Professor Hewett returned to his instruments and the generator howled. Charley Chang was trying to say something, but his words were cut off as the truck vanished. There was no flicker or fading, it just disappeared as instantly and as quickly as the image on a back-projection screen when the film breaks. Barney started to turn to talk to his secretary, but just as his motion began the truck appeared.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, then saw that all the suppplies were gone from the back. Clyde Rawlston was standing near the professor at the controls and Charley Chang was sitting on an empty crate clutching a thick folder of typed sheets.
“Nothing is wrong,” the professor said. “I have just timed our return with the utmost of exact precision.”
Charley was no longer wearing his jacket and his shirt was creased and faded, so bleached by the sun across the shoulders that all the color was gone. His hair was long and a black bristle of beard covered his cheeks.
“How did it go?” Barney asked.
“Not bad—considering. I’m not quite finished though, you see it’s those things in the water. Those teeth! Eyes… !”
“How much more time do you need?”
“Two weeks should wrap it up, with time to spare. But, Barney, the eyes…”
“There’s nothing there big enough to hurt you, that’s what the Prof said.”
“Maybe not big, but in the ocean, so many of them, and the teeth…”
“See you. Take it away, Prof. Two weeks.”
This time the truck barely flickered, and if he had blinked at the wrong moment Baney would have missed the trip altogether. Yet, Charley and Clyde were sitting together on the other side of the truck and the wad of typescript was thicker.
“Who’s arguing?” Barney said, weighing the script happily. “Come on along, Charley, we’ll have the story conference right away.”
Charley sniffed the twilight air as they came out of the warehouse. “What a lot of stinks,” he said. “I never realized it before. What great air we had there on the island.” He looked down at his feet while he walked. “Feels funny to be wearing shoes again.”
“The native’s return,” Barney said. “I’ll bring the script in and you can get some clothes from wardrobe to replace your beachcomber’s rags and grab a shave. Get over to L.M.’s office as soon as you can. Is it a good script?”
“Maybe it’s too early to say—but in a way I think it’s the best thing I have ever done. Working the way I did, no outside distractions you know—if you don’t count the eyes! And Clyde was a big help, a good clean typist. He’s a poet, did you know that?”
“I thought he was a cook?”
“He’s a lousy cook, I ended up doing all the cooking. He only took the job in the commissary to pay his rent. He’s a damn good poet, and great on dialogue. He helped me a lot there. Do you think we can get him a credit on this film?”
“I don’t see why not. And don’t forget that shave.”
Barney went into L.M.’s office and dropped the script onto the desk. “Finished,” he said.
L.M. weighed it carefully in both hands, then held it at arm’s length so he could read the cover sheet.
“No secret, L.M., it’s the vremeatron. You saw it in action. Charley Chang went back in time to a nice quiet spot where he worked very hard to produce this script. He stayed as long as he needed, then we brought him back to almost the same moment when he left. Hardly any time at all elapsed here while he was away, so from your point of view it looks like it took just an hour to produce a complete script.”
“A script in an hour!” L.M. said, beaming happily. “This is going to revolutionize the business. Don’t be cheap, Barney. Give me the highest hourly rate you can imagine, then double it—twice! I don’t care about money. I want to do the right thing and see that Charley Chang gets the greatest rate per hour ever paid to man, paid for one hour of his time.”
“You missed the point, L.M. Maybe only an hour of
“He can’t prove it!” L.M. said, scowling fiercely.
“He can prove it. He punched a time clock every day and I have the time cards right here.”
“He can sue! One hour it took, one hour I pay for.”
“Sam,” Barney pleaded, “talk to him. Tell him you don’t get nothing for nothing in this world. Eight weeks’ pay is still beans for a great script like this.”
“I liked the one-hour script better,” Sam said.
“We all liked the one-hour script better, except there never was a one-hour script. This is just a new way of working, but we still have to pay the same amount for the work whatever happens.”
The buzz of the phone interrupted and L.M. picked it up, first listening, then answering with a monosyllabic series of grunts, finally slamming the handpiece back into the cradle.
“Ruf Hawk is on his way up,” L.M. said. “I think maybe we can use him for the lead, but also I think he is under contract to an independent for another picture. Feel him out, Barney, before his agent gets here. Now—about this one hour…”
“Later we discuss the one hour, please, L.M. It’ll work out.”
Ruf Hawk came in, stopping for a moment in the doorway and turning his head in profile so they could see how good he looked. He looked good. He looked good because that was really the only thing in life that he cared about. While all around the world, in countless movie houses, women’s hearts beat faster when they watched Ruf lock some lucky starlet in his firm embrace, little did these countless women know that their chances of getting locked in that embrace were exactly zero. Ruf did not like women. Not that he was a queer or something, he didn’t like men either. Or sheep or raincoats or whips, etc. Ruf just liked Ruf, and the light of love in his eyes was nothing more than a reflected gleam of narcissistic appreciation. He had been just one more slab of beefcake on muscle beach until it was discovered that he could act. He couldn’t act really, but it had been also discovered that he could act what he had been told to act. He would follow exactly whatever instructions were given to him, repeating the same words and actions over and over again with infinite bovine patience. Between takes he refreshed himself by looking into a mirror. His incompetence had never been revealed, because, in the kind of pictures he appeared in, before anyone could notice how bad he was the Indians would attack or the dinosaurs stampede or the walls of Troy would get torn down or something else mildly distracting would happen. Therefore Ruf was happy, and when the producers looked at box-office receipts they were happy, and everyone agreed that he had plenty of mileage left in him before his gut began to spread.
“Hi, Ruf,” Barney said, “just the man we want to see.”
Ruf raised his hand in greeting and smiled. He didn’t talk much when he hadn’t been told to talk.
“I’m not going to beat around the point, Ruf, all I’m going to say is that we’re going to make the world’s greatest picture and we were talking about a lead and your name was mentioned, and I said right out loud if we are going to do a Viking picture, then Ruf Hawk is the most vilkingest Viking I can think of.”
Ruf showed no signs of emotion or interest at this revelation. “You’ve heard of Vikings, haven’t you, Ruf?” Barney asked.
Ruf smiled slightly.
“You remember,” Barney said, “tall guys with big axes and horns on their helmets always sailing around in ships with a carved dragon in front…”
“Oh, yeah, sure,” Ruf said, his attention captured at last. “I’ve heard of Vikings. I’ve never played a Viking.”
“But in your heart of hearts you have always wanted to play a Viking, Ruf, it couldn’t be any other way. This
