Speaker 1: In just a moment X minus one.
Speaker 2: But first, some of the funniest situations you've ever witnessed
a car Every Wednesday night, when the devilish imagination of
mc Jack Bailey gets to work on NBC's Truth or Consequences,
You won't believe it until you hear it, So listening tomorrow.
Then another last session is in store later on with
the wise and witty Gracio Marks as he and contestants
play You Bet Your Life, While the melodic note in
your Wednesday evening schedule is music and fun. On Airtime
with Jazell McKenzie.
Speaker 3: Comet down for blast Off X minus five four three
two X minus one. Fire from the far horizons of
the unknown come transcribed tales of new dimensions in time
and space. These are stories of the future adventures in
which you'll live in a million, could be years, on
a thousand, maybe worlds. The National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation
with Galaxies Science Fiction Magazine presents.
Speaker 4: He minus one Tonight, the Mark Clifton Story Star Bright.
Speaker 1: Well, It's finally happened. I've known Edwood for a long
time now. That's why I'm writing this in the hope
that you'll understand and not think me mad. Whatever the outcome,
I hope you will not judge me too harshly for
what I've done or failed to do.
Speaker 5: Mister Holmes, mister Holmes.
Speaker 1: Come in.
Speaker 6: Oh hello, Chief, I just want to let you know
so that we're doing everything we can to find the children.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm sure you are. We've got three.
Speaker 7: Hundred men out calling the woods for them.
Speaker 6: The Army base has volunteered another hundred men, and we've
sent an all points bullet and every police unit in
the country.
Speaker 1: Fine, fine, I just want to check and make certain
our description is accurate. Your little girl Star was wearing
a blue dress and white sandals.
Speaker 7: Is that right?
Speaker 1: That's right?
Speaker 7: And she is?
Speaker 1: How old? Is six? Six years old?
Speaker 7: And the little howl boy holes seven?
Speaker 1: I believe seven.
Speaker 7: H Thank you, well, I'll be in touch with it.
Speaker 1: Well, that's very good to be Chief.
Speaker 8: Oh.
Speaker 1: By the way, yes, mister and missus Howell, how are
they taking Well, they're pretty upset naturally. Mister Howley's out
with a man searching. Yes, yes, I know.
Speaker 7: Missus Howell's in the car outside.
Speaker 1: Ruth is outside. Why didn't you come in?
Speaker 7: Well, she she said she'd rather not. Why see missus
Hall I.
Speaker 9: Thought I decided to come in. I'm not going to
sit on my feelings any long. I have to say this, Pete.
Bill and I have been your neighbors for almost a
year now. Our children have been almost inseparable.
Speaker 1: I know that.
Speaker 9: Then, how can you just sit here writing letters when
they may be lost somewhere or in trouble. Why aren't
you out with Bill and the rest of them searching?
Speaker 1: I can't, Ruth, I know how you feel. Please try
to understand. I intend to help find Bobby in Starr,
but I must do this first.
Speaker 10: Why what's so important about rude?
Speaker 1: I'm sorry?
Speaker 10: Sorry? Then, why don't you act like a man. You're inhuman? Please,
I don't ever want to see you or speak to
you again.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you won't.
Speaker 7: What was that, mister Holmes?
Speaker 1: Nolly Chief, If you don't mind, I'd like to be
alone for a moment.
Speaker 7: Okay, mister Holmes, I'll keep in touch.
Speaker 1: How can I tell them? How can I make them understand?
I write this to you because they must be made
to understand somehow. But I have to begin at the beginning.
I think I first noticed it one evening when Star
was three years old. I was in my reading chair
going over some work. Star was sitting on the floor
in the circle of light with her blunt nose, scissors
and scraps of paper. Her long silence made me glance down.
Speaker 8: And then we glew this togetheret for the line here.
Speaker 1: Star like that? Star? What is it?
Speaker 8: Daddy?
Speaker 1: Can I see what you've made? Uh? Huh, Well, well
it's quite a coincidence. What you know what they call
a piece of paper joined together with a half twist
like this? Nope, it's called a mobia strip.
Speaker 8: You mean somebody already made.
Speaker 1: One, a man named Mobius mathematician a long time ago.
Speaker 8: Did he know you can put a line on it
like that? So it has one side?
Speaker 1: Old joy? Yes, yes he did. Someday. I'll tell you
what it means.
Speaker 8: Now, what tell me about a Mobia's strip?
Speaker 1: Very complicated?
Speaker 8: Then read about it?
Speaker 1: Oh you wouldn't understand, honey, read me anyway, Okay, young lady,
But I warn you it'll be like one of those
nonsense rhymes. At least I hope it will. At three
years a child shouldn't have enough functioning intelligence to put
together a Mobia's strip. I had known for some time now,
the star was an exceptionally bright child. Just how bright?
I had no idea, not until I began to read
to her from an advanced physics book, The Theory of
the Mobius Strip to the Power of Infinity. Now, then,
are you sufficiently mixed up? Young lady?
Speaker 11: Daddy?
Speaker 12: You know what what?
Speaker 8: You read too slow?
Speaker 12: You say a word, then I think a long time,
then you say another word.
Speaker 1: I see. Just what would you have me do about it?
Speaker 9: Well?
Speaker 10: Teach me to read.
Speaker 8: Then I can think as quick as.
Speaker 1: I want the words quickly. It's an adverbtion.
Speaker 8: Oh, daddy, really, you pick on such unimportant things. I
want to learn to read.
Speaker 1: Okay, when would you like to begin?
Speaker 8: Right now? Tonight?
Speaker 1: Before she went to bed that evening, my daughter was
able to read. In the months that followed, a great
deal happened. Some of our friends, like Jim Petree, have
dropped in and been amused to see her on the
floor rapidly turning the pages of an encyclopedia as big
as she is. Sit down, Jim, Oh, thanks, Starr. Aren't
you going to say hello to Uncle Jim?
Speaker 11: Well, I see she's taken to looking at the pictures
in the encyclopedia and.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yes, come on in the library, Jim, I
like to talk to you, proudably Yeah, sure thing. Bring
you drinking, Okay, I'll shut the door here a while
all was secrecy. Sit down, Jim. We've been friends, you
and I ever since engineering school. So neither of us
have ever mentioned it. But one of the reasons we
were drawn together is because both of us have IQ
somewhere up in the genius ratings.
Speaker 11: Oh I think it was more than that.
Speaker 1: Well, that played a part. It isn't easy to be
exceptional in a world which regards mediocrity as the only
behavior above suspicion.
Speaker 11: Well, we all have to live with our afflictions. Yours
and mine is a quick mind and a dull environment.
Speaker 1: What would you do, Jim, if you were a parent,
as I am, whose wife had died as Eleanor did,
and you discovered that your only child was well afflicted
with a fantastically brilliant mind star.
Speaker 11: Oh, come on, pete, any little girl who's content just
to look at the pictures and the encyclopedia.
Speaker 7: I mean, after all, she.
Speaker 1: Wasn't looking at the pictures, huh, she was reading the pages? What?
Speaker 11: But she was turning them as fast as humanly possible.
Speaker 1: She was reading them. But I know I've tested her.
She not only remembers everything, she understands the concepts. She
even gets impatient with.
Speaker 11: Well have measured her?
Speaker 1: Why I've given her IQ tests, aptitude tests, reaction tables,
all the parapherneia for measuring something we know nothing about it.
Speaker 11: And.
Speaker 1: Tests don't work.
Speaker 11: How do you mean? Well?
Speaker 1: Either the tables are screwing your stars beyond all measurement, Peter, Are.
Speaker 11: You sure you're not projecting this? I mean, isn't it
possible at a few accidental.
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yes, yes, honey, I got lonely, Okay, Cook, come
on in, Uncle.
Speaker 8: Jim, would you read me a story?
Speaker 11: Why don't you read your own story?
Speaker 8: Because I'm only three and three year olds can't read.
Speaker 1: And so she had found the answer to her affliction
by herself conformity. She had already learned to conceal her intelligence.
So many of us break our hearts before we learn that.
When Star was four years old, according to state law,
her mind had developed enough so she could attend nursery school.
Speaker 13: Hi daddy, Hi.
Speaker 1: Honey, did you like nursery school?
Speaker 9: Oh?
Speaker 8: Yes, it was fun.
Speaker 1: What'd you learn today, not much.
Speaker 12: I tried to cut out paper dolls, but the scissors
kept slipping.
Speaker 1: I look, Starr, don't overdo it. That's as bad as
being too quick. The idea is that everybody has to
be just about standard average. That's the only thing people
will tolerate. It's expected that a little girl of four
should know how to cut out paper dolls properly.
Speaker 10: Oh.
Speaker 12: I guess that's the hard part, isn't it, daddy, to know?
How much you want to know?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the part I always found hard when I
was young.
Speaker 8: It's really all right. I let one little girl show
me how to cut them out, so now she likes me.
She just took charge of me in told the other
kids say she liked me too, so they did, because
she's the leader, even if she is one of the stupid.
What the stupid? That's the trouble with you, daddy. You
don't grasp things right away, just because you're only a
tween between.
Speaker 1: I assume that means an in between.
Speaker 8: That's right, you're in between a stupid and.
Speaker 1: A bright, and you're a bright. Yes.
Speaker 8: I made those names up when I was very little.
Speaker 1: How little?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 8: About six months old? Ah?
Speaker 1: The thoughts began to whirl around in my head. After
that one, A small fear kept growing inside me. How
profound was this little inn that was staring up at me?
How much did she understand?
Speaker 12: Already?
Speaker 1: Even as the thought formed, I learned the final horrifying
fact about my little girl.
Speaker 8: It's all right, Daddy, don't be afraid of me.
Speaker 1: How did you know that I was thinking anything like that?
Speaker 8: Well, I just figured it out.
Speaker 1: Star. I want you to ask me honestly when I
ask you this next question, will you?
Speaker 8: Yes?
Speaker 1: Star? Can you read people's minds? Are you a telepath? Well?
Speaker 8: Yes, Daddy, I thought so.
Speaker 1: You read my mind just now, didn't you?
Speaker 8: Yes?
Speaker 1: Now, I'd like to know something else, right, Can you
teach me to do it?
Speaker 8: You're already learning it, daddy. The trouble is you're so slow.
You didn't even know you were learning. See Daddy, Yeah,
you know what I wish?
Speaker 1: What do you wish?
Speaker 8: Well?
Speaker 1: Nothing, all the same. I knew exactly what she was wishing.
She was wishing for a companion whose mind would match
her own. You see, I was becoming telepathic. Just a minute. Well, hello,
you a little girl home? Yeah, she's upstairs. Who are
you I'm Robert. Robert.
Speaker 12: Who Robert? How my mother and father moved next door yesterday?
Speaker 1: Oh? Well, come in, Robert, I'd like to play with
your little girl. How'd you know I had a little girl? Oh?
I just know, I see. And how old are you?
Speaker 12: I'm six.
Speaker 1: Well I'll ask Starr to come downstairs. I'm sure she'd
be glad to see it.
Speaker 12: Yes, she will.
Speaker 1: Tell me, Robert. Are you a tween or a bride?
Speaker 12: Oh? I'm a What did you.
Speaker 1: Say, mister hols Helling. I didn't have to say it.
I could read his thought. He was a bride, and
there was no accident that he and his parents had
moved next door. Somehow Star had managed to make contact
with him, and they had arranged the whole thing. A
father is prepared to lose his daughter eventually, but not
so soon, not so terribly soon. Coming. Oh hello, Ruth,
something wrong.
Speaker 10: I was just looking for Bobby. I thought he was
over here playing with Star.
Speaker 1: I thought they were over your place.
Speaker 10: I don't understand it.
Speaker 1: I have noticed that they've been disappearing for a couple
of hours, almost every afternoon.
Speaker 9: Well I suppose they'll turn up again. They know better
than to cross the street by themselves. They're too little
for that. If they come here first, tell them to
come over and have some milk and cookies.
Speaker 1: I'll do that.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 10: Oh, by the way, this must belong to your Star.
Speaker 1: Oh it's that.
Speaker 9: Oh, some sort of coin or metal or something. I
found it out in the backyard after Star and Bobby
were playing. It looks brand new.
Speaker 1: Let's have a look.
Speaker 10: Oh it's something wrong.
Speaker 1: Did you say you found this in your backyard? Yes?
Speaker 10: What is it?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 9: Well, I've got to get back. They will be getting
home for dinner soon, so see you later.
Speaker 1: Yes, hello, Jim. Yes, do you have a portable spectral photometer?
Speaker 11: Well, sure, we've got a dozen here at the lab.
Speaker 1: Pack one up and get over here right away, will you.
Speaker 11: Well, Pete, I don't quit though, five.
Speaker 1: Look do as I say. Huh, it's important.
Speaker 8: Well okay, uh.
Speaker 11: Huh. Well let me check the amount of radioactivity again.
Speaker 1: You've checked it four times.
Speaker 11: That's about it.
Speaker 1: Okay, what's your opinion of this coin?
Speaker 11: Well, first of all, let me say this, it's the
real McCoy and also it doesn't exists. Look, Pete, that
coin is pre Egyptian. It's hand cast It's made out
of one of the oldest bronze alloys, one that was
lost four thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: So it's four thousand years old. It is and it isn't.
What do you mean?
Speaker 11: Listen, Pete. Old coins show where the edges get rounded
with handling, the surface oxidizes, the molecular structure changes, crystallizes.
Speaker 1: Pete.
Speaker 11: This coin is authentic, and yet it's brand new. It
might have been struck off yesterday.
Speaker 1: You realize, of course, that that's impossible.
Speaker 11: What'd you get a Pete?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think the kids got it.
Speaker 11: Star.
Speaker 1: Yes, I don't know. I'm almost afraid to think.
Speaker 11: Why not ask her?
Speaker 1: She isn't around. She and Robert are off playing somewhere.
Speaker 11: Do you know where?
Speaker 1: No? I, oh, Jim, it's just too fantastic. It isn't possible.
Speaker 11: I haven't said a word.
Speaker 1: I know what you're thinking.
Speaker 11: As a matter of fact, I was thinking something fantastic.
How did you guess?
Speaker 1: I just guessed, Jim, Let's find those kids right now? Okay, Star, Robert,
let's try the playroom, Star Robert. I did hear, let's
try back here.
Speaker 11: I hear something, but hey, it's coming from the room.
We were just in That's impossible.
Speaker 1: There's no place they could have hidden.
Speaker 11: I'm going to open that door.
Speaker 1: Take a jim. There they were in the middle of
the playroom, holding hands, a little shamefaced, a little defiant. Star, Robert,
where have you been now? I know you weren't in
this room a few seconds ago, and there are no
windows you could get through.
Speaker 8: Well, it's nothing, daddy, we just went a little way.
Speaker 1: That is not answering me. Where did you go?
Speaker 11: You see, Star, we've found this coin?
Speaker 8: Come on, I shouldn't have to tell you are both
just tweeting.
Speaker 1: Star. I'm still your daddy. Even brightes have feelings about
their parents.
Speaker 8: No, I tried to ESP, Daddy. You just don't ESP
good Daddy. Robert does it very nicely. He can always
find me when I hide. That's cause you don't have
much imagination. I do too, Yeah, but you always have
to look at a book to SP what's in it?
Speaker 12: So you leave an ESP smudge. I just look at
where you left a smudge, and I go to that
place in that time, and here you are. Oh but
that's cheating.
Speaker 1: It isn't.
Speaker 12: You just haven't got imagination. You can't teleport yourself to
a place that hasn't been I can too.
Speaker 8: What about the moon people. They haven't been.
Speaker 12: Yet, Oh Star, they have too. Not for your daddy,
they haven't. But for the things from our Taurus. The
moon people were about ten million white years ago.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, kids, Hold on, Jim, have you been
listening to this?
Speaker 11: I think I heard it. I love kids.
Speaker 1: You're either playing a big joke on us older folks,
or you've actually figured out a way to travel to
places in the past, right and in the future too.
Speaker 11: Daddy, Star, could you tell us how you do it?
Speaker 8: It would be easier if I could esp it to you.
Speaker 11: We'll just pretend we're stupids and tell us in words.
Speaker 8: Well, you remember the Moby's strip.
Speaker 1: I remember she made it about a year ago.
Speaker 8: Well, you join the ends of a strip of paper
with a half twist to make one's surface. Then you
take a sheet and give it a half twist so
you can join the edges together all over.
Speaker 11: That's Klein's bottle. Oh you know about that, Yes, we
know that. Go on.
Speaker 12: Well, then you take a cube, you imagine a cube,
and you twist it.
Speaker 7: That's right, Go on, Star.
Speaker 8: And uiesp the twisted cube all together the same way
you did Klein's bottle. Now, if you you do that
big enough all around you, so you sort of folded
into it, you can teleport yourself any place you want
to go. And that's all there is to it.
Speaker 11: Jim, what do you think I need another drink? Pete,
a big one.
Speaker 1: That's all there was to it. The line, the plane,
the cube, those were Euclidean physics. The Mobia strip, the
Kline bottle, the twisted cube, those were Einsteinian physics. Well
I was pretty advanced in both, but I'd have to
do some heavy thinking to really grasp it. Meanwhile, the
two little kids stood there staring at us.
Speaker 11: Star Robert, can you tell us some of the places
you've been all over.
Speaker 8: Uncle Jim, the Romans and the Egyptians and places like that.
Speaker 11: Is that how you got the coin?
Speaker 1: Uh? Huh?
Speaker 8: I found it. It wasn't stealing, was it, Daddy. I
just found it in the door.
Speaker 1: Well skip that for a minute. What about going to
the future.
Speaker 12: There isn't any future, mister Holmes.
Speaker 1: What's that?
Speaker 12: It's kind of hard to explain. Even Star doesn't get it. Oh,
when she gets to be six, like I Am, she'll
probably understand.
Speaker 1: We'll try to explain it to me.
Speaker 12: Well, it's all connected, just like the moby a strip.
If you go far enough, you'll get back to Earth
starts again. Start with the cavemen, than us men, the
atomic men, the moon men, planet men, star men, and brights.
I mean, somehow what the Bright's got off the strip?
We haven't been able to find them any place in time.
Speaker 8: I'd like to know how they got off and where
they are all.
Speaker 1: Look, kids, this kind of thing can be dangerous. You
might be eaten by a dinosaur or something.
Speaker 8: Oh we just esp I salls right out of it.
Speaker 1: Well, anyway, I don't want you leaving this part of
the time strip, not again.
Speaker 8: Daddy.
Speaker 1: I may be just a tween, but I'm your father.
Speaker 8: I always mind you, Daddy.
Speaker 1: Uh what about going off the block?
Speaker 8: But Daddy, we didn't cross as singles.
Speaker 11: Nevertheless, think of what you're doing. Pictures, specimen's recordings not
only from the past, but from the future. Pete, I
beg you, Jim, this is my daughter, But what a contribution.
We could be ages ahead of ourselves.
Speaker 1: No, Star, Robert, I'd like your promise you won't leave
present time again. Well, okay, okay, all right, now run along.
Robert's mother has some cookies and milk for you.
Speaker 8: Okay, see you, lady, Daddy.
Speaker 1: Jim, I'm sorry. Well, I suppose if I had a daughter.
Are you going to report this and.
Speaker 11: Have everybody give me the horse? Laugh? I may be
just a tween peete, but I'm not another fool.
Speaker 1: It took me almost six months to do it. I
don't know how many times I've visualized a cube and
esp did a half twist and tried to see the
edges around me. And then once there was a flies
just for an instant, I was concentrating on Caesar's triumphant
march into Rome, and for the briefest instant there it was,
I was standing on a roadway watching, and then it vanished. Hey, hey, daddy,
what are your two characters plotting? We lah, I'm going
to my study for a while. Star. Yes, daddy, you
remember your promise about not leading present time, don't you? Yes, Daddy,
You're going to keep it, Yes, daddy, Okay, I'm holding
you to it. Hello, Hello, yeah.
Speaker 9: There, No, When did you see them last?
Speaker 1: What time is it?
Speaker 8: Oh?
Speaker 1: About ten this morning? Six or seven hours ago?
Speaker 10: Why Pete, I'm worried.
Speaker 1: What's up?
Speaker 10: Well, they were upstairs in Bobby's room.
Speaker 9: I was in the living room now, and I could
swear they didn't come downstairs. And yet when I went
up there, they were gone.
Speaker 1: That was over five hours ago, Ruth. Are you sure
they didn't come down.
Speaker 10: I was in that living room every moment, Pete.
Speaker 1: Now, Ruth, Ruth, don't get panicky. I'm coming right over.
Just don't get panicky. There wasn't a trace of them. Well,
that isn't exactly true. Remember what Robert had said about
star leaving an esp smudge. Well, I was able to
catch it in Robert's room. It had something to do
with where the brights went when they got off the
time strip. That's it. Of course, they wouldn't disobey by
leaving present time. But isn't it possible that there is
more than one present time? Isn't it possible that another
now coexists hours? That's the cue.
Speaker 10: Of course, I'm going to call the police, Pete.
Speaker 1: I don't think it'll do any good.
Speaker 10: We've got to find them. They'd have come back by now.
Speaker 1: Yes, if they could. What do you mean nothing?
Speaker 10: What are you going to do?
Speaker 1: I'm going back to my study to think.
Speaker 10: To think, aren't you going to look for them?
Speaker 1: I have to figure out where to look.
Speaker 10: Well, I'm not going to sit around doing nothing. I'm
calling the police.
Speaker 1: That was this morning. I've been doing some desperate concentrating
since then. Jim, I'm writing this down so you'll know
I've already managed to go back to the time of
kiops and ahead to the time when men were navigating
to distant planets in a matter of days. But the
big job remains how to get into a dimension parallel
with our own. At the same time, I figured out
that to get the equivalent of a Mobius strip with depth,
you must use the super cube, the Tesseract. That's what
I'm on at the moment. If I succeed, there is
a possibility I may not be able to get back.
I hope you will be able to make Bill and
Ruth Howell understand. Okay, Now, if I take six cubes
and pull them in one another so that every angle
is a right angle, yes, all right, I've got that.
And now I've been folding a esp the tesser Act,
I half twist around myself.
Speaker 5: Mister Holmes, there's the harms. You in there, mister Holmes,
We'll have to break in. It's locked on the inside.
Speaker 1: Mister Holmes, he he, why are you he?
Speaker 6: That's funny. The door was locked from the inside. But
here's this fountain pen with the ink still wet.
Speaker 13: But he's gone.
Speaker 4: You have just heard X minus one, presented by the
National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with Galaxy Science Fiction magazine,
which this month features the final installment of Frederick Pohl's
novel slave Ship, story of a world engaged in the
wildest of all possible non wars, where the order of
the day was even wilder still, Spare every animal and
throw the men to the wolves. Galaxy Magazine on your
new stand today The Night, by transcription X minus one
has brought You star Bright, a story from the pages
of Galaxy, written by Mark Clifton and adapted for radio
by George Leffards. Featured in the cast were Sarah Fussell,
Lawson Zerby, Bill Quinn, Billy Harris, Ralph Bell, and Kate Wilkinson.
You're announcer Fred Collins. X minus one was directed by
Daniel Sutter and is an NBC Radio Network production.