Ross filled him in, carefully explaining why Bernie and Helena had left him. Doc Jones filled Ross in. He didn’t have much to tell. He had come to in the ship, waited around until he got hungry, fallen into a conversation with a rocket pilot on the field—and that was how his round of parties had begun.
Like Ross, Doc, in his soberer moments, had come to the conclusion that Earth was run by person or persons unseen. He had learned little that Ross hadn’t found out or deduced. The blue lights had bothered him, too; he’d asked the pilot about it, and found out about what Ross had—there appeared to be some sort of built-in safety device which kept the inevitable accidents from becoming unduly fatal. How they worked, he didn’t know—
But he had an idea.
“It sounds a little ridiculous, I admit,” he said, embarrassed. “But I think it might work. It’s a radio program.”
“A radio program?”
“I said it sounded ridiculous. They call it, ‘What’s Biting You,’ and one of the fellows was telling me about it. It seems that you can appear before the panel on the program with any sort of problem, any sort at all, and they guarantee to solve it for you. There’s some sort of bond posted—I don’t know much about the details, but this man assured me that the bond was only a formality; they never failed. Of course,” Doc finished, hearing his own proposal with a touch of doubt, “I don’t know whether they ever had any problem like this before, but—”
“Yeah,” said Ross. “What have we got to lose?”
They got into the program. It took the techniques of a doubler on an army chow line and a fair amount of brute strength, but they got to the head of the queue at the studio and wedged themselves inside. Doc came close to throttling the man who prowled through the studio audience, selecting the lucky few who would get on stage—but they got on.
The theme music swelled majestically around them, and a chorus crooned, “What’s Biting You—Hunh?” It was repeated three times, with crashing cymbals under the “Hunh?”
Ross listened to the beginning of the program and cursed himself for being persuaded into such a harebrained tactic. But, he had to admit, the program offered the only possibility in sight. The central figure was a huge, jovially grinning figure of papier-mâché, smoking a Smog and billowing smoke rings at the audience. An announcer, for some obscure reason in blackface, interviewed the disturbed derelicts who came before Smiley Smog, the papier-mâché figure, and propounded their problems to Smiley in a sort of doggerel. And in doggerel the answers came back.
The first person to go up before Smiley was a woman, clearly in her last month of pregnancy. The announcer introduced her to the audience and begged for a real loud holler of hello for this poor mizzuble li’l girl. “Awright, honey,” he said. “You just step right up here an’ let ol’ Uncle Smiley take care of your troubles for you. Less go, now. What’s Bitin’ You?”
“Uh,” she sobbed, “it’s like I’m gonna have a baby.”
“Hoddya like that!” the announcer screamed. “She’s gonna have a baby! Whaddya say to that, folks?” The audience shrieked hysterically. “Awright, honey,” the announcer said. “So you’re gonna have a baby, so what’s bitin’ you about that?”
“It’s my husband,” the woman sniffled. “He don’t like kids. We got eight already,” she explained. “Jack, he says if we have one more kid he’s gonna take off an’ marry somebody else.”
“He’s gonna marry somebody else!” the announcer howled. “Hoddya like that, folks?” There was a tempest of boos. “Awright, now,” the announcer said, “you just sit there, honey, while I tell ol’ Uncle Smiley about this. Ya ready? Listen:
“What’s bitin’ this lady is plain to see:
Her husband don’t want no more family!”
The huge figure’s head rotated on a concealed hinge to look down on the woman. From a squawk-box deep in Smiley’s papier-mâché belly, a weary voice declaimed:
“If one more baby is your husband’s dread,
Cross him up, lady. Have twins instead!”
The audience roared its approval. The announcer asked anxiously, “Ya get it? When ya get inta the hospital, like, ya jus’ tell the nurse ya want to take two kids home with you. See?”
The grateful woman staggered away. Ross gave Doc a poisonous look.
“What else is there to do?” the doctor hissed. “All right, perhaps this won’t work out—but let’s try!” He half rose, and staggered against the man next to him, who was already starting toward the announcer. “Go on, Ross,” Doc hissed venomously, blocking off the other man.
Ross went. What else was there to do?
“What’s biting me,” he said belligerently before the announcer could put him through the preliminaries, “is simply this: L-sub-T equals L-sub-zero e to the minus-T-over-two-N.”
Dead silence in the studio. The announcer quavered, “Wh‑what was that again, buddy?”
“I said,” Ross repeated firmly, “L-sub-T equals L-sub-zero e to the—”
“Now, wait a minute, buddy,” the announcer ordered. “We never had no stuff like that on this program before. Whaddya, some kind of a wise guy?”
There might have been violence; the conditions were right for it. But Uncle Smiley Smog saved the day.
The papier-mâché figure puffed a blinding series of smoke rings at Ross. From its molded torso, the weary voice said:
“If you’re looking for counsel sagacious and wise,
The price is ten cents. It’s right under your eyes.”
They left the studio in a storm of animosity.
“Maybe we could have collected the forfeit,” Doc said hopefully.
“Maybe we could have collected some lumps,” Ross growled. “Got any more ideas?”
The doctor sipped his coffee. “No,” he admitted. “I wonder—No, I don’t suppose that means anything.”
“That jingle? Sure it means something, Doc. It means I should have had my head examined for letting you talk me into that performance.”
The doctor said rebelliously, “Maybe I’m wrong, Ross, but I don’t see that you’ve had any ideas than panned out much better.”
Ross
