Cosmic Striptease - (1)

A picture is worth a thousand words--especially if they're Martian words and nobody can understand them. So Mars put on a spectacular for Earth, using the skies as a TV screen. This proved the superiority of their science. But their morals--Wow!
    The Atlas didn't make it--it blew up. And so did the Thor. The Vulcan wasn't much better; it just went pfftt. None of them got anywhere near outer space--the real outer space. Oh, yes, they went up hundreds of miles, even thousands. The Vulcan went nearly five thousand. But they were still in the Electro-Magnetic Field. Nobody really understood the EMF. Einstein had hit on it with his final theory, before he died. He said gravity and magnetism were just manifestations of something else, some single thing that held the very secret of matter.
    It was suspected that the Vulcan had reached the limits of the EMF, but nobody was sure. You can't be very sure about a thing that just goes pfftt, and then isn't there any more. Not there at all! That's what radar said, and telescopes, and theodolites, and every other detection apparatus conceivable. Not until the Jason went up where no rocket had ever gone were they sure. Sure that man would never leave the confines of his EMF--at least until he solved the problem of the nature of the EMF. And that seemed the problem of the nature of matter itself. You'll have to admit, that's a difficult problem to tackle.
    Yes, they tackled it. Theories were a dime a dozen. But just what the EMF really was, nobody could say even mathematically. Instead of wasting money on rockets that went pfftt, they began to investigate space with rays, frequencies, radiations, echoes, electronic things the man in the street just didn't understand. What he did understand, however, was the answer that came back from space, as a result of all this electronic probing.
    Mars picked us up, and answered!
    We thought we had quite a bit of electronic science. But we turned out to be babes in the woods. The Martians knew more about rays and waves and frequencies and vibrations than the Yanks knew about buying baseball players. They had a real cool signal. They called it the Resonating Magnetic Field. You know what a resonating field is, don't you? It's like a great big drum--you hit it right, and it'll vibrate with the biggest boom you ever heard. It resonates.
    *       *       *       *       *
    Our scientists knew how to resonate crystals; but the Martians could resonate the atmosphere. And when they resonated our atmosphere, every Earthman dug them, no matter where he was. That's the way their first signal reached us--a resonant voice sounded clearly everywhere on Earth, speaking in the language of the area in which it was heard. It was all a matter of resonant pitch. A thought has a basic wave, and it can be keyed to any pitch. When you say something, you express a thought by resonating the atmosphere. No matter if you speak English, or German, or Brooklyn--it's all the same thought. Well, when the Martians talked, we, each of us, were our own wave converter, and the vibrations that hit our eardrums came out whatever language we talked.
    How did they do it? Well, how do you explain electronic knowledge as advanced as that? You're right, they didn't. They didn't even try. They said we wouldn't get it anyway, so why waste air-time?
    A few of our big-domes were incensed, but the Martians let them smoke. They said they'd been watching our rocket efforts, and had figured we were pretty stupid, since everybody in the Solar System (and outside it for that matter) knew you couldn't lick the EMF with rockets. But then we'd started our electronic probing of outer space, and they lifted their mental eyebrows. It, they said, gave them the itch to give us a few pointers.
    You can imagine the fuss there was in the Pentagon; and in the Kremlin for that matter. Here was a chance to load up on classified stuff of the highest order, and something called an RMF was the biggest leak the world had ever known.
    Well, the Martians deep-froze that kind of idea right away. They weren't going to have any truck with secrets, especially secret weapons. They gave us quite a ribbing about weapons, and there were a lot of red faces on Earth. They were civilized, they said, and even their plows had been beaten into resonators. They had a highly developed moral sense, and the word war appeared in their dictionaries only in the archaic section.
    They were going to tell us a lot of things, to be sure, but they were going to elevate us. They were going to make real ladies and gentlemen out of us, like they were. And as a beginning, they said they were going to put on a pageant. They were going to depict life on Mars for us as it was today, in all its glory and perfection, and they were going to do it in the form of a play.
    You can picture the Broadway producers perking up their ears at this, and right away they began thinking of the whole thing in the terms of a "production." Naturally, when the Martians said it would be done via world-wide television, the big networks immediately sensed a big deal, and they jumped almost as high as Vulcan.
    But the Martians said the broadcast didn't need receivers, but that the sky itself would be the TV screen. This was going to be exactly the opposite of closed-circuit TV. This was wide open--as wide open as Minsky's in the Twenties.
    *       *       *       *       *
    Nobody knows how they did it, but NBC and CBS got a dual contract with the Martians for the commercials! Yes, it's true. The Martians agreed to monitor their commercials, and then rebroadcast them as part of the Big Show that was to introduce Earthmen to Martians.
    The sponsors weren't difficult to sell! They fell all over themselves to get spots on the program.
    Actually, the whole thing was the most serious development in world history. Picture it for yourself. Out of a clear sky, one day (and night, because it involved the whole Earth in the same instant) a voice came from outer space, from Mars, and introduced us to a form of life our scientists had always claimed was a member of the lichen family, but which actually was a lot more human than you are. What we had thought was the lowest form of mossback, was actually the highest human civilization in the solar system. Wedgewood china, suspension bridges, and hot dogs were old stuff thirty thousand years ago with the Martians. They were really advanced. And when we understood it (most of us, that is) we felt mighty flattered to think that they were going to try to rub some of it off on us.
    *       *       *       *       *
    Actually the Big Show idea was a good one. Their psychologists had studied us, and had decided that the best way to educate us was the painless way--by entertaining us. They knew how TV fascinated us. They noted our bowed shoulders, our kinked necks, our TV squint. What more natural thing than to put on the biggest TV show of all, and at the same time take the bow out of our shoulders, the kink out of our necks, and restore the focus of our eyes to the natural one of infinity? The whole sky was going to become one gigantic television screen, in perfect focus, in full (how full we never imagined until we saw it!) color, and in Three-D.
    This Big Show, they said, was going to come in like cosmic rays, from every direction, but seeming to focus directly overhead. Every seat in the house would be the best seat in the house. You were the entire audience, sitting in the one seat, surrounded from horizon to zenith by the entire stage. The Earth's EMF, they said, was a perfect lens shape--and it formed a perfect focus on the center of the Earth. The atmosphere was a perfect lens also, because it was governed by, and in fact owed its existence, as did the entire Earth, to the EMF.
    Ever stop to think that it's the EMF that makes the direction exactly opposite to your feet the direction we call up, no matter where we stand on Earth? To a Chinese, up is the other way. It's the EMF does that. The EMF, expressing itself as gravity. There really isn't anything called gravity, as an entity. The EMF is the entity, and gravity is one of its legs. Magnetism is the other. Maybe the only way you could describe the EMF would be to call it the body. And nobody knows what the head is!
    The egotist who thinks he is the center of the universe may be right after all. Except that he's not alone. Everybody else is at the center too!
    Not that Edith Miller was ego-centric. She was beautiful, yes, but not ego-centric. She was not only beautiful, but she was private secretary to Herman Fendler, head of the new NBC-CBS Big Show Merger. It was quite true that she would not have been secretary had she not been beautiful. After all, it's what you see on TV that counts, and the bosses never let that fact get very far out of their minds. Anything that couldn't go before a camera, didn't go in TV, anywhere. Edith went everywhere. She was the kind of a girl who, when you saw her, you wanted to see more--and you cursed the "things as they are" that made it impossible. It just wasn't fair, was the thought that instantly suggested itself as you saw enough to realize there was much more.
    *       *       *       *       *
    That was the thought that Roy Mallory usually carried in his mind as he went about his business of Production and Coordination. And sometimes it effected his coordination, but never his production. As a TV producer, he was tops. And now, the youngest man in the sharpest of all businesses, he was assigned to handle the biggest "spectacular" of them all. To give you an idea of how highly regarded he was, having given him the assignment, Herman Fendler also gave him his secretary--but strictly on loan.
    Roy's face was flushed as he walked back to his office, Edith beside him, Fendler's words still ringing in his ears.
    "The Big Show!" he breathed. "Wow!"
    "Not too big for you," said Edith.
    "Not with you to handle the details," he returned, gallantly.
    "That will be wise," she said.
    "Huh?" he said.
    "To let me do all the handling."
    He flushed a different kind of flush now. "What makes you think...."
    "The look on your face when Mr. Fendler said you could have me. I've seen that look hundreds of times, and it always means the same thing."
    "But...." he protested.
    "We understand each other perfectly, don't we?" she asked sweetly.
    "Yes. We have our desks in separate offices."
    "No we don't. I intend to sit with my desk directly opposite you so I can keep my eye on you at all times. Mr. Fendler gave me the job of seeing that you do your job, and I'm going to do it."
    "Sadist," he snapped.
    "Of course," she agreed. "But can I help it?"
    He looked at her, and suddenly he grinned. "No, you can't. But with you sitting across from me, that realization won't lessen my sufferings any."
    "It won't be so bad," she said. "You can look."
    "You are a sadist!" he exclaimed.
    *       *       *       *       *
    The Big Show opened with a commercial. Roy and Edith were sitting atop the roof of the central studio, relaxing in contour chairs. Roy's chair adjusted to his figure comfortably as he leaned back, but Edith's found the task impossible. She squirmed about until Roy glanced at her and remarked: "Why don't you give up? The chair isn't made that can fit those curves. You've just got too much of a good thing, that's all."
    "It isn't the chair," she said, "it's that commercial. Just look at it!"
    Roy stared at the huge box of breakfast food that loomed across the entire sky.
    "The sponsor is probably delirious with joy," he said. "Did you ever see such color, and such sharpness of focus? It's so vivid you can almost reach right up and touch it. It's really there, not a picture!"
    "But what a thing to open the most important historical event of all time--the establishment of visual communication with another planet!"
    "I get what you mean," said Roy. "But if you don't stop squirming, I'll find myself unable to concentrate on the Big Show."
    Footsteps behind them announced the late arrival of Herman Fendler, and he literally hurled himself into his contour chair as he puffed: "Stupendous! Utterly stupendous! And to think that we've got the contract for these commercials!"
    Now the scene changed, and it was Fendler himself, announcing the Big Show. Fendler beamed as his own voice rolled out of the sky, sonorous and dignified and with the clarity of a golden bell, slightly amalgamated with bronze.
    "Ladies and gentlemen of the world. We bring you now the Big Show. The sensational Martian television broadcast of the Pageant of Life as it is lived on Mars. It is with great pride that we announce that through the combined efforts of NBC-CBS we bring you the most historic event in television history, or in the Earth's history, for that matter.
    "You all know how the Martians first communicated with us from space. You all heard the voice that came to us so unexpectedly. But now, at last, we can see as well as hear! For the first time you will see our fellow men and women from Mars, enacting before you the glorious pageant of their 35,000 year history.
    "It is through this history that they hope to acquaint you with themselves, so that we can go on through the future as brother worlds, understanding each other, respecting each other, loving each other. It is true that our Martian brothers are far advanced over us, in the mechanics of civilization as well as the moral values. It is also true that as we watch, we will be forced to revise many of our own standards, but all for the better. It is the fond hope of the Martians, and of the many among us who are concerned with our future development, the governments, the churches, the universities, that we will be speeded up along the path of civilization upon which the Martians have so long trod.
    "Let us pray that what we see now, and in the days to follow, nay, the weeks and months, for it will be a pageant of tremendous length to show the history of 35,000 years, will be as a leaven to enlarge our lives, and catapult us into a higher development that can enrich us beyond our dreams.
    "My fellow men, I give you--the Martians!"
    *       *       *       *       *
    A burst of applause followed, and Fendler beamed. "You think of everything, my boy," he approved. "Makes the show seem more live."
    Roy looked at Edith and snorted, almost inaudibly. She looked back. "No matter what you think," she whispered, "I can tell you he expected it, and your name would be mud if you hadn't included it. Don't let it go to your head."
    "That's right," whispered Roy sarcastically. "Look out for me like a mother."
    Another voice came now, and with it the face of the first Martian ever seen on Earth.
    Edith gasped for breath. "He's beautiful!"
    The wind sagged out of Roy's sails, "Oh, no!" he groaned. "The last thing I expected--competition!"
    "Not at all," said Edith. "You never had a chance!"
    "He'll never lay a hand on you," said Roy maliciously. "Unless he can do it over TV."
    "If he could, I think I'd let him," returned Edith sweetly.
    "Your cruelty is savage beyond comprehension," growled Roy. "Why don't you jump off the roof...." His voice trailed away as he listened to the Martian.
    "Fellow men and women of Earth," came the voice, exquisitely clear and cultured. "We are happy to present ourselves to you. In order that you may know us completely, we will begin with what we on Mars consider the most important facet of our lives--the family. The next thing you will see is a Martian wedding, which is really the beginning of living on Mars. Until the day a Martian man and woman join themselves as a family, to begin the wonderful task of continuing the race, it cannot be said that they have really been alive, but only going through the first faint stirrings of life as it really is. Look now upon a Martian wedding day."
    *       *       *       *       *
    As the voice faded away, the face of the Martian, which had filled the whole sky, began to recede, and as it did so, his shoulders came into view, his bronzed chest, his perfectly formed arms, his gleaming nude torso....
    "Oh, my goodness!" screamed Edith, sitting erect in her chair. "Oh, my goodness!"
    "He's stark naked!" roared Fendler. "Mallory, he's nude as a jaybird!"
    "So I see," said Roy uncomfortably. "Rather makes the classical sculptures of the ancient Greeks seem crude by comparison, doesn't he?"
    "Eh?" said Fendler. "Oh ... yes, he ... does.... I see what you mean. But ..." he subsided and relaxed in his chair, because now the figure had vanished. "Classical art, personified. Great artists, those Martians must be...."