HANLEY:

Oh, I was just thinking. Uh, do you like bowling?

4TH GIRL:

Oh, I don't know. I've never bowled.

HANLEY:

(DISAPPOINTED) Oh.

4TH GIRL:

Do you like tennis? I'm crazy about tennis.

HANLEY:

Well, tennis is all right. Yeah. I guess you could say - tennis is fine.

4TH GIRL:

I'm crazy about it.

MUSIC:

BRIDGE ... THEN IN BG, OUT BY [X]

HANLEY:

(NARRATES) Well, all right. So it wasn't romantic. At least, it wasn't at first. But there must have been something about it. We began to hit it off, and we had more dates, and one thing led to another, and -- the first thing you know-- (CHUCKLES) Darned if we didn't get married. [X]

Yes, that's the story of my courtship. Of course, it isn't the whole story. At least, if you're making a case history, you have to know the important things. And, to my mind, one of the most important of all happened after we were married.

We bought a nice little house out near my aunt's and settled down in it. Then, one Saturday morning, I was out cutting the lawn--

SOUND:

YARD BACKGROUND -- BIRDS TWITTER, ET CETERA ... REEL MOWER CUTS GRASS, THEN OUT BEHIND--

MORRIS:

(OFF) Hi, there!

HANLEY:

Huh? Uh, did you - did you say something?

MORRIS:

(OFF) I said "Hi"! Don't you remember me? Joe Morris.

HANLEY:

Ohhhh! Oh, sure. New York Romances. Well, uh, I'm sorry, Mr. Morris, but you'd better take me off the list. I'm, uh-- Heh! I'm married now.

MORRIS:

(APPROACHES) Certainly. I know all about it. Congratulations.

HANLEY:

Oh, thanks.

MORRIS:

I mean, I know all about the way it happened. Introduced by your aunt, talking on the sun porch, corny old-fashioned stuff. Now, don't get me wrong; I'm not knocking it. Quite the contrary. Do you know what we down at New York Romances call this?

HANLEY:

No, what?

MORRIS:

Hanley's Mode. We studied you. A lot of commercial possibility there. We've got it down on graphs. "Effects of Embarrassment on the Psyche," "The Role of the Aunt in American Courtship," the whole works.

HANLEY:

What are you talking about?

MORRIS:

New York Romances, what else? We've got a new service. It's called "The Old-Fashioned Plan."

HANLEY:

The what?!

MORRIS:

We provide bonded aunts for young men to call up. We even have the aunt walk into the sun parlor, at unexpected intervals, with a plate of cookies or something. They say the suspense becomes almost overpowering. Like our motto always said -- "Spontaneity and a Sense of Fatedness." It never misses, my boy. Never misses!

MUSIC:

FOR A SPONTANEOUS BUT FATED FINISH

ANNOUNCER:

You have just heard "X Minus One," presented by the National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine which this month features "The Repairman" by Harry Harrison. Being an interstellar trouble shooter wouldn't be so bad if only you could - shoot the trouble. Galaxy Magazine, on your newsstand today.

MUSIC:

CLOSING THEME SNEAKS IN UNDER FOLLOWING--

ANNOUNCER:

"X Minus One" has brought you "Gray Flannel Armor," a story from the pages of Galaxy written by Finn O'Donnevan and adapted for radio by William Welch. Featured in our cast were William Redfield as Thomas Hanley and Guy Repp as Joe Morris. Others in our cast were Abby Lewis, Pat Hosley, Hetty Galen, Freddie Chandler and Helen Gerald. This is Fred Collins speaking. This broadcast concludes this series of "X Minus One." We sincerely hope you enjoyed it. "X Minus One" was directed by George Voutsas and is an NBC Radio Network production.

MUSIC:

TO A FINISH

NBC ANNCR:

Guest star Don Ameche is your host on "Nightline," your line to new worlds of entertainment after dark -- tonight on most of these NBC stations.

Audio presentation [January 9th, 1958]...

Gray Flannel Armor

 Tangent wrote...

Robert Sheckley (1928-2005) is regarded as one of the finest short story writers in SF history, his voluminous short work being lauded by J.G. Ballard, Harlan Ellison, Alan Dean Foster, and many others. Hugo and Nebula nominated for his sparkling, clever, sometimes absurdist visions, he was named SFWA Author Emeritus at the 2001 Nebula Awards in Los Angeles, where I was fortunate enough to meet him for the first and last time. "Gray Flannel Armor" is Sheckley's third X Minus One appearance here. It appeared in the November 1957 issue of Galaxy, under the pen name of Finn O'Donnevan (note that the cover has another Sheckley story, "Morning After," under his own name, along with the conclusion of Fred Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth's novel Wolfbane).

A word of warning, or explanation if you will. Sometimes a story gives rise to a lengthier introduction via its historical context than the norm. Such is the case here, so please bear with me.

"Gray Flannel Armor" is a deceptively simple story, for it deals with lonely people searching for someone to love. In this prescient story however, Sheckley combines cutting edge technology with the human element and a (relatively) early incarnation of the "dating" service. The cutting edge technology? The transistor.

The transistor is very old technology now, but when Sheckley wrote "Gray Flannel Armor" it was the hot high-tech innovation that pretty much revolutionized the way people world-wide would listen to music (and get their news; the automobile industry would engineer this technology for car radios as well). Those of us old enough to remember will appreciate the introduction of the transistor into our lives. But here's part of the beauty of Sheckley's speculation about how the transistor could be used. First, a brief bit of history. The transistor was invented in 1947--just the transistor--with no immediate practical application. But engineers in major tech corporations around the world attempted to adapt it to the radio immediately--in Japan, the US, and Germany--all were scrambling to find a commercially practical way for it to replace the bulky vacuum tubes used in radios and televisions. Everyone failed until 1954 when Texas Instruments introduced the first practical production line transistor radios. 1954. Radios became portable (with batteries as the power source, and that industry blossomed as well) and sans an electrical cord for the first time. They became part of the social consciousness of the public at large via exposure to magazine and newspaper articles all over the country...and in advertising everywhere. The transistor made the portable transistor radio an overnight sensation, selling billions from the mid-1950s through most of the 1970s when cassettes and other technologies replaced the transistor (the digital revolution was just around the corner).

But Sheckley's story was published at the end of 1957, which means that with magazine lead time (at least four to six months, give or take), the inventory Galaxy had on hand, and whether or not the story was extracted from the slush pile (doubtful, but possible), that Sheckley wrote the story (following the time to come up with the idea, research it, and plot and write the story) either in very early 1957 or late 1956. No more than two years after the beginning of the transistor-fueled explosion hit the general public on a practical level with the first transistor radios. A revolutionary commercial application, mind you, that wouldn't appreciably change the world for a few years yet.

So, as a science fiction author, what does Sheckley do with this transistor radio phenomenon. Two things. On the human level he speculates a "dating service," such as they were at the time--but in this instance a very special sort of service--enticing the lovelorn (after payment) into wearing a miniature transistor radio device whereby an anonymous voice from the "service" whispers in the ear of the "customer" upon meeting a possible romantic partner, just the right words to insure a positive emotional response on the part of the other person (male or female). In essence, and for the time, a high-tech dating/match-making service (strictly on the up-and-up, of course--no "escort" service here). Therefore, the clumsy, tongue-tied, or shy are transformed into something they may want to be, and on the inside may be, but outwardly are not. How this transistor technology, used by Sheckley's mid-1950s cutting-edge dating service plays out is the crux of the story. But the story doesn't quite end there, for this is a Sheckley story. At the very end there is a chance meeting with our protagonist, years later, with the representative who sold him the original service. The service, the New York Romances service by name--has come up with a new "scientific" wrinkle. A set of personal and sociological matrixes whereby they can virtually guarantee a satisfactory romantic match, for New York Romances has followed our protagonist from his previous history and tracked his every move (how they do this is irrelevant--but we know how such things might be accomplished today, don't we?).

As an example of how much of Sheckley's blend of then-high-tech focused on the timeless search for love has progressed fictionally through the decades, we note that as recently as this year, 2011, new writers (whether they know it or not) are attempting to address the same concern, in strikingly similar, if not precisely identical fashion. The high-tech element is now borrowed from early Bruce Sterling, ones and zeros and the almost-magical possibilities arising therefrom and not the lowly transistor, and while the search for love is not from a dating service, the search for a one-on-one romantic rendezvous is still at the heart of the matter; see this review of the story "Perfection" by Jay Garmond from Redstone SF #11, April 2011--over half a century after "Gray Flannel Armor" appeared in Galaxy. The core use of technology to explore the identical theme is worth noting, thus, in part, this unusually lengthy introduction for which I beg forgiveness.

Survival in desperate circumstances...Fritz Leiber's "A Pail of Air"

Wikipedia...

"A Pail of Air" is a science fiction short story by Fritz Leiber which appeared in the December 1951 issue of Galaxy Magazine and was dramatized on the radio show X Minus One in March 1956.

Plot...

The story is narrated by a ten-year-old boy living on Earth after it has been torn away from the Sun by a passing "dark star". The loss of solar heating has caused the Earth's atmosphere to freeze into thick layers of "snow". The boy's father had worked with a group of other scientists to construct a large shelter, but the earthquakes accompanying the disaster had destroyed it and killed the others. He managed to construct a smaller, makeshift shelter called the "Nest" for his family, where they maintain a breathable atmosphere by periodically retrieving pails of frozen oxygen to thaw over a fire. They have survived in this way for a number of years.

At the end, they are found by a search party from a large group of survivors at Los Alamos, where they are using nuclear power to provide heat and have begun using rockets to search for other survivors (radio being ineffective at long range without an ionosphere). They reveal that other groups of humans have survived at Argonne, Brookhaven, and Harwell nuclear research facilities as well as in Tanna Tuva, and that plans are being made to establish uranium mining colonies at Great Slave Lake or in the Congo region.

The age of the narrator is not revealed until the last sentence, providing a twist.

Audio presentation... 

"A Pail of Air"
X Minus One

"A Pail of Air"

by

Fritz Leiber

Pa had sent me out to get an extra pail of air. I'd just about scooped it full and most of the warmth had leaked from my fingers when I saw the thing.

You know, at first I thought it was a young lady. Yes, a beautiful young lady's face all glowing in the dark and looking at me from the fifth floor of the opposite apartment, which hereabouts is the floor just above the white blanket of frozen air. I'd never seen a live young lady before, except in the old magazines—Sis is just a kid and Ma is pretty sick and miserable—and it gave me such a start that I dropped the pail. Who wouldn't, knowing everyone on Earth was dead except Pa and Ma and Sis and you?

Even at that, I don't suppose I should have been surprised. We all see things now and then. Ma has some pretty bad ones, to judge from the way she bugs her eyes at nothing and just screams and screams and huddles back against the blankets hanging around the Nest. Pa says it is natural we should react like that sometimes.

When I'd recovered the pail and could look again at the opposite apartment, I got an idea of what Ma might be feeling at those times, for I saw it wasn't a young lady at all but simply a light—a tiny light that moved stealthily from window to window, just as if one of the cruel little stars had come down out of the airless sky to investigate why the Earth had gone away from the Sun, and maybe to hunt down something to torment or terrify, now that the Earth didn't have the Sun's protection.

I tell you, the thought of it gave me the creeps. I just stood there shaking, and almost froze my feet and did frost my helmet so solid on the inside that I couldn't have seen the light even if it had come out of one of the windows to get me. Then I had the wit to go back inside.

Pretty soon I was feeling my familiar way through the thirty or so blankets and rugs Pa has got hung around to slow down the escape of air from the Nest, and I wasn't quite so scared. I began to hear the tick-ticking of the clocks in the Nest and knew I was getting back into air, because there's no sound outside in the vacuum, of course. But my mind was still crawly and uneasy as I pushed through the last blankets—Pa's got them faced with aluminum foil to hold in the heat—and came into the Nest.

* * *

Let me tell you about the Nest. It's low and snug, just room for the four of us and our things. The floor is covered with thick woolly rugs. Three of the sides are blankets, and the blankets roofing it touch Pa's head. He tells me it's inside a much bigger room, but I've never seen the real walls or ceiling.

Against one of the blankets is a big set of shelves, with tools and books and other stuff, and on top of it a whole row of clocks. Pa's very fussy about keeping them wound. He says we must never forget time, and without a sun or moon, that would be easy to do.

The fourth wall has blankets all over except around the fireplace, in which there is a fire that must never go out. It keeps us from freezing and does a lot more besides. One of us must always watch it. Some of the clocks are alarm and we can use them to remind us. In the early days there was only Ma to take turns with Pa—I think of that when she gets difficult—but now there's me to help, and Sis too.

It's Pa who is the chief guardian of the fire, though. I always think of him that way: a tall man sitting cross-legged, frowning anxiously at the fire, his lined face golden in its light, and every so often carefully placing on it a piece of coal from the big heap beside it. Pa tells me there used to be guardians of the fire sometimes in the very old days—vestal virgins, he calls them—although there was unfrozen air all around then and you didn't really need one.

He was sitting just that way now, though he got up quick to take the pail from me and bawl me out for loitering—he'd spotted my frozen helmet right off. That roused Ma and she joined in picking on me. She's always trying to get the load off her feelings, Pa explains. Sis let off a couple of silly squeals too.

Pa handled the pail of air in a twist of cloth. Now that it was inside the Nest, you could really feel its coldness. It just seemed to suck the heat out of everything. Even the flames cringed away from it as Pa put it down close by the fire.

Yet it's that glimmery white stuff in the pail that keeps us alive. It slowly melts and vanishes and refreshes the Nest and feeds the fire. The blankets keep it from escaping too fast. Pa'd like to seal the whole place, but he can't—building's too earthquake-twisted, and besides he has to leave the chimney open for smoke.

Pa says air is tiny molecules that fly away like a flash if there isn't something to stop them. We have to watch sharp not to let the air run low. Pa always keeps a big reserve supply of it in buckets behind the first blankets, along with extra coal and cans of food and other things, such as pails of snow to melt for water. We have to go way down to the bottom floor for that stuff, which is a mean trip, and get it through a door to outside.

You see, when the Earth got cold, all the water in the air froze first and made a blanket ten feet thick or so everywhere, and then down on top of that dropped the crystals of frozen air, making another white blanket sixty or seventy feet thick maybe.

Of course, all the parts of the air didn't freeze and snow down at the same time.

First to drop out was the carbon dioxide—when you're shoveling for water, you have to make sure you don't go too high and get any of that stuff mixed in, for it would put you to sleep, maybe for good, and make the fire go out. Next there's the nitrogen, which doesn't count one way or the other, though it's the biggest part of the blanket. On top of that and easy to get at, which is lucky for us, there's the oxygen that keeps us alive. Pa says we live better than kings ever did, breathing pure oxygen, but we're used to it and don't notice. Finally, at the very top, there's a slick of liquid helium, which is funny stuff. All of these gases in neat separate layers. Like a pussy caffay, Pa laughingly says, whatever that is.

* * *

I was busting to tell them all about what I'd seen, and so as soon as I'd ducked out of my helmet and while I was still climbing out of my suit, I cut loose. Right away Ma got nervous and began making eyes at the entry-slit in the blankets and wringing her hands together—the hand where she'd lost three fingers from frostbite inside the good one, as usual. I could tell that Pa was annoyed at me scaring her and wanted to explain it all away quickly, yet could see I wasn't fooling.

"And you watched this light for some time, son?" he asked when I finished.

I hadn't said anything about first thinking it was a young lady's face. Somehow that part embarrassed me.

"Long enough for it to pass five windows and go to the next floor."

"And it didn't look like stray electricity or crawling liquid or starlight focused by a growing crystal, or anything like that?"

He wasn't just making up those ideas. Odd things happen in a world that's about as cold as can be, and just when you think matter would be frozen dead, it takes on a strange new life. A slimy stuff comes crawling toward the Nest, just like an animal snuffing for heat—that's the liquid helium. And once, when I was little, a bolt of lightning—not even Pa could figure where it came from—hit the nearby steeple and crawled up and down it for weeks, until the glow finally died.

"Not like anything I ever saw," I told him.

He stood for a moment frowning. Then, "I'll go out with you, and you show it to me," he said.

Ma raised a howl at the idea of being left alone, and Sis joined in, too, but Pa quieted them. We started climbing into our outside clothes—mine had been warming by the fire. Pa made them. They have plastic headpieces that were once big double-duty transparent food cans, but they keep heat and air in and can replace the air for a little while, long enough for our trips for water and coal and food and so on.

Ma started moaning again, "I've always known there was something outside there, waiting to get us. I've felt it for years—-something that's part of the cold and hates all warmth and wants to destroy the Nest. It's been watching us all this time, and now it's coming after us. It'll get you and then come for me. Don't go, Harry!"

Pa had everything on but his helmet. He knelt by the fireplace and reached in and shook the long metal rod that goes up the chimney and knocks off the ice that keeps trying to clog it. Once a week he goes up on the roof to check if it's working all right. That's our worst trip and Pa won't let me make it alone.

"Sis," Pa said quietly, "come watch the fire. Keep an eye on the air, too. If it gets low or doesn't seem to be boiling fast enough, fetch another bucket from behind the blanket. But mind your hands. Use the cloth to pick up the bucket."

Sis quit helping Ma be frightened and came over and did as she was told. Ma quieted down pretty suddenly, though her eyes were still kind of wild as she watched Pa fix on his helmet tight and pick up a pail and the two of us go out.

* * *

Pa led the way and I took hold of his belt. It's a funny thing, I'm not afraid to go by myself, but when Pa's along I always want to hold on to him. Habit, I guess, and then there's no denying that this time I was a bit scared.

You see, it's this way. We know that everything is dead out there. Pa heard the last radio voices fade away years ago, and had seen some of the last folks die who weren't as lucky or well-protected as us. So we knew that if there was something groping around out there, it couldn't be anything human or friendly.

Besides that, there's a feeling that comes with it always being night, cold night. Pa says there used to be some of that feeling even in the old days, but then every morning the Sun would come and chase it away. I have to take his word for that, not ever remembering the Sun as being anything more than a big star. You see, I hadn't been born when the dark star snatched us away from the Sun, and by now it's dragged us out beyond the orbit of the planet Pluto, Pa says, and taking us farther out all the time.

I found myself wondering whether there mightn't be something on the dark star that wanted us, and if that was why it had captured the Earth. Just then we came to the end of the corridor and I followed Pa out on the balcony.

I don't know what the city looked like in the old days, but now it's beautiful. The starlight lets you see pretty well—there's quite a bit of light in those steady points speckling the blackness above. (Pa says the stars used to twinkle once, but that was because there was air.) We are on a hill and the shimmery plain drops away from us and then flattens out, cut up into neat squares by the troughs that used to be streets. I sometimes make my mashed potatoes look like it, before I pour on the gravy.

Some taller buildings push up out of the feathery plain, topped by rounded caps of air crystals, like the fur hood Ma wears, only whiter. On those buildings you can see the darker squares of windows, underlined by white dashes of air crystals. Some of them are on a slant, for many of the buildings are pretty badly twisted by the quakes and all the rest that happened when the dark star captured the Earth.

Here and there a few icicles hang, water icicles from the first days of the cold, other icicles of frozen air that melted on the roofs and dripped and froze again. Sometimes one of those icicles will catch the light of a star and send it to you so brightly you think the star has swooped into the city. That was one of the things Pa had been thinking of when I told him about the light, but I had thought of it myself first and known it wasn't so.

He touched his helmet to mine so we could talk easier and he asked me to point out the windows to him. But there wasn't any light moving around inside them now, or anywhere else. To my surprise, Pa didn't bawl me out and tell me I'd been seeing things. He looked all around quite a while after filling his pail, and just as we were going inside he whipped around without warning, as if to take some peeping thing off guard.

I could feel it, too. The old peace was gone. There was something lurking out there, watching, waiting, getting ready.

Inside, he said to me, touching helmets, "If you see something like that again, son, don't tell the others. Your Ma's sort of nervous these days and we owe her all the feeling of safety we can give her. Once—it was when your sister was born—I was ready to give up and die, but your Mother kept me trying. Another time she kept the fire going a whole week all by herself when I was sick. Nursed me and took care of the two of you, too.

"You know that game we sometimes play, sitting in a square in the Nest, tossing a ball around? Courage is like a ball, son. A person can hold it only so long, and then he's got to toss it to someone else. When it's tossed your way, you've got to catch it and hold it tight—and hope there'll be someone else to toss it to when you get tired of being brave."

His talking to me that way made me feel grown-up and good. But it didn't wipe away the thing outside from the back of my mind—or the fact that Pa took it seriously.

* * *

It's hard to hide your feelings about such a thing. When we got back in the Nest and took off our outside clothes, Pa laughed about it all and told them it was nothing and kidded me for having such an imagination, but his words fell flat. He didn't convince Ma and Sis any more than he did me. It looked for a minute like we were all fumbling the courage-ball. Something had to be done, and almost before I knew what I was going to say, I heard myself asking Pa to tell us about the old days, and how it all happened.

He sometimes doesn't mind telling that story, and Sis and I sure like to listen to it, and he got my idea. So we were all settled around the fire in a wink, and Ma pushed up some cans to thaw for supper, and Pa began. Before he did, though, I noticed him casually get a hammer from the shelf and lay it down beside him.

It was the same old story as always—I think I could recite the main thread of it in my sleep—though Pa always puts in a new detail or two and keeps improving it in spots.

He told us how the Earth had been swinging around the Sun ever so steady and warm, and the people on it fixing to make money and wars and have a good time and get power and treat each other right or wrong, when without warning there comes charging out of space this dead star, this burned out sun, and upsets everything.

You know, I find it hard to believe in the way those people felt, any more than I can believe in the swarming number of them. Imagine people getting ready for the horrible sort of war they were cooking up. Wanting it even, or at least wishing it were over so as to end their nervousness. As if all folks didn't have to hang together and pool every bit of warmth just to keep alive. And how can they have hoped to end danger, any more than we can hope to end the cold?

Sometimes I think Pa exaggerates and makes things out too black. He's cross with us once in a while and was probably cross with all those folks. Still, some of the things I read in the old magazines sound pretty wild. He may be right.

* * *

The dark star, as Pa went on telling it, rushed in pretty fast and there wasn't much time to get ready. At the beginning they tried to keep it a secret from most people, but then the truth came out, what with the earthquakes and floods—imagine, oceans of unfrozen water!—and people seeing stars blotted out by something on a clear night. First off they thought it would hit the Sun, and then they thought it would hit the Earth. There was even the start of a rush to get to a place called China, because people thought the star would hit on the other side. But then they found it wasn't going to hit either side, but was going to come very close to the Earth.

Most of the other planets were on the other side of the Sun and didn't get involved. The Sun and the newcomer fought over the Earth for a little while—pulling it this way and that, like two dogs growling over a bone, Pa described it this time—and then the newcomer won and carried us off. The Sun got a consolation prize, though. At the last minute he managed to hold on to the Moon.

That was the time of the monster earthquakes and floods, twenty times worse than anything before. It was also the time of the Big Jerk, as Pa calls it, when all Earth got yanked suddenly, just as Pa has done to me once or twice, grabbing me by the collar to do it, when I've been sitting too far from the fire.

You see, the dark star was going through space faster than the Sun, and in the opposite direction, and it had to wrench the world considerably in order to take it away.

The Big Jerk didn't last long. It was over as soon as the Earth was settled down in its new orbit around the dark star. But it was pretty terrible while it lasted. Pa says that all sorts of cliffs and buildings toppled, oceans slopped over, swamps and sandy deserts gave great sliding surges that buried nearby lands. Earth was almost jerked out of its atmosphere blanket and the air got so thin in spots that people keeled over and fainted—though of course, at the same time, they were getting knocked down by the Big Jerk and maybe their bones broke or skulls cracked.

We've often asked Pa how people acted during that time, whether they were scared or brave or crazy or stunned, or all four, but he's sort of leery of the subject, and he was again tonight. He says he was mostly too busy to notice.

You see, Pa and some scientist friends of his had figured out part of what was going to happen—they'd known we'd get captured and our air would freeze—and they'd been working like mad to fix up a place with airtight walls and doors, and insulation against the cold, and big supplies of food and fuel and water and bottled air. But the place got smashed in the last earthquakes and all Pa's friends were killed then and in the Big Jerk. So he had to start over and throw the Nest together quick without any advantages, just using any stuff he could lay his hands on.

I guess he's telling pretty much the truth when he says he didn't have any time to keep an eye on how other folks behaved, either then or in the Big Freeze that followed—followed very quick, you know, both because the dark star was pulling us away very fast and because Earth's rotation had been slowed in the tug-of-war, so that the nights were ten old nights long.

Still, I've got an idea of some of the things that happened from the frozen folk I've seen, a few of them in other rooms in our building, others clustered around the furnaces in the basements where we go for coal.

In one of the rooms, an old man sits stiff in a chair, with an arm and a leg in splints. In another, a man and a woman are huddled together in a bed with heaps of covers over them. You can just see their heads peeking out, close together. And in another a beautiful young lady is sitting with a pile of wraps huddled around her, looking hopefully toward the door, as if waiting for someone who never came back with warmth and food. They're all still and stiff as statues, of course, but just like life.

Pa showed them to me once in quick winks of his flashlight, when he still had a fair supply of batteries and could afford to waste a little light. They scared me pretty bad and made my heart pound, especially the young lady.

* * *

Now, with Pa telling his story for the umpteenth time to take our minds off another scare, I got to thinking of the frozen folk again. All of a sudden I got an idea that scared me worse than anything yet. You see, I'd just remembered the face I'd thought I'd seen in the window. I'd forgotten about that on account of trying to hide it from the others.

What, I asked myself, if the frozen folk were coming to life? What if they were like the liquid helium that got a new lease on life and started crawling toward the heat just when you thought its molecules ought to freeze solid forever? Or like the electricity that moves endlessly when it's just about as cold as that? What if the ever-growing cold, with the temperature creeping down the last few degrees to the last zero, had mysteriously wakened the frozen folk to life—not warm-blooded life, but something icy and horrible?

That was a worse idea than the one about something coming down from the dark star to get us.

Or maybe, I thought, both ideas might be true. Something coming down from the dark star and making the frozen folk move, using them to do its work. That would fit with both things I'd seen—the beautiful young lady and the moving, starlike light.

The frozen folk with minds from the dark star behind their unwinking eyes, creeping, crawling, snuffing their way, following the heat to the Nest.

I tell you, that thought gave me a very bad turn and I wanted very badly to tell the others my fears, but I remembered what Pa had said and clenched my teeth and didn't speak.

We were all sitting very still. Even the fire was burning silently. There was just the sound of Pa's voice and the clocks.

And then, from beyond the blankets, I thought I heard a tiny noise. My skin tightened all over me.

Pa was telling about the early years in the Nest and had come to the place where he philosophizes.

"So I asked myself then," he said, "what's the use of going on? What's the use of dragging it out for a few years? Why prolong a doomed existence of hard work and cold and loneliness? The human race is done. The Earth is done. Why not give up, I asked myself—and all of a sudden I got the answer."

Again I heard the noise, louder this time, a kind of uncertain, shuffling tread, coming closer. I couldn't breathe.

"Life's always been a business of working hard and fighting the cold," Pa was saying. "The earth's always been a lonely place, millions of miles from the next planet. And no matter how long the human race might have lived, the end would have come some night. Those things don't matter. What matters is that life is good. It has a lovely texture, like some rich cloth or fur, or the petals of flowers—you've seen pictures of those, but I can't describe how they feel—or the fire's glow. It makes everything else worth while. And that's as true for the last man as the first."

And still the steps kept shuffling closer. It seemed to me that the inmost blanket trembled and bulged a little. Just as if they were burned into my imagination, I kept seeing those peering, frozen eyes.

"So right then and there," Pa went on, and now I could tell that he heard the steps, too, and was talking loud so we maybe wouldn't hear them, "right then and there I told myself that I was going on as if we had all eternity ahead of us. I'd have children and teach them all I could. I'd get them to read books. I'd plan for the future, try to enlarge and seal the Nest. I'd do what I could to keep everything beautiful and growing. I'd keep alive my feeling of wonder even at the cold and the dark and the distant stars."

But then the blanket actually did move and lift. And there was a bright light somewhere behind it. Pa's voice stopped and his eyes turned to the widening slit and his hand went out until it touched and gripped the handle of the hammer beside him.

* * *

In through the blanket stepped the beautiful young lady. She stood there looking at us the strangest way, and she carried something bright and unwinking in her hand. And two other faces peered over her shoulders—men's faces, white and staring.

Well, my heart couldn't have been stopped for more than four or five beats before I realized she was wearing a suit and helmet like Pa's homemade ones, only fancier, and that the men were, too—and that the frozen folk certainly wouldn't be wearing those. Also, I noticed that the bright thing in her hand was just a kind of flashlight.

The silence kept on while I swallowed hard a couple of times, and after that there was all sorts of jabbering and commotion.

They were simply people, you see. We hadn't been the only ones to survive; we'd just thought so, for natural enough reasons. These three people had survived, and quite a few others with them. And when we found out how they'd survived, Pa let out the biggest whoop of joy.

They were from Los Alamos and they were getting their heat and power from atomic energy. Just using the uranium and plutonium intended for bombs, they had enough to go on for thousands of years. They had a regular little airtight city, with airlocks and all. They even generated electric light and grew plants and animals by it. (At this Pa let out a second whoop, waking Ma from her faint.)

But if we were flabbergasted at them, they were double--flabbergasted at us.

One of the men kept saying, "But it's impossible, I tell you. You can't maintain an air supply without hermetic sealing. It's simply impossible."

That was after he had got his helmet off and was using our air. Meanwhile, the young lady kept looking around at us as if we were saints, and telling us we'd done something amazing, and suddenly she broke down and cried.

They'd been scouting around for survivors, but they never expected to find any in a place like this. They had rocket ships at Los Alamos and plenty of chemical fuels. As for liquid oxygen, all you had to do was go out and shovel the air blanket at the top level. So after they'd got things going smoothly at Los Alamos, which had taken years, they'd decided to make some trips to likely places where there might be other survivors. No good trying long-distance radio signals, of course, since there was no atmosphere to carry them around the curve of the Earth.

Well, they'd found other colonies at Argonne and Brookhaven and way around the world at Harwell and Tanna Tuva. And now they'd been giving our city a look, not really expecting to find anything. But they had an instrument that noticed the faintest heat waves and it had told them there was something warm down here, so they'd landed to investigate. Of course we hadn't heard them land, since there was no air to carry the sound, and they'd had to investigate around quite a while before finding us. Their instruments had given them a wrong steer and they'd wasted some time in the building across the street.

* * *

By now, all five adults were talking like sixty. Pa was demonstrating to the men how he worked the fire and got rid of the ice in the chimney and all that. Ma had perked up wonderfully and was showing the young lady her cooking and sewing stuff, and even asking about how the women dressed at Los Alamos. The strangers marveled at everything and praised it to the skies. I could tell from the way they wrinkled their noses that they found the Nest a bit smelly, but they never mentioned that at all and just asked bushels of questions.

In fact, there was so much talking and excitement that Pa forgot about things, and it wasn't until they were all getting groggy that he looked and found the air had all boiled away in the pail. He got another bucket of air quick from behind the blankets. Of course that started them all laughing and jabbering again. The newcomers even got a little drunk. They weren't used to so much oxygen.

Funny thing, though—I didn't do much talking at all and Sis hung on to Ma all the time and hid her face when anybody looked at her. I felt pretty uncomfortable and disturbed myself, even about the young lady. Glimpsing her outside there, I'd had all sorts of mushy thoughts, but now I was just embarrassed and scared of her, even though she tried to be nice as anything to me.

I sort of wished they'd all quit crowding the Nest and let us be alone and get our feelings straightened out.

And when the newcomers began to talk about our all going to Los Alamos, as if that were taken for granted, I could see that something of the same feeling struck Pa and Ma, too. Pa got very silent all of a sudden and Ma kept telling the young lady, "But I wouldn't know how to act there and I haven't any clothes."

The strangers were puzzled like anything at first, but then they got the idea. As Pa kept saying, "It just doesn't seem right to let this fire go out."

* * *

Well, the strangers are gone, but they're coming back. It hasn't been decided yet just what will happen. Maybe the Nest will be kept up as what one of the strangers called a "survival school." Or maybe we will join the pioneers who are going to try to establish a new colony at the uranium mines at Great Slave Lake or in the Congo.

Of course, now that the strangers are gone, I've been thinking a lot about Los Alamos and those other tremendous colonies. I have a hankering to see them for myself.

You ask me, Pa wants to see them, too. He's been getting pretty thoughtful, watching Ma and Sis perk up.

"It's different, now that we know others are alive," he explains to me. "Your mother doesn't feel so hopeless any more. Neither do I, for that matter, not having to carry the whole responsibility for keeping the human race going, so to speak. It scares a person."

I looked around at the blanket walls and the fire and the pails of air boiling away and Ma and Sis sleeping in the warmth and the flickering light.

"It's not going to be easy to leave the Nest," I said, wanting to cry, kind of. "It's so small and there's just the four of us. I get scared at the idea of big places and a lot of strangers."

He nodded and put another piece of coal on the fire. Then he looked at the little pile and grinned suddenly and put a couple of handfuls on, just as if it was one of our birthdays or Christmas.

"You'll quickly get over that feeling, son," he said. "The trouble with the world was that it kept getting smaller and smaller, till it ended with just the Nest. Now it'll be good to have a real huge world again, the way it was in the beginning."

I guess he's right. You think the beautiful young lady will wait for me till I grow up? I'll be twenty in only ten years.

Fritz Leiber [Wikipedia]

Physics and philosophy win..."The Cold Equations"

Astounding Science Fiction

August 1954

"The Cold Equations"--the most horrific episode of the X Minus One radio series and similar to the Twilight Zone's "Time Enough at Last". Physics and ethics must be satisfied and an example of the sacrifice of one for the salvation of many.

Audio presentation...

The Cold Equations

Script...

X Minus One

"The Cold Equations"

August 25th 1955

SOUND:

HIGH-PITCHED ELECTRONIC HUM ... JOINED BY ELECTRONIC BEEPING IN AGREEMENT WITH COUNTDOWN

ANNOUNCER:

Countdown for blast-off. X minus five, four, three, two. X minus one. Fire.

SOUND:

A MOMENT'S SILENCE ... THEN ROCKET SHIP BLASTS OFF

MUSIC:

BUILDS VERTIGINOUSLY TO A CLIMAX ... THEN IN BG

ANNOUNCER:

From the far horizons of the unknown come transcribed tales of new dimensions in time and space. These are stories of the future, adventures in which you'll live in a million could-be years on a thousand maybe worlds. The National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation with Street and Smith, publishers of Astounding Science Fiction, presents -- (HEAVY ECHO) X Minus One!

MUSIC:

TO A CLIMAX ... THEN OUT

ANNOUNCER:

Tonight's story, "Cold Equations."

MUSIC:

FOR DEEP SPACE ... IN BG, OUT AT [X]

BARTON:

(NARRATES) There is no margin of safety along the rim of a frontier; there can't be any, until the way is made for those who come later. Until then, the penalty for mistakes is a grim one. The laws of physical nature operate with irrevocable certainty -- with no room for mercy, kindness or sentimentality. In space, life becomes a cold equation -- and the equal sign is often followed by death. I know. I'm the pilot of an EDS. (PRONOUNCED ee-dee-ess) [X]

SOUND:

KNOCK AT DOOR

COMMANDER:

Come in.

SOUND:

DOOR OPENS ... FOOTSTEPS IN

BARTON:

You sent for me, Commander?

COMMANDER:

Yes.

SOUND:

DOOR SHUTS

COMMANDER:

Sit down, Barton.

SOUND:

BARTON WALKS TO CHAIR AND SITS

COMMANDER:

We just got an ED from the territorial space station on Woden.

BARTON:

Uhh, Woden -- that's in the Crab Nebula, isn't it?

COMMANDER:

That's right. There are two exploration parties there on Manning's Continent. Eight men each.

BARTON:

Mm hm.

COMMANDER:

They've got kala fever in one of 'em and no serum.

BARTON:

(DISAPPOINTED) Ohhh. And I thought this was gonna be a nice, quiet passenger run.

COMMANDER:

Computers are working out your payload and your course right now. In exactly ten minutes, we'll drop into normal space and launch your ship.

BARTON:

I'll get her ready.

COMMANDER:

One thing.

BARTON:

What's that?

COMMANDER:

Woden is at the maximum pay limit for an EDS. Figuring the weight of the serum, we'll be able to give you just enough fuel to land on Manning's Continent if you make it the first pass. Otherwise, you'll burn out in midair.

BARTON:

Mm hm. Standard procedure.

COMMANDER:

Report to launching control.

BARTON:

Right.

COMMANDER:

Good luck, Barton.

BARTON:

Thanks. Oh, er, by the way--

COMMANDER:

Yes?

BARTON:

When can I expect to be picked up?

COMMANDER:

We'll make a stop on the run back to Earth some time next year. You'll be notified by radio.

BARTON:

Okay.

COMMANDER:

Sorry we can't make it sooner.

BARTON:

(GOOD-NATURED) Heh! That's what happens when you sign on for EDS work. I'll see you next year, Commander.

MUSIC:

BRIDGE ... BRISK, FOR A HURRIED LAUNCH ... THEN IN BG, OUT BY [X]

BARTON:

(NARRATES) Down in the belly of the Stardust, the crew was working like beavers to get the EDS -- the Emergency Dispatch Ship -- ready. Mechanics and technicians were swarming all over the place. Girls in inspectors' uniforms were checking the gauges and the supply cabinet. Nine minutes later, the exact course was in the computer, the serum was stowed in my supply cabinet closet, and little EDS Four-Gee-Three was ready to be borne into space. [X]

LAUNCH:

(FILTER) Barton?

BARTON:

Yes, sir?

LAUNCH:

(FILTER) Thirty seconds to blast-off. All set?

BARTON:

All set.

LAUNCH:

(FILTER) I'm turning you over to Traffic.

BARTON:

Ready.

TRAFFIC:

(FILTER) Traffic Control. Come in, EDS Four-Gee-Three.

BARTON:

Ready.

TRAFFIC:

(FILTER) Twenty seconds. Lock open.

SOUND:

LOCK SLIDES OPEN

TRAFFIC:

(FILTER) Fifteen seconds. Space Drive on.

BARTON:

Space Drive on.

TRAFFIC:

(FILTER) Ten seconds. Gravity Neutralizer on.

BARTON:

Neutralizer on.

TRAFFIC:

(FILTER) Five seconds. Four. Three. Two. One. Blast off!

SOUND:

SHIP BLASTS OFF!

MUSIC:

BRIEF BRIDGE ... FOR SPACE TRAVEL ... THEN IN BG, OUT BY [X]

BARTON:

(NARRATES) I don't remember how long it was afterwards that I first noticed something wrong. Maybe an hour, maybe two. There was nothing to show it except the needle in the heat gauge. It was on zero when we left the Stardust and now I noticed that it had crept up toward the thirty mark. That meant something inside the ship was radiating heat. That something was in the supply closet -- and it was alive. [X]

SOUND:

SHIP'S ENGINES THROB, IN BG ... BARTON'S FOOTSTEPS TO CLOSET

BARTON:

(CALLS) All right! Come out! (NO RESPONSE, CALLS) Whoever or whatever you are -- if you don't come out in five seconds, I'm gonna blast you! One! Two!

SOUND:

CLOSET DOOR OPENS

BARTON:

(STUNNED) Well, I'll be--

MARILYN:

(FRIENDLY) Hello. I'm Marilyn Lee Cross.

BARTON:

What are you doing in there?

MARILYN:

(CASUAL) I'm a stowaway.

BARTON:

(HORRIFIED) Oh, my--

MARILYN:

Well, what's the matter? Do I have to pay a fine or something?

BARTON:

What are you doing here?!

MARILYN:

I wanted to see my husband.

BARTON:

Who's your husband?

MARILYN:

He's with the Government Survey crew on Woden. I haven't seen him since he left Earth four years ago.

BARTON:

Okay. But what made you hide in my EDS?

MARILYN:

I have a job waiting for me on Mimir. But I heard you were going to Woden and there was plenty of room, so I hid. Oh, I knew I'd be breaking some kind of rule but, er, what's one little rule?

MUSIC:

SOBER BRIDGE ... THEN IN BG, OUT BY [X]

BARTON:

(NARRATES) Ha! "What's one little rule?" H amount of fuel will power an EDS with a mass of M safely to its destination. H amount of fuel will not power an EDS with a mass of M plus X safely to its destination. (SIGHS) Well, how could she be expected to know? She was five-two, with brown curly hair, and the faint sweet smell of perfume. She was five-two and she smelled like apple blossoms. And her name was X in an equation that would have to be balanced. [X]

SOUND:

SHIP'S ENGINES THROB, IN BG ... BEEP! OF RADIO

COMMUNICATIONS:

(FILTER) Stardust. Come in, EDS. Come in.

BARTON:

This is Barton, Emergency Dispatch Pilot Four-Gee-Three.

COMMUNICATIONS:

(FILTER) Go ahead.

BARTON:

Give me Commander Delhart.

COMMUNICATIONS:

(FILTER) What's the message, EDS?

BARTON:

I have to consult Commander Delhart.

COMMUNICATIONS:

(FILTER) The commander is busy.

BARTON:

Listen, you squirt! Give me Commander Delhart!

COMMUNICATIONS:

(FILTER) One moment, Four-Gee-Three.

SOUND:

FILTERED CLICK! OF COM

COMMUNICATIONS:

(FILTER, INTO COM) Commander Delhart? Emergency message from EDS Four-Gee-Three.

COMMANDER:

(BEAT, FILTER, ANNOYED) This is Delhart. What is it?

BARTON:

At oh-eight-hundred hours, I discovered a stowaway aboard my ship.

COMMANDER:

(FILTER) A stowaway?!

BARTON:

Yes, sir.

COMMANDER:

(FILTER) Well, have you notified Ship's Records?

BARTON:

Not yet, sir.

COMMANDER:

(FILTER) You know the regulations as well as I do.

BARTON:

Of course I know the regulations. That's why I'm calling.

COMMANDER:

(FILTER) Barton -- what's going on?

BARTON:

Sir, this is a girl. A young woman.

COMMANDER:

(FILTER, PAUSE, LOW) Oh.

BARTON:

She wanted to see her husband on Woden. She didn't know what she was doing.

COMMANDER:

(FILTER) I see.

BARTON:

I wondered, sir-- Maybe the cruiser could - change course or something?

COMMANDER:

(FILTER) I'm afraid not. We're hundreds of light-years apart now. We have a limited fuel supply ourselves. With nine hundred passengers--

BARTON:

Is there any chance--?

COMMANDER:

(FILTER) No.

BARTON:

Okay, skipper.

COMMANDER:

(FILTER) Better get the information to Ship's Records.

BARTON:

Okay.

COMMANDER:

(BEAT, FILTER) Barton?

BARTON:

Skipper?

COMMANDER:

(BEAT, FILTER, LOW) I'm sorry.

BARTON:

Yeah, sure.

SOUND:

CLICK! OF RADIO ... SHIP'S ENGINES SLOW, THEN CONTINUE IN BG

MARILYN:

You cut our acceleration, didn't you?

BARTON:

Yes.

MARILYN:

Why?

BARTON:

Mm, save fuel. For a while. (EXASPERATED) How did you manage to stow away?

MARILYN:

(MERRILY, A LITTLE PROUD) Well, I was taking a language lesson in Mimirese from a girl in the Inspection Corps. The order came in for your trip and I just went along on an impulse. Oh, it was easy. I'll be a model prisoner, I promise.

BARTON:

(GROANS) If you were only a thief or a spy, it would make it easier.

MARILYN:

Make what easier?

BARTON:

(CURT) Oh, forget it!

MUSIC:

BRIDGE ... SAD ... THEN IN BG, OUT AT [X]

BARTON:

(NARRATES) Why couldn't she have been somebody with some ulterior motive? A fugitive, hoping to lose himself in a raw new world; a crackpot, with a mission. Why did she have to be a woman? A beautiful, kind, trusting woman? [X]

SOUND:

SHIP'S ENGINES THROB, IN BG ... BEEP! OF RADIO

RECORDS:

(FILTER) Stardust.

BARTON:

Barton, EDS Four-Gee-Three.

RECORDS:

(FILTER) Go ahead, Four-Gee-Three. Identify stowaway.

BARTON:

(TO MARILYN) Uh, give me your identification disc, Miss Cross.

MARILYN:

Here. Why?

BARTON:

It's for Ship's Records. (READS) Uh, Identification Number T-eight-three-seven-four--

RECORDS:

(FILTER) One moment. This is for the Gray Card, of course?

BARTON:

Yes.

RECORDS:

(FILTER) I'll need the time of--

BARTON:

I'll tell you later.

RECORDS:

(FILTER) That's highly irregular--

BARTON:

Then we'll do it in a highly irregular manner! The subject is a young woman. She's listening to everything that's said. Are you capable of understanding that?

RECORDS:

(PAUSE, FILTER, LOW) Oh. Go ahead, Four-Gee-Three.

BARTON:

(READS) Number T-eight-three-seven-four dash Y-five-four. Name: Marilyn Lee Cross. Female. Married. Born: July seventh, Twenty-One Sixty. (SHOCKED, TO MARILYN) Good lord, you're only a child.

MARILYN:

(GIGGLES)

BARTON:

(READS) Height: Five feet, two inches. Weight: a hundred and ten. Hair: Brown. Eyes: Blue. Complexion: Light. Blood Type: O. Original destination: Port City, Mimir. (TO RECORDS) Listen, I'll call you back later.

SOUND:

CLICK! OF RADIO

BARTON:

Look, miss--

MARILYN:

Marilyn.

BARTON:

Look, Marilyn. I - I guess you don't know what you got yourself into here. Well, it's like this. This ship is carrying kala fever serum to the survey group on Woden.

MARILYN:

Yes?

BARTON:

Their supply was wrecked in a tornado. The fever is always fatal unless the serum is given in the first forty-eight hours. Now, these little ships have exactly enough fuel to reach their destination. If you stay aboard her, your added weight will cause it to use up all its fuel before it can land.

MARILYN:

Oh. What happens then?

BARTON:

We crash. You die. I die. And six fever victims on Woden die.

MARILYN:

Can't they send out another ship to meet us?

BARTON:

There are no ships to send.

MARILYN:

Well, I-- (REALIZES, PANICS) Oh, no. No, no, you - you couldn't do that.

BARTON:

That's how it has to be.

MARILYN:

But that's crazy. I haven't done anything! I haven't hurt anybody!

BARTON:

I'm sorry. I - I - I should have told you before but I wanted to make sure there was no other way.

MARILYN:

You mean it? You're gonna make me leave this ship?

BARTON:

That's how it is.

MARILYN:

But I'll die! I'll explode! I'll be like those horrible pictures of--!

BARTON:

Try to understand.

MARILYN:

I do understand! You're going to kill me and I didn't do anything!

BARTON:

I know you didn't! I know you didn't! That has nothing to do with it.

MARILYN:

It has everything to do with it! Nobody just dies like that for no reason! Oh, listen, maybe there are other cruisers. Cruisers you don't know about. Maybe the radio-- Maybe it--

BARTON:

Now, listen to me. It's different here. Different from anything you've ever known. On Woden, there are sixteen men -- sixteen men on an entire world. They're fighting. Fighting an alien environment. The environment fights back. You can only make a mistake once.

MARILYN:

(QUIETLY) And - I made a mistake.

BARTON:

Yes.

MARILYN:

(SLOWLY) There's no hope of--?

BARTON:

Absolutely none. You'll have to be put out of the ship.

MUSIC:

AN ACCENT ... THEN IN BG, OUT AT [X]

BARTON:

(NARRATES) It was better so. With the going of all hope would go the fear. Then would come the resignation. She needed time and there was so little. [X]

SOUND:

RADIO STATIC ... THEN IN BG

COMMUNICATIONS:

(FILTER) EDS? Starship to EDS. Need pertinent data.

BARTON:

All right, starship.

COMMUNICATIONS:

(FILTER) When do you expect to complete your report?

BARTON:

I - I need a computer check.

COMMUNICATIONS:

(FILTER) I'll give you Statistics.

SOUND:

BUZZER!

STATISTICS:

(FILTER) Statistics.

BARTON:

This is EDS Four-Gee-Three. I'm intersecting course vector seven-point-three at oh-eight-three-one. Deceleration, seventeen-fifty. Weight, one ton. I would like to stay at point-ten as long as the computers allow. Will you give them the question?

STATISTICS:

(FILTER) Check. I'll call you back.

MUSIC:

AN ACCENT ... THEN IN BG

BARTON:

(NARRATES) We wouldn't have long to wait. The new factors would be fed into the steel maw of the computer bank and the electrical impulses would go through the complex circuits. Here and there, a relay would click, a tiny cog turn over. But it would be the current -- formless, mindless, invisible -- which would determine with utter precision how long the pale young girl beside me would live. Five little segments of metal in the second bank would trip against an inked ribbon and the machine would spit out the answer.

STATISTICS:

(FILTER) You will resume deceleration at nineteen ten.

BARTON:

(NARRATES) It was eighteen ten when he spoke. One hour. She has one hour to live.

MUSIC:

UP, FOR A BRIDGE, THEN OUT WITH--

SOUND:

SHIP'S ENGINES THROB, IN BG

MARILYN:

One hour?

BARTON:

That's it.

MARILYN:

All I did was hide in a closet. Now you tell me I have to die. I don't believe it.

BARTON:

You might as well get used to it.

MARILYN:

If this happened back on Earth, a thousand ships would fill the sky. The whole word would know about it. They'd do everything to save me.

BARTON:

This isn't Earth.

MARILYN:

It was such a big dream. Gerry and I separated almost five years ago. We were too young. And I was going to see him to - try to make everything all right again. Are - are you married?

BARTON:

I - was.

MARILYN:

Oh?

BARTON:

She ran off with some guy in the Weather Service.

MARILYN:

Do you still think about her?

BARTON:

I don't let myself.

MARILYN:

Where is she?

BARTON:

Back on Earth. Look, if you don't mind, I'd just as soon talk about something else.

MARILYN:

Okay. (PAUSE) What do you do when you've got an hour to live? What do you talk about?

BARTON:

(AWKWARD) What's - Gerry like?

MARILYN:

Gerry? Oh, he - he's a funny guy. When he found out I-- I mean, about the other fella. He didn't get mad. He - he cried. That was all he felt -- sadness.

BARTON:

So you walked all over him.

MARILYN:

Oh, I thought I wanted him to get mad at me -- to be jealous.

BARTON:

And now?

MARILYN:

I've been thinking about him for five years. So when I heard this ship was bound for Woden and I knew Gerry was there -- I stowed away. I didn't know about the fuel. I didn't know this would happen to me.

MUSIC:

MELANCHOLY ... THEN IN BG, OUT AT [X]

BARTON:

(NARRATES) She had violated a man-made law that said "Keep Out." The penalty was not of man's making or desire. It was not a penalty men could revoke. H amount of fuel will power an EDS with a mass of M safely to its destination. The time was eighteen-thirty. Forty minutes. It was beginning to get me. A space frontier is a rough place and I'd seen a hundred men die since I left Earth. But this was different. I watched her as she wrote a message to her folks. I watched her as she fought her way through the black horror of fear toward the calm gray of acceptance. And then, there it was on the viewscreen -- the planet Woden, a red ball enshrouded in the blue haze of its atmosphere, swimming in space against the background of star-sprinkled blackness. The chronometer on the instrument panel said eighteen-forty-five. [X]

SOUND:

SHIP'S ENGINES THROB, IN BG

BARTON:

Listen. We're in radio range of Woden now. I mean, would you want me to try to contact your husband?

MARILYN:

Gerry?

BARTON:

It'd mean-- He would know you're going to die. There'd be nothing anyone can do.

MARILYN:

Yes. I would like to talk to him. Do you think we can?

BARTON:

Well, the planet is turning. If his group is on the side facing us, we might be able to reach him.

MARILYN:

Oh, try.

BARTON:

All right.

SOUND:

BUZZER!

BARTON:

Hello? Hello, Woden? EDS to Government Survey Group, can you hear me? Come in, Woden.

SOUND:

PAUSE ... RADIO STATIC

BARTON:

(TO MARILYN) They may not be monitoring.

MONITOR:

(FILTER) Hello? Hello?

BARTON: Hello? Hello? Identify yourself, please.

MONITOR:

(FILTER) This is Government Survey Group One on planet Woden.

BARTON:

This is John Barton, EDS pilot.

MONITOR:

(FILTER) Do you have the serum?

BARTON:

Yes. How bad is it?

MONITOR:

(FILTER) One man died last night. Six have the fever. How long will it take to--?

BARTON:

I start deceleration at nineteen-ten hours. I should be able to land at nineteen-thirty.

MONITOR:

(FILTER) Thank God.

BARTON:

Uh, look, do you have a Gerald Cross in charge of the group?

MONITOR:

(FILTER) Commander Cross? Yes, we do.

BARTON:

Could I speak to him?

MONITOR:

(FILTER) He isn't here. He's out with a survey team.

BARTON:

Well, when do you expect him?

MONITOR:

(FILTER) Can't say.

BARTON:

How do you read me? How much time do we have left for communication?

MONITOR:

(FILTER) Less than fifteen minutes.

BARTON:

All right. If Commander Cross comes back before we lose radio contact, will you have him buzz me? It's important.

MONITOR:

(FILTER) Okay, EDS.

BARTON:

I'll keep the set open.

MONITOR:

(FILTER) Check.

SOUND:

CLICK! OF RADIO

MUSIC:

TENSE ... THEN IN BG, FADES OUT AT [X]

BARTON:

(NARRATES) The minutes passed like small bits of eternity. On the viewscreen, I could see Manning's Continent sprawled like a gigantic hourglass in the Eastern Sea. There was a thin line of shadow where it was beginning to disappear as the planet turned on its axis. I looked at the pale woman next to me and I thought of another woman, long ago, who'd sat next to me and cried because I wouldn't try to understand. What had she written in those letters back home? What would they think of the faceless, unknown pilot who'd sent her to her death? What would I think of myself -- alone, nights -- reliving this voyage? [X]

SOUND:

SHIP'S ENGINES THROB, IN BG

MARILYN:

Cold, isn't it?

BARTON:

I'll turn up the thermostat.

MARILYN:

Nothing from Gerry?

BARTON:

We have about two minutes of radio contact left.

MARILYN:

Maybe it's better. I mean, suppose it were you and your wife tried to call you. How would you feel?

BARTON:

I don't know.

MARILYN:

Do you ever hear from her?

BARTON:

I got a letter about a year ago. I tore it up.

MARILYN:

That was foolish.

BARTON:

Yeah, it was.

MARILYN:

Life is so terribly short - to be wandering around alone.

SOUND:

RADIO STATIC, BEHIND--

BARTON:

Well, I - I-- Wait a second, we're getting something.

MARILYN:

How much time before - before I have to leave the ship?

BARTON:

About ten minutes.

MONITOR:

(FILTER) Hello, EDS? Hello, EDS? Come in. Come in.

BARTON:

(ANSWERS) EDS.

MONITOR:

(FILTER) This is Woden. I have Commander Cross.

BARTON:

All right, go ahead.

CROSS:

(FILTER) Hello? This is Commander Cross.

BARTON:

Gerry Cross?

CROSS:

(FILTER) Yes.

BARTON:

I have someone for you. Go ahead.

CROSS:

(FILTER) Hello?

MARILYN:

Gerry?

CROSS:

(FILTER) Hello?

MARILYN:

Gerry?

CROSS:

(FILTER) Who is it?

MARILYN:

It's me -- Marilyn.

CROSS:

(FILTER) Marilyn?

MARILYN:

I wanted to see you again. I stowed away on the EDS.

CROSS:

(FILTER) You what?! But, Marilyn--!

MARILYN:

It doesn't matter, Gerry. All that matters is that I can tell you all the things I've kept inside for so long. Gerry -- I want you to know, I - I've never forgotten.

CROSS:

(FILTER) Oh, it's been so many years, I - I can't believe it.

MARILYN:

I thought I'd see you again but-- Now I can't. Gerry, you don't hate me, do you?

CROSS:

(FILTER) Hate you? Oh, Marilyn, I've never stopped loving you. Not for an instant.

MARILYN:

Oh, Gerry--!

CROSS:

(FILTER) Listen, we don't have much time. The transmission is getting fuzzy. Oh, Marilyn, I've got to see you. There's got to be some way.

MARILYN:

There isn't.

CROSS:

(FILTER) Let me talk to the pilot.

BARTON:

(LOW) Give it to me. (TO CROSS) Hello?

CROSS:

(FILTER) Pilot, have you called the mother ship? Did you have them check with the computers?

BARTON:

I've done everything. You've been on the frontier long enough to know the set-up in an EDS.

CROSS:

(FILTER) Oh, dear God, there must be something. Some way.

BARTON:

Do you think I'd let this happen if I wasn't sure?

MARILYN:

He tried to help me, Gerry. He tried. And it really doesn't matter. I'm not frightened any more. Not now.

CROSS:

(FILTER) But how did you get here? I don't understand.

MARILYN:

Well, I was going to Mimir to take a job, I thought, and-- Now I realize I was just going because I'd be closer to where you were. Oh, Gerry, all this time--

SOUND:

RADIO STATIC GROWS WORSE BEHIND--

CROSS:

(FILTER) Don't. Let me tell you something. Marilyn, I've always known you'd come back to me. I've known it every minute. It's what's kept me alive. I want you to hold that in your mind--

MARILYN:

Gerry, I - I can't hear you!

CROSS:

(FILTER) We haven't much time. We're losing radio contact.

MARILYN:

Gerry!

CROSS:

(FILTER) Oh, don't cry, darling. Just know how I feel.

MARILYN:

I do.

BARTON:

It's fading.

MARILYN:

There are so many things to say. Gerry, if you can still hear me-- Maybe I'll come to see you again. Maybe I'll come to you in your dreams. Or - or be the touch of a breeze. Or one of those golden-winged little birds, singing my silly head off. Maybe I'll be nothing you can see or hear but-- You'll know I'm there. Think of me like that, Gerry. Goodbye.

CROSS:

(FILTER, VERY FAINT) Goodbye, my darling.

SOUND:

SHIP'S ENGINES FADE OUT BEHIND--

BARTON:

(NARRATES) She sat motionless in the hush that followed, and then she looked at me.

MARILYN:

Now?

BARTON:

Now.

MUSIC:

FOR MARILYN'S DEATH ... IN BG, OUT AT [X]

BARTON:

(NARRATES) I pulled down the black lever and the inner door of the lock slid open. She walked with her head up and the brown curls brushing her shoulders. I let her do it alone. She stepped into the lock and turned to face me, and I could see the pulse in her throat.

MARILYN:

(AFTER A PAUSE) I'm ready.

SOUND:

LEVER PULLED ... AIR LOCK DOOR SLIDES SHUT

BARTON:

(NARRATES) I pulled the red lever and there was a slight waver as the air gushed out. I thought I sensed a bump -- as if something had bumped the outer door. And then there was nothing. [X] The white hand of the closet temperature control was back at zero. A cold equation had been balanced and I was alone in the ship.

MUSIC:

TO A FINISH

ANNOUNCER:

You have just heard "X Minus One" presented by the National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation with Street and Smith, publishers of Astounding Science Fiction.

MUSIC:

CLOSING THEME SNEAKS IN UNDER FOLLOWING--

ANNOUNCER:

Tonight, by transcription, "X Minus One" has brought you "Cold Equations," written by Tom Godwin and adapted for radio by George Lefferts. Featured in the cast were Court Benson as Barton, Jay Meredith as Marilyn, Milo Boulton as Commander Delhart, Bob Hastings as Gerry Cross, Jack Arthur as Traffic Control Officer, and Walter Kinsella as the Woden monitor. Your announcer, Bill Rippe. "X Minus One" was directed by Ken MacGregor and is an NBC Radio Network production.

MUSIC:

TO A FINISH

SOUND:

HIGH-PITCHED ELECTRONIC HUM ... IN BG, OUT ABRUPTLY AT [X]

ANNOUNCER:

And now, next week! In the days of the windjammers, whalers sometimes went on cruises that lasted as long as two years, and so, sometimes, they had to resort to rough methods to gather a crew. But what of the future, when a cruise to a distant star may last for fifteen years or more? We hear of such a voyage next week on-- [X] (HEAVY ECHO) X ... Minus ... One!


Bummer for Bemis..."Time Enough at Last"

X Minus One [Wikipedia]

The Digital Deli


Other X Minus One offerings...

X Minus One's "How 2"...old time radio offering #1

X Minus One's "Student Body"...old time radio offering #2

X Minus One's "A Gun for Dinosaur"...old time radio offering #3

X Minus One's "Tunnel Under the World"...old time radio offering #4

X Minus One's "Junkyard"...old time radio offering #5

X Minus One's "Marionettes, Inc."...old time radio offering #6

X Minus One's "Skulking Permit"...old time radio offering #7

X Minus One's "Something for Nothing"...old time radio offering #8

X Minus One's "Project Mastodon"...old time radio offering #9

X Minus One's "The Veldt"...old time radio offering #10

X Minus One's "The Coffin Cure"...old time radio offering #11

X Minus One's "The Defenders"...old time radio offering #12

X Minus One's "Knock"...old time radio offering #13

X Minus One's "Protection"...old time radio offering #14

X Minus One's "The Snowball Effect"...old time radio offering #15

X Minus One's "First Contact"...old time radio offering #16

X Minus One's "The Seventh Victim"...old time radio offering #17

X Minus One's "The Haunted Corpse"...old time radio offering #18

X Minus One's "Man's Best Friend"...old time radio offering #19

X Minus One's "Mars Is Heaven"...old time radio offering #20


And four Dimension-X offerings...

Dimension X's "A Logic Named Joe"...old time radio offering #1

Dimension X's "Requiem"...old time radio offering #2

Dimension X's "There Will Come Soft Rain--Zero Hour"...old time radio offering #3

Dimension X's "The Outer Limit"...old time radio offering #4