Armaments Race

for accuracy.

'All went well until the first rushes, and even beyond. While the cast was acting, if you can use that word, they had to point the guns and press the triggers as if something was really happening. The sparks and flashes, however, were put on the negative later by two little men in a darkroom about as well guarded as Fort Knox . They did a good job, but after a while the producer again felt twinges in his overdeveloped artistic conscience.

''Solly,' he said,, toying with the plastic horror which had reached Junior by courtesy of Crunch, the Succulent Cereal-Not a Burp in a Barrel-'Solly, I still want a gun that does something.'

'Solly ducked in time, so the jet went over his head and baptized a photograph of Louella Parsons.

''You're not going to start shooting all over again!' he wailed.

''Nooo,' replied the producer, with obvious reluctance. 'We'll have to use what we've got. But it looks faked, somehow.' He ruffled through the script on his desk, then brightened up.

''Now next week we start on Episode 54-'Slaves of the SlugMen.' Well, the Slug-:Men gotta have guns, so what I'd like you to do is this-'

'The Mark III gave Solly a lot of trouble. (I haven't missed out one yet, have I? Good.) Not only had it to be a completely new design, but as you'll have gathered it had to 'do something'. This was a challenge to Solly's ingenuity: however, if I may borrow from Professor Toynbee, it was a challenge that evoked the appropriate response.

'Some high-powered engineering went into the Mark III. Luckily, Solly knew an ingenious technician who'd helped him out on similar occasions before, and he was really the man behind it. ('I'll say he was!' said Mr. Blumberg gloomily.) The principle was to use a jet of air, produced by a small but extremely powerful electric fan, and then to spray finely divided powder into it. When the thing was adjusted correctly, it shot out a most impressive beam, and made a still more impressive noise. The actors were so scared of it that their performances became most realistic.

'The producer was delighted-for a full three days. Then a dreadful doubt assailed him.

11 'Solly,' he said, 'those damn guns are too good. The Slug-Men can beat the pants off Captain Zoom. Well have to give him something better!

I 'it was at this point that Solly realized what had happened. He had become involved in an armaments race.

'Let's see, this brings us to the Mark IV, doesn't it? How did that work?-oh yes, I remember. It was a glorified oxy-acetylene burner, with various chemicals injected into it to produce the most beautiful flames. I should have mentioned that from Episode 50'Doom on Deimos'-the studio had switched over from black and white to Murkicolor, and great possibilities were thus opened up. By squirting copper or strontium or barium into the jet, you could get any colour you wanted.

'If you think that by this time the producer was satisfied, you don't know Hollywood . Some cynics may still laugh when the motto 'Ars Gratia Artis' flashes on the screen, but this attitude, I submit, is not in accordance with the facts. Would such old fossils as Michelangelo, Rembrandt or Titian have spent so much time, effort and money on the quest for perfection as did Pandemic Productions? I think not.

'I don't pretend to remember all the Marks that Solly and his ingenious engineer friend produced during the course of the serial. There was one that shot out a stream of coloured smoke-rings. There was the high-frequency generator that produced enormous but quite harmless sparks. There was a particularly ingenious curved beam produced by a jet of water with light reflected along inside it, which looked most spectacular in the dark. And finally, there was the Mark 12.'

'Mark 13,' said Mr. Blumberg.

'Of course-how stupid of me! What other number could it have been! The Mark 13 was not actually a portable weapon though some of the others were portable only by a considerable stretch of the imagination. It was the diabolical device to be installed on Phobos in order to subjugate Earth. Though Solly has explained them to me once, the scientific principles involved escape my simple mind . . . . However, who am I to match my brains against the intellects responsible for Captain Zoom? I can only

report what the ray was supposed to do, not how it did it. It was to start a chain reaction in the atmosphere of our unfortunate planet, making the nitrogen and the oxygen in the air combine with highly deleterious effects to terrestrial life., –

'I'm not sure whether to be sorry or glad that Solly left all the details of the fabulous Mark 13 to his talented assistant. Though I've questioned him at some length, all he can tell me is that the thing was about six feet high and looked like a cross between the 200 inch telescope and an anti-aircraft gun. That's not very helpful, is it?

'He also says that there were a lot of radio tubes in the brute, as we'll as a thundering great magnet. And it was definitely supposed to produce a harmless but impressive electric arc, which could be distorted into all sorts of interesting shapes by the magnet. That was what the inventor said, and, despite everything, there is still no reason to disbelieve him.

'By one of those mischances that later turns out to be providential, Solly wasn't at the studio when they tried out the Mark 13. To his great annoyance, he had to be down in Mexico that day. And wasn't that lucky for you, Solly! He was expecting a long-distance call from one of his friends in the afternoon, but when it came through it wasn't the kind of message he'd anticipated.

'The Mark 13 had been, to put it mildly, a success. No-one knew exactly what had happened, but by a miracle no lives had been lost and the fire department had been able to save the adjoining studios. It was incredible, yet the facts were beyond dispute. The Mark 13 was supposed to be a phony death-ray-and it had turned out to be a real one. Something had emerged from the projector, and gone through the studio wall as if it wasn't there. Indeed, a moment later it wasn't. There was just a great big hole, beginning to smolder round the edges. And then the roof fell in . . . .

'Unless Solly could convince the F.B.I. that it was all a mistake, he'd better stay the other side of the border. Even now the Pentagon and the Atomic Energy Commission were converging upon the wreckage . . . .

'What would you have done in Solly's shoes? He was innocent, but how could he prove it? Perhaps he would have gone back to face the music if he hadn't remembered that he'd once hired a man who'd campaigned for Henry Wallace, back in '48. That might take

some explaining away: besides, Solly was a little tired of Captain Zoom. So here he is. Anyone know of a British film company that might have an opening for him? But historical films only, please. He won't touch anything more up-to-date than cross-bows.'