Season 1 · Episode 1

THE MONSTER MAKER by Ray Bradbury

31 min Clean Full episode
THE MONSTER MAKER by Ray Bradbury
Astounding Tales of the Public Domain
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31:20
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About this episode

"Get Gunther," the official orders read. It was to laugh! For Click and Irish were marooned on the pirate's asteroid—their only weapons a single gun and a news-reel camera.

Transcript

Automatically generated, so expect the odd misheard name.

Good evening and welcome to Night's Gallery. Thank you, Rod, and I want to welcome everyone to Midnight Viewing, where once a month we talk all about your follow up to the Twilight Zone, Rod Serling's Night Gallery. They say it's Rod through Ling's Night Gallery, and it isn't really Rod through Las Night Gallery. It's somebody else's. Oh we know, we talk about it a lot.

Your curators at Midnight Viewing are the projection booths. Mike White. What can happen to human beings when trust is wiped out by suspicion and culture casts? Chris Stashue, small boy incased in the Crystal Ball and I'm father Malone, the kind of thing that usually infest nightmares, joined us monthly at Midnight Viewing. The Night Gallery podcast at weird Ingwaymedia dot Com doesn't remotely belong to me.

I have no proprietary interest in that at all. Weird weird Away mediates astounding of the public, the public which follow The Monster Maker by Ray Bradbury. Suddenly it was there. There wasn't time to blink or speak or get scared. Click.

Hathaway's camera was loaded and he stood there listening to it. Rak Spin film between his fingers, and he knew he was getting a damn sweet picture of everything that was happening. The picture of Marnigan hunched huge over the control console, wrenching levers, jamming studs with freckled fists, and out in the dark of the forepart there was space and a star sprinkling, and this meteor coming like blazing fury. Click. Hathaway felt the ship move under him like a sensitive animal's skin, and then the meteor hit.

It made a spiked fist and knocked the rear gent's flash, and the ship spun like a constant merrier rat. There was plenty of noise, too, damned much. Hath the way only knew he was picked up and hurled against a lever bank, and that Marnigan wasn't long in following, swearing loud words. Click remembered hanging on to his camera and gritting to keep holding it. What a sweet shot that had been of the meteor.

A sweeter one still of Marnigan beating hell out of the controls and keeping his words to himself until just now it got quiet. It got so quiet you could almost hear the asteroids rushing up, cold blue and hard you could hear your heart kicking a tom tom between your sick stomach and your empty lungs. Stars asteroids revolved, click grabbed Marnigan because he was the nearest thing, and held on. You came hunting for a space raider, and you ended up cradled in a slab side eised irishman's arms diving at a hunk of metal death. What a fade out Irish, He heard himself say, Is this?

It is this? What yelled Marnigan, insigned his helmet. Is this where the big producer? Yelled cut Marnigan. Fun.

I'll die when I'm good and ready, And when I'm ready, I'll inform you and you can picture me profile for cosmic films. They both waited, thrust against the ship's side and held by a hand of gravity, listening to each other's breathing hard in the earphones. The ship struck once bound struck again. It turned end over end and stopped. Hathaway felt himself grabbed.

He and Marnigan rattled around human dice in a Crouvier's cup. The shell of the ship first, air and energy flung out. Hathaway screamed the air out of his lungs, but his brain was thinking quick, crazy, unimportant things. The best scenes in his life never reached film or an audience like this one. Damn it, like this one.

His brain spun racketing like the instantaneous flicking motions of his camera. Silence came and engulfed all the noise, ate it up and swallowed it. Hathaway shook his head instinctively grabbed at the camera locked to his midbelt. There was nothing but stars, twisted wreckage, cold that pierced through his vac suit, and silence. He wriggled out of the wreckage into that silence.

He didn't know what he was doing until he found the camera in his fingers, as if it had grown there when he was born. He stood there, thinking, well, I'll at least have a few good scenes on film. I'll hunk of metal teetered, fell with a crash. Marnigan elevated seven feet of bellowing manhood from the wreck hold. It cracked Hathaway's high voice.

Marnigan froze the camera word low angle shot. Interplanetary patrolman emerges unscathed from asteroid crack up swell stuff. I'll get a raise for this from the toomy boot snarled Marnigan brusquely. Oxen's shoulders flexed inside his vac suit. It might have died in there and your nurse in that film contraption.

Hathaway felt funny inside. Suddenly, I never thought of that I can die. I just took it for granted. You'd come through. You always have funny, but you don't think about dying.

You try not to. Hathaway stared at his gloved hand, but the gloving was so thick and heavy he couldn't tell if it was shaking. Muscles in his bony face went down pale. Where are we a million miles from nobody? They stood in the middle of a potted, time eroded meteor plane that stretched off, dripping down into silent indigo and a rash of stars overhead.

The sun poised black and stars all around it, making it look sick. If we walk in opposite our actions, click Hathaway, we'd be shaken hands the other side of the rock in two hours. Martigan shook his mop of dusty red hair, and I promised the boys at Una base this time I captured at Punter Lad. His voice stopped, and the silence spoke. Hathaway felt his heart pumping slow hot pumps of blood.

I checked my oxygen iris sixty minutes of breathing left. The silence punctuated that sentence too. Upon the sharp meteoric rocks, Hathaway saw the tangled insides of the radio, the food supply mashed and scattered. They were lucky to have escaped, or was suffocation a better death? Sixty minutes they stood and looked at one another.

Damn that meteor, said Marnigan hotly. Hathaway got hold of an idea, remembering something. He set it out. Somebody tossed that meteor, irish. I took a picture of it, looked it right in the eye when it rolled at us, and it was poker hot space Meteors are never hot and blowing.

If it's proof you want, I've got it here on film, Martigan winced, his freckled square of face. It's not proof. We need now click oxygen and then food, and then some way back to earth. Hathaway went on, saying his thoughts, this is Gunther's work. He's here somewhere, probably lamping his guns out of the job he did on us.

Oh God, this would make great news with these stuff, if we could get it back to earth. IPAs Irish Marnigan, temporarily indisposed by a pirate whose dirty face has never been seen, Gunther by name finally wins through to a triumphant finish, photographed on the spot in college by yours truly Click had the way cosmic films. Please notice they started walking fast over the pott rubbled plane toward a bony ridge of metal. They kept their eyes wide and awake. There wasn't much to see, but it was better than standing still waiting.

Martigan said, we're working on margin, and we got nothing to sweat with this except your suspicions about this not being an accident. We've got fifty minutes to prove your right. After that, right or wrung, you'll be cosmic film's prettiest, unmoving, unbreathing genius. But talk all your light click. It's times like this when we need all words, any words on our tongues.

You got your camera and your scoop. Talk about it. As for me, he twisted his glossy red face. Keeping alive is my hobby in this sort of two bit death, I did not order. Click nodded Gunther knows how you'd hate dying this way, Irish, it's iron hat clean through.

That's probably why he planned the meteor and the crash this way. Martigan said nothing, but his thick lips went down at the corners, far down, and the green eyes blazed. They stopped together. Hoops Klick said, Hey, Marnigan blinked, Did you feel that? Hathaway's body felt feathery?

Light? Us a whisper, boneless and limbless. Suddenly, Irish, we lost weight coming over that ridge. They ran back. Let's try it again.

They tried it. They scowled at each other. The same thing happened. Gravity should not act this way. Click, Are you telling me it's man made?

Better than that? It's gunther No wonder we felt so fast we were dragged down by a supergravity set up. Gun do anything too? Did I say anything? Hathaway leaped backward in reaction, his eyes widened, and his hand came up jabbing over a hill ridge swarmed a brew of unbelievable horrors progeny from Frankenstein's art, Immense crimson beasts with numerous legs and gnashing mandibles, brown black creatures, some tubular in fat others like thin, white, poisonous whips slashing along the air.

Bangs caught starlight white on them. Hathaway yelled and ran Marnigan at his heels, lumbering, sweat broke cold in his body. The immense things were all slithered and squirmed after him. A flash of light, Marnigan firing his proton gun, then in Klick's ears, the irishman's incredulous bellow. The gun didn't hurt the creatures at all.

Irish Hathaway flung himself over the ridge, slid down an inclined toward the mouth of a small cave. This way, Fella, Hathaway made it first, Marnigan bellowing just behind him. They're too big. They can't get us in here. Click's voice and gasped it out as Marnigan squeezed his two hundred and fifty pounds beside him.

Instinctively, Hathaway added, asteroid monsters. My camera, what a scene. Damn your damn camera, yelled Marnigan. They might come in use your gun. They got him purdeous hides no use gyah, And that was a pretty chase.

They click, Yeah, sure, you enjoyed it every moment of it. Oh, I did that, Irish grinned, showing white, uneven teeth. Now what will we be doing with these uninvited guests at our door? Let me think lots of time, little man, forty more minutes of air to be exact. They sat staring at the monsters for about a minute.

Hathaway felt funny about something. Didn't know what something about these monsters and gunther And which one will you'll be having, asked Irish casually, A red one or a blue one? Hathaway laughed nervously, A pink one with yellow rattles. Good God, now you got me doing it joking in the face of death. My father taught me keep laughing, you'll always have Irish luck.

That didn't please the photographer. I'm an Anglo Swede, he pointed out. Marnigan shifted uneasily. Here. Now you're doing nothing but sitting looking like a little boy locked in a bedroom closet.

So take me a profile shot of the beasties and myself. Hathaway petted his camera reluctantly. What in hell's the use all that swell film shot? Nobody'll ever see it, then retorted Marnigan, we'll develop it on our own benefit. While waiting for the US cavalry to come riding over the hill to our rescue, Hathaway snorted, US Cavalry.

Marnigan raised his protagon forman stop me this pose, he said, I paid your salary to trot along photograph and we hoped my capture of Gunther now the least you can do with record piece negotiations between me and these pixies. Marnigan wasn't fooling anybody. Hathaway knew the superficial palaver for nothing but a covering over the fast, furious thinking running around in that red cropped skull. Hathaway played the palaver too, but his mind was worrying faster than his camera as he spun a picture of Marnigan standing there with a useless gun pointed at the animals, montage Martigan sitting chatting at the monsters, Marnigan smiling for the camera, Martigan and profile Martigan looking grim without much effort for the camera, and then a closeup of the thrashing death wall that hold them in.

Klick took them all those shots, not saying anything. Nobody fooled nobody with this act. Death was near and they had sweaty faces, dry mouths, and frozen guts. When Klik finished filming, Irish sat down to save oxygen and used it up. Arguing with Gunther, Click came back at him.

Gunther drew us down here, sure a series that gravity change? We felt back on that ridge, Irish. That proves it. Gunther's short on men. So what's he do?

He builds an asteroid base and drag ships down. Space war isn't perfect, kick Gunstone prime true in space trajectory is lousy over long distances. So what's the best weapon which dispenses with losing valuable rare ships and a small bunch of men. Super Gravity and a couple of well tossed meteors saves all around, and it's a good front. This damned iron pebble from it, Gunther strengths unseen ship simply crash.

That's all a subtle hand with all aces. Marnigan grumbled, where is the dirty sun? Then he didn't have to appear Irish. He sent them. Hathaway nodded at the beasts.

People crashing here dye from air, lack no food, or from wounds caused at the crack out. If they survive all that the animals tend to them. It all looks like nature was responsible. See how subtle his attack is. Looks like accidental death instead of murder.

If the patrol happens to land and finds us no reason for undue investigation, then I don't see no base click shrug, Still doubt it. Okay. Look, He capped his camera and a school popped out onto his gloved palm. Holding it up, he stripped it out to its full twenty inch length, held it to the light while it developed, smiling. It was one of his best inventions self developing film.

The first light struck film surface destroyed one chemical leading imprints. The second exposure simply hardened, secured the impressions. Quick stuff. Inserting the film tongue into a micro viewer in the camera's base click, handed the whole thing over. Look.

Marnigan put the viewer up against the helmet glass, squinted. Ah, click, Nam, Now this is one lousy film you've invented. Huh, it's a strange process. You've developed my picture, and ignore the asteroid monsters. Complete what Hathaway grabbed the camera, gasped, squinted, and gasped again.

Pictures in montage Marnigan sitting down, chatting conversationally with Nothingnigan shooting his gun at nothing, Marnigan pretending to be happy in front of nothing, then close up of nothing. The monsters had failed to image the film. Marnigan was there, his hair like a red banner, his freckled face with the green eyes bright in it. Maybe, Hathaway said it loud, irish, irish. I think I see a way out of this mess, Carrie.

He elucidated it over and over to the patrolman about the film, the beasts, and how the film couldn't be wrong if the film said the monsters weren't there. They weren't there, Yeah, said Martigan, But step outside the cave. If my theory is correct, I'll do it, unafraid, said click. Martigan scowled, you're sure them beasts don't radiate ultra violet or infrared or something that won't come out on film nuts any color. We see the camera sive, We've been fooled.

Hey, where are you going? Marnigan blocked Hathaway as the smaller man tried pushing past him. Get out of the way, said Hathaway. Marnigan put his big fists on his hips. If anyone is going anywhere, it'll be me does the going.

I can't let you do that, Irish. Why not? You'd be going on my say so? Ain't you say so good enough for me? Yes?

Sure of course, I guess if you say the man animals ain't there, that's all I need. Stand aside your film, develop and flee and let an irishman settle their bones. He took an unnecessary hitchen trousers that didn't exist except an inch of porous metal plate. Your express purpose on this voyage, Hathaway is taken films to be used by the patrol later for teaching junior patrol and how to act in tough spots firsthand education. Poke another spool of film in that contraption and give me a profile scan.

This is less than number seven. Daniel walks into the Lion's day Irish. I shot up and load up. Hathaway nervously loaded the film slot raised it ready. Click, I kess, so, said Hathaway.

And remember, think it hard, Irish, think it hard. There aren't any animals. Keep me in focus a lot all the way Irish where they say oh yeah, action light camera. Margan held his gun out in front of him, and still smiling, took one, two, three, four steps into the outside world. The monsters were waiting for him.

At the fifth step, Marnigan kept walking right out into the middle of them. That was the sweetest shot Hathaway ever took, Marnigan and the monsters. Only now it was only Marnigan, no more monsters. Marnigan smiled, a smile broader than his shoulders. Hey, click, look at me, I'm in one pace.

Why hell the damn things turned out and run away? Ran hell, cried Hathaway, rushing out, his face flushed and animated. They just plane vanished. They were only imaginative figments. And to think we let them hold us in that way.

Click, Hathaway, you coward smile when you say that Irish? Sure, and ain't I always smile it? Kickboy, the tears in your sweet gray eyes damp, swore the photographer embarrassedly. Why don't they put window wipers in these helmets. I'll take it up with the board, lad forget it.

I was still plain glad to see your homely carcass in one hunk. I couldn't help look now about Gunta. Those animals are hard to set up. Explorers who land here inadvertently chase back into their ships, forced to take off tourists and the light. Nothing suspicious about animals.

If the tourists don't leave, the animals kill them. Sure now, those animals can't kill I think not, Martigan. As long as we believed in them, they could have frightened us to death, forced us maybe to commit suicide. If that isn't dangerous, the irishman whistled. But we've got to move, Irish.

We've got twenty minutes of oxygen in that time. We've got to trace these monsters to their source Gunther's base, find our way in and get fresh oxycanisters. Click attention to his camera to his midbelt. Gunther probably thinks we're dead by now. Everyone else has been fooled by his playmates.

They never had a chance to disbelieve them if it hadn't been for you taken them pictures today, coupled with your dam stubborn attitude about the accident. Click stopped and felt his insides turning to water. He shook his head and felt a film slipped down over his eyes. He spread his legs out to steady himself and swayed. I don't think my oxygen is as full as yours.

His excitement had been double breathing. I feel sick. Marnigan's homely face grimmest in sympathy. Hold a tight click. The guy that invented these fish boats didn't provide for a six stomach old tight hell, let's move.

We gotta find where those animals came from, and the only way to do that is to get the animals to come back. Come back. How they're waiting just outside the aura of our thoughts. If we believe in them, they'll return. Marnigan didn't like it.

Won't tay kill us if they come, if we believe in him. Hathaway shook a head that was tons heavy and weary. Not if we believe them to a certain point, psychologically, they can be both seen and felt. We only want to see them coming at us again, do we now? With twenty minutes left, maybe less?

All right, click, let's bring them back. How do we do it? Hathaway fun against the mist in his eyes. Just think I will see the monsters again. I will see them again, and I will not feel them.

Think it over and over. Marnigan's hull stirred uneasily. And what if I forget to remember all that? What if I get excited? Hathaway didn't answer, but his eyes told the story by just looking at Irish.

Marnigan cursed, all right, lad let's have at it. The monsters returned, a soundless deluge of them, pouring over the rubbled horizon, swarming and malevolent anticipation about the two men. This way, Irish, to come from this way. There's a focal point, ascending station for these telepathic prooves. Come on.

Hathaway sludged into the pressing tide of color mouths, contorted faces, and silvery fat bodies, misty as he cloud through them. Martigan was making good progress ahead of Hathaway, but he stalked and raised his gun and made quick moves with it. Click this one here, it's real. He fell back and something struck him down. His immense frame slammed against rock noiselessly.

Hathaway darted forward, flung his body over Marnigan's covered the helmet glass with his hands, shouting, Marnigan, get a grip, damn it, it's not real. Don't let it forth into your mind. It's not real, I tell you quick. Marnigan's face was a bitter, tortured movement behind glass quick he was fighting hard. Sure, no, sure, it's only a shanty fake, keep saying it, Irish, keep it up.

Martigan's thick lips open. It's only a fake, he said, and then irritated. Get the head off of me, Hathaway, Let me up to my feet. Hathaway got up shakily. The air in his helmet smelt stale, and little bubbles danced in his eyes.

Irish, you forget the monsters. Let me handle them. I know how they might fool you again. You might forget. Martigan showed his teeth.

Yeah, let the flea have all the fun. And besides, click, I'd like to look at them. They're pretty. The outpour of animals came from a low lying mound a mile further on. Evidently the telepathic source lay there.

They approached it wearily. We'll be taken, our chances on guard, hissed, Irish. I'll go ahead, draw their attention, maybe get captured. Then you show up with your gun. I haven't gone one.

We'll chance it. Then you stick here until I see what's ahead. They probably got scanners out let them see me, And before Hathaway could object, Martigan walked off. He walked about five hundred yards, bent down, applied his fingers to something. Heaved up, and there was a door opening in the rock.

His voice came back across the distance into Click's earphones. A door, an airlock, Click, a tunnel leading down inside. Then Marnigan dropped into the tunnel, disappearing. Click heard the thud at his feet hitting the metal flooring. Click sucked in his brin hard and fast.

All right, put them up. A new harsh voice cried over a different radio one of Gunther's guards. Three shots sizzled out, and Marnigan bellowed. The strange harsh voice said, don't try and pick up now bush with you. I thought gun had finished water.

Did you past the animals? Click started running. He switched off his sending audio kept receiving on Marnigan weaponless one guard. Click gasped, things were getting dark. Had to have air air.

He ran and kept running and listening to Marnigan's lying voice. I tried them pink elephants of Gunther's and Nat Alpha at hoop bundles and stacked them up to dry your louse, Marnigan said, but damn you, they killed my partner before he had a chance, the guard laughed. The air locked door was still wide open when Klick reached it, his head swimming darkly, his lungs crammed with pain, fire in hell rockets. He let himself down in quiet and soft. He didn't have a weapon.

He didn't have a weapon. Damn, damn. A tunnel curved ending in light, and two men silhouetted in that yellow glare. Marnigan backed against a wall, his helmet cracked, air hissing slowly out of it, his face turning blue, and the guard a proton gun extended stiffly before him, also in a back suit. The guard had his profile toward Hathaway, his lips twisting right there and daring.

He said, quietly, that's what Kuper wanted anyway, and they sort of death. Hathaway took three strides, his hands out in front of him. Don't move, he snapped, I've got a weapon stronger than yours. One twitch and I'll blast you in the whole damned wall out from behind you. Freeze.

The guard whirled, He widened his sharp eyes and reluctantly dropped his gun to the floor. Get his gun, Irish, Marnigan made as if to move, crumpled clumsily forward. Hathaway ran in, snatched up the gun, smirked at the guard thanks proposing. He said that shot will go down in film history for candid acting. Ah, keep your place, I've got a real gun.

Now, where's the door leading into the base. The guard moved his head suddenly over his left shoulder, but was afraid he would show his weak dizziness. He needed air. Okay, drag Marnigan with you. Open the door and will have air double time double.

Ten minutes later, Marnigan and Hathaway fresh tanks of oxygen on their backs, Marnigan in a fresh boulger and helmet. Trust The guard hid him in a huge trans receptacle where he belongs. Observed irish tersely. They found themselves in a complete inner world, an asteroid nothing more than a honeycomb fortress sliding through the void unchallenged, perfect front for a raider who had little equipment and was shorthanded of men. Gunther simply waited for a specific cargo ship to rock it by, pull them down, or knocked them down, and swarmed over them for cargo.

The animals served simply to ensure against suspicion and the swarms of tourists that filled the void. These days, small fry weren't wanted. They were scared off. The telepathic sending station for the animals was a great bank of intricate glittering machine through which strips of colored film with images slid into slots and machine mouths that translated them into thought emanations. A damned meat piece of genius.

So here we are still not much better off than we were, growled Irish. We haven't a ship or a space radio, and more guards will turn up at any moment. You think we could refocus this du hicky project the monsters inside the asteroid to fool the pirates themselves. Look what that do, hath the way nod his lip. It would fool the engineers who created them were nut.

Marnigan exhaled, disgustedly. Ah, if only the US cavalry would come right and over that hill, Irish Hathaway snapped his face, lighting up Irish, the US cavalry it is. His eyes darted over the machines. Here. Help me will state everything on the most co lossle raid of the century.

Marnigan winced, you've either oxygen or whiskey. There's only one stipulation I make irish. I want a complete picture of Marnigan capturing Raider's base. I want a picture of Gunther's face when you do it. Snap it.

Now. We've got rush work to do. How good an actor are you? That's a silly question. You only have to do three things.

Walk with your gun out in front of you, firing. That's number one. Number two is to clutch at your heart and fall down dead. Number three is to clutch at your side, fall down and twitch on the ground. Is that clear?

Clear? Is the coal sack? Nebula? An hour later, half Away trudged down a passageway that led out into a sort of city street. Inside the asteroid, there were about six streets lined with cube houses in yellow metal, ending near Hathaway in a wide, green lawned plaza.

Hathaway weaponless idly carried his camera in one hand, walked across the plaza as if he owned it. He was heading for a building that was pretentious enough to be Gunther's quarters. He got halfway there when he felt a gun in his back. He didn't resist. They took him straight ahead to his destination and pushed him into a room where Gunther sat.

Hathaway looked at him. So your Gunner, he said calmly. The pirate was incredibly old. His bulging forehead stood out over sunken questioningly dark eyes, and his scrawny body was lost in folds of meddling cloth. He glanced up from a paper final surprise.

Before he could speak, Hathaway said, everything's over with, mister Gunther. The patrol's in the city now, and we're capturing your faith. Don't try to fight with a thousand men against your eighty five. Gunther sat there, blinking in half away, not moving. His thin hands twitched in his lap.

You are bluffing, he said finally, with a firm directness. A ship has landed here for an hour. Your ship, with the last two people were on it. The last I saw of them. They were being pursued to the death.

But the beasts one off you escaped. It seemed both the other guy went after the patrol. Impossible. You can't respect your opinion, mister Gunther. A shouting rose from the plaza.

About fifty of Gunther's men, lounge on carved benches during their time off, stirred to their feet and started yelling. Gunther turned slowly to the huge window in one side of his office. He stared hard. The patrol was coming across the plaza, marching quietly and decisively. Came the patrol.

Five hundred patrolmen in one long, incredible line, carrying paralysis guns with them in their tight hands. Gunther babbled like a child, his voice a shrill dagger in the air. Get out there, you men, throw them back. We're outnumbered. Guns flared, but the patrol came on.

Gunther's men didn't run. Hathaway had to credit them on that. They took it stead. Hathaway chuckled inside deep but a sweet, sweet shot, for this was his camera were clicked and worked again. Nobody stopped him from filming it.

Everything was too wild, hot and angry. Gunther was stirring a fit, still seated at his desk, unable to move because of his fragile, bony legs and their after feet state. Some of the patrol were killed. Hathaway chuckled again as he saw three of the patrolman clutch of their hearts. Crump will lie on the ground and twitch.

God, what photography. Gunther raged and swept a small pistol from his length corselate. He fired wildly until Hathaway hit him over the head with a paperweight. Then Hathaway took a picture of Gunther slumped at his desk, the chaos taking place immediately outside his window. The pirates broke and fled those who were left a mere handful, and out of the chaos came Martigan's voice.

Here one of the patrolmans stopped firing and ran toward click end of the building. He got inside. Did you see them run? Clickboy, what an idea? How'd we do?

Fine? Irish? Fine? So here's gun through the spalpeen gun through the little droid up pirates. Eh, Martigan whacked half away on the back.

I'll have to hand it to you. This is the best plan of battle ever laid out. And proud I was to fight with such splendid men as Lease. He gestured toward the plaza. Click laughed with him.

You should be proud. Five hundred patrolmen with their hair like red banners flying, with thick Irish brogues and broad shoulders and freckles and green eyes eyes and a body as tall as your stories, Marnigan roared. I always said I said, if there could be an army of Marnigan's we could lick the whole damn universe. Did you photographic click? I did half away, tapped his camera happily.

Ah, then, won't that be a scoop for your boy? Money from the patrol so they can use the film as instruction in classes, and money from cosmic films for the newsreel headlines. And what a scene in what acting? Five hundred duplicates of Steve Marnigan broadcast telepathically into the minds of the pirates walking across the plaza, capturing the whole shebang? How did you like my death scenes?

You're a ham in anyway? Five hundred duplicates? Nothing said click. He ripped the film school from the camera, spread it in the air to develop, inserted it into the micro viewer. Have a look.

Marnigan looked. Ah no, he said, over and over again. There's the plaza, and there's Stunter's men fighting, and they're turning and they're running, and what are they running from? One man me Iris Manigan, walking all by myself across the lawn, paralyzed in them one against a hundred, and the cowards running from me sure, click, This is better than I thought. I forgot that the film wouldn't read or telepathic gambinations, them other Marnigans.

It makes it look like I'm a mighty brave man, does it not? It does? Look at me, Look at me, Hathaway. I'm enjoying every minute of it. I am Hathaway swatted him on his back side.

Look here, you egocentric son of Erin. There's more work to be done, more pirates to be captured. The patrol is still marching around, and someone might be suspicious if they look too close and saw on that red hair. All right, click, we'll clean up the rest of them. Now we're a combination.

We two, we are. I take it all back about your pictures. Click. If you hadn't thought of taking pictures of me and in certain into that telepath machine, we'd beat dead ducks. Now, well, here I go.

Hathaway stopped him. Hold it until I load my camera again, Irish grin horeos huth. Here come three guards. Oh they're unarmed. I think I'll handle them with me fists for a change, the gentle art of uppercuts.

I already, hath Away. Ready. Marnigan lifted his big ham fists the camel word. Hathaway chuckled to himself, What a sweet fade out this was. This episode performed and produced by Father Malone.

Music by H. P.

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