Cosmic Striptease - (2)

Roy looked covertly at Edith, who was trembling and trying to compose herself as she too returned to her reclining position.
    "Eight, nine, ten," he muttered.
    "What did you say?" asked Edith faintly, her composure returning.
    "Just counting myself out," said Roy sadly. "If that's what it takes, I'm long gone."
    Once more the gigantic television screen of the sky came to life, and this time Roy Mallory sat erect. "This is more like it!" he exclaimed with renewed interest.
    The scene was a great cathedral-like building, with the rays of the sun streaming redly through fantastically carved windows that seemed made of diamonds. Walking straight toward them came a young woman, smiling radiantly, and bearing in her arms a large bouquet of the most vivid and exotic flowers Roy had ever seen. Except for the flowers she wore absolutely nothing other than a gold band around her forehead, in the center of which was a gigantic, blood-red ruby.
    *       *       *       *       *
    Standing on both sides were long rows of smiling men and women, two by two, and in common with the girl who advanced down the aisle between them, they were all completely naked.
    "One thing seems certain," said Fendler. "Clothing is unknown on Mars. I hadn't suspected, but I suppose it would be best to make nothing of it."
    "Exactly, Mr. Fendler," said Roy. "God created man and woman in the Garden of Eden, unclothed, and it was only the warping effect of sin in their minds that made them wear clothing. Obviously on Mars this either never happened, or they have returned to godliness and purity."
    "You're right, my boy," said Fendler, beginning to beam again. And this time he beamed with distinct pleasure. "Beautiful, aren't they?"
    "Terrific!" said Roy.
    "The flowers are lovely," said Edith bravely. "She carries them so gracefully."
    "Flowers?" said Roy absently. "Oh, yes, flowers. Very nice. Geraniums, aren't they? Look! She's giving them to the audience!"
    "There's the groom," said Fendler. "My ... she's a lucky girl!"
    Edith threw the executive a look that should have made him sink through the roof, but he didn't see it. She returned her gaze quickly to the heavens and tried to stare composedly. Once again she found it difficult to find a comfortable position in her chair.
    For long minutes the three along with every other person on Earth, watched the ensuing ceremony, which was simple, direct, noble and uplifting. Background music that began as a murmur, grew until it became a virtual pæan of joy as the young Martian couple announced their eternal vows in ringing tones. Then, before the assembled audience, they removed their golden circlets from about their heads, and exchanged them. Obviously this completed the wedding ceremony, for now they clasped their arms around each other and kissed, long and tenderly.
    "It is ... lovely," said Edith wistfully.
    Now the young couple, arm in arm, advanced slowly up a few steps toward an ornate couch, around which burned candles with flames of a color never seen on Earth.
    "Eh?" said Fendler. He leaned forward anxiously.
    "Oh!" said Edith, her hand flying to her mouth as though to stifle any further outburst.
    "Ah!" said Roy.
    The couple advanced to the couch and sat down upon it. A moment of incredulous silence was broken as Fendler leaped to his feet. "Mallory!" he roared. "Get that show off the air! Cut the power! Smash the cameras! Do anything! The FCC will murder us!"
    "There's no power to cut," said Roy. "This isn't our show--remember. Just the commercials."
    "Then put on a commercial! Hurry, man!"
    "Right in the middle of the show?" asked Roy. "Besides, they control the commercials too. Immediately after this scene, as I understand it, they'll put on the breakfast cereal again. And it will be rather well-timed, I'd say...."
    Edith rose to her feet, her face flaming. "You've got to do something...."
    "I don't know what," said Roy, looking at the sky intently. "Besides, isn't this what they got married for?" He settled himself more comfortably.
    Fendler turned and raced from the roof. "Somebody turn that thing off!" he screamed. His voice floated back to Roy and Edith on the roof. It died away in the recesses of the building.
    "Nobody can turn it off," said Roy. "And it's going to go on for months...."
    "For months!" exclaimed Edith, horrified. She cast a glance upward, then turned away, clenching her fists, and biting her lips.
    "What's the matter?" asked Roy. "Can't you take it?"
    She stamped her foot. "Roy Mallory, you say one more word, and I'll...."
    Roy shrugged. "I'm surprised at you. Offhand, I'd say the Martians were highly advanced, sensible, uninhibited, pretty wonderful human beings. At least they know what they're living for. Maybe it would do you good to watch."
    Edith looked up momentarily at the sky, then lowered her gaze swiftly. "I ... I can't!" she whispered. Then she too ran from the roof and disappeared down the stairway.
    Roy looked after her a moment, then shrugged and returned to his contour chair and settled himself deeply into it.
    As the Big Show went on, he had no idea of the turmoil that was sweeping the world. It was only when the day's performance was over and he went down to his office that he got his first inkling. It consisted of the discovery that he had been fired--at the request of a certain breakfast cereals company.
    *       *       *       *       *
    By noon the next day every sponsor who had signed up for the Big Show had cancelled their contracts, and by midnight it became painfully obvious that although the contracts could easily be cancelled, it was not equally easy to cancel the show. That night the Big Show went on, depicting more of the family life of the Martians, taking Earth viewers through a typical day of a Martian couple on the day of the birth of their first child. To many of those who watched the show, it offered a tremendous fascination; but to others, more squeamish and unable to face the naked realities, both of the flesh and of the business of giving birth to a baby, neither of which spared any detail in their presentation, it was an experience past their ability to endure.
    However, as one prominent physician said: "This is the way a baby should be born! Every woman on Earth can take a lesson from what we have just seen ... if they did we'd have little use for doctors, psychiatrists or psychologists. This is the miracle of birth as it was meant to be."
    It was the unfortunate sponsor who made the loudest noise, though. His screams were heard the world over. His brand of beer, spoken of in such glowing terms before and after the broadcast, wasn't worth a nickel after the Martians did a re-run of the show depicting how the birth would have gone if the mother had been a drunkard. Now, indeed, were there faintings and mental blowups among the populace. The scene was rather ghastly. Some thought the Martians had overdone it, but as the president of the W.C.T.U. remarked triumphantly: "Exactly what we've been saying for decades!"
    At midnight the FCC suspended the license of the NBC-CBS Big Show Merger, and Herman Fendler himself lost his job. Along with him, of course, Edith Miller became unemployed, although no woman in that category could claim to be more beautifully unemployed.
    *       *       *       *       *
    Roy Mallory, visiting his office to remove some of his personal belongings, found her emptying her own desk.
    "Oh," he said. "Another casualty?"
    "You read the papers, don't you?" she asked.
    "Yes, I heard of the FCC closing the networks up. But it hasn't stopped the show. Tonight, you know, is the Martian version of what they do for entertainment. I suppose we'll be watching that happy young couple going out on the town and doing it up brown, or buff, as you might say...."
    "You will be watching," Edith cut in acidly. "I have no doubt at all. As for me...."
    "Certainly I'll be watching. That doll is almost as beautiful as you are, and I keep thinking how nice it would be if we were on Mars."
    "We're not," she said. "And we won't ever be."
    "Alas!" he said glumly. "And alack!"
    "You're as funny as a crutch," she said, stuffing the last of her belongings into her bag. "You ought to get yourself a job as a comedian."
    "Oh, I've already got a job," he said airily.
    "Oh?"
    "Yes."
    She stood there, poised as if to leave, but not actually translating the poise into action.
    "Where?" she asked, setting down her bag with a defiant slam.
    "I could use a good secretary," he said.
    "Tell me where you're working," she demanded impatiently.
    "I'm starting my own business in television producing," he said. "And I'll never make it go without a competent secretary, and ..." he put his hands behind his back, "... look, no hands."
    "I'll take the job," she said. "And what are you doing for your first show?"
    "Give me time," he grinned. "I just this minute started the new company."
    "I thought so," she said calmly. "Well, how about the Big Show?"
    "The Big Show!"
    "Why not?"
    "Who'll we get for a sponsor?" he asked sarcastically.
    "How about Sunbathing Magazine?" she suggested.
    He looked at her wide-eyed. "Sunbathing Magazine!" he gasped.
    "Of course. With all this publicity, their circulation will zoom to the moon, if they just grab it--and it's up to you to see that they do!"
    "Baby," he said wonderingly, "I just don't know how to take you."
    "Don't try it," she said, picking up a letter-knife and toying with it.
    *       *       *       *       *
    Exactly one week later the Martians dropped all their previously scheduled commercials, and put on the first of the new commercials. As Roy Mallory reclined in the contour chair atop the roof of his newly rented office, Edith Miller suddenly appeared at his side and looked around.
    "Where's my chair?" she asked.
    He leaped to his feet. "I didn't think you cared to watch the Big Show," he said. "I only ordered one chair. You're always yelling about extravagance...."
    "All right," she said. "I'll sit on the parapet."
    "You'll get a stiff neck."
    "I've already got one," she said.
    "I'll say you have," he said disgustedly. "But why not forget all that? This chair is big enough for two."
    "I don't need this job that bad."
    He grunted and sat down in the chair again. "Okay. But tell me if your neck does get stiff--I'll change off with you, fifty-fifty."
    "Fair enough," she said.
    The show began, and there was silence on the roof. Edith watched calmly, and Roy divided his attention between watching her and the show. As the show progressed, it became obvious that the script was perfect for the new sponsor.
    "We'll make a million on that percentage agreement," said Edith.
    "Two million," said Roy. "I think I'll make you a partner for that bit of masterminding."
    "Keep it," she said. "And by the way, isn't that the roof of the Sunbathing Magazine building over there?"
    "Yes."
    "And isn't that the editorial staff of Sunbathing Magazine out on the roof watching the show?"
    "Yes."
    "And aren't they in the buff, as you so crudely put it, in spite of the fact the sun isn't out?"
    Roy sat up in his chair and looked sharply at the roof in question. In the vivid light from the sky-pictures, which now were showing a happy couple soaring fantastically in a Martian equivalent of the aerial gadgets of Coney Island, still unimpeded by the briefest of entangling garments, it was quite obvious that the editorial staff of Sunbathing Magazine was indeed buffing it.
    "They're pretty modern over there," he said. "You can't blame them for practicing what they preach."
    "But isn't this an innovation?"
    "I believe so. Usually they limit their activities to private camps."
    "I heard today that there were new teenage clubs being formed, patterned after the Big Show," said Edith.
    "Clubs?"
    "Yes. The police arrested a whole group of them in Sandusky, Ohio, for stripping off their clothes during a local hop."
    "That's not so good," said Roy.
    "Oh, I don't know. They weren't really doing anything wrong."
    Roy almost choked. "Nothing wrong...."
    "No. They were conducting the whole affair on a highly moral plane. The police let them go, and dismissed the case when their parents showed up and suggested that it was all rather natural, and that they felt no harm had been done."
    "The parents said that?" asked Roy incredulously.
    *       *       *       *       *
    Weeks passed, and the Big Show went on. The audience, which had always been huge, now became almost universal. And no longer were there any remarks about nudity, but instead "sunbathing" groups began springing up everywhere. For a time this development, which began to edge its way into public places with an accelerated pace, rather than private camps, stirred up another storm, and there were demands that Sunbathing Magazine be banned from the newsstands. This fell through when the authorities pointed out the magazine was tame compared to the show in the heavens.
    Then one day Edith handed the phone to Roy with the remark: "Another sponsor."
    "Who?" asked Roy in surprise.
    "The League of Decency," said Edith. "Something about if they can't lick them, to join them." There was a peculiar look in her eyes as Roy took the phone and leaned back in his swivel chair to talk. When he had finished he turned back to Edith and said: "Baby, I've got a hunch that it won't be long before the only use the people on this Earth will have for clothing will be for protection from the elements--which after all, are not as temperate on Earth as they are on Mars, with its scientifically controlled weather."
    "You may be right," she said. She busied herself with her filing cabinet.
    *       *       *       *       *
    That night as Roy lay back on the roof-chair watching the Martian version of a musical show, which several weeks ago would have seemed tremendously daring, it stirred scarcely a flicker in his nervous system. It was in the middle of the ballet, wherein lovely Martian girls soared about on twinkling toes gloriously nude, bathed only in incredibly exotic color symphonies played on them by a master color organist, that Roy heard the soft pad of footsteps beside him. He heard Edith seat herself in her chair, but paid no attention, so engrossed was he in the spectacle before him. But as he lay there, something nagged at the back of his mind disturbingly, and all at once it hit him.
    Edith's footsteps had had the unmistakable slap of bare feet....
    For an instant he lay there frozen, then he turned his head with a jerk. Edith was lying in her contour chair, composedly looking at the Big Show. And she was as naked as the day she was born!
    He sat up angrily. "This is going too far!" he exploded.
    Edith turned to him in wonderment, her eyes wide. "What?" she gasped. "That's certainly a strange reaction, coming from you!"
    "You're as buff as a billiard ball!" he said indignantly, his face growing red.
    "I don't think I look like a billiard ball," she said. "I've always been under the impression I was rather nice looking. Neither square, nor perfectly round. Just nicely curved...."
    "Your sadism has gone too far this time!" he snapped. "I don't appreciate it at all. You can sit here and moon-bath if you want to, I'm going downstairs and work...."
    He began to stride toward the roof entrance.
    "What's the matter, can't you take it?" she called after him.
    He whirled. "If it'll satisfy your sadistic little mind," he said, "I can't! Now, are you pleased with yourself?"
    She looked hurt. "Who's being a sadist?" she said. She stood up and came toward him.
    He grew giddy and for a moment the roof whirled around him. Then all at once he found himself lying on the roof, and his head cradled on her lap. He looked up at her.
    "You aren't being a sadist?" he persisted.
    "Of course not," she said. "After all, the Martians are thirty thousand years ahead of us, and if it's all right with them ... who am I to be backward?"
    "Baby," he said, drawing her lips down to his, "you've been ahead of them all the time!"
    And all over the Earth mankind took a gigantic step forward, into a new Eden that promised many good things....
    THE END