Speaker 1: In just a moment X minus one. But first, after
a hard day's work, there's nothing more welcome than an
evening of variety entertainment, and that's just the tonic provided
tomorrow night by NBC Radio. You'll laugh your cares away
when good natured contestants carry out the rib tickling stunts
dreamed up by mc Jack Bailey on NBC's Truth or Consequences,
and later on Groucho Marx PEPs things up with lots
of spontaneous good fun and more of the friendly insults
at which he's so accomplished For a brighter, livelier evening
Tomorrow night, it's Groucho Marx and Truth or Consequences on
this station. Now, stay tuned for X minus one on NBC.
Speaker 2: Have a nice trip. The seat numbers fifteen.
Speaker 3: Next, please.
Speaker 4: Come 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.
Speaker 5: 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 Galaxy
Science Fiction Magazine, presents.
Speaker 6: HE minus one.
Speaker 5: On the night story jay Walker by Ross Rockland.
Speaker 7: In the Galactic flight number fourteen, now loading at ramp ten.
In a Galactic flight number fourteen, now loading at ramp ten,
Please have your flight validation.
Speaker 3: You walk from the waiting room down the long ramp
number ten. The flight pack is in one hand, the
validation papers in the other. Other passengers chatter behind you.
You turn a corner and there's the ship, a cylinder
of glistening silver aimed at the moon. You feel yourself
carried up the moving stair to the gaping entrance lock.
A pretty stewardess in a blue uniform smiles at you.
Speaker 2: Validation papers, Please your papers.
Speaker 3: Madam, oh papers?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yes, here there, this is Marsha Foster.
Speaker 2: You feeling well, Miss Foster?
Speaker 3: Yes quite well, Thank you.
Speaker 2: We have to make sure. Once in a while somebody
slips aboard with an other person's validation papers.
Speaker 3: What difference would it make if I felt well or not?
Speaker 2: A great deal, I'm afraid you see the effect of
a free fall in space without gravity. It can do
quite a bit of damage in certain glandular conditions. I
see you've passed your physical Yes, I'm quite all right,
It's fine. Have a nice trip. Your seat number is fifteen. Next, please.
Speaker 3: You walk down the carpeted aisle to the plastic on seat.
Her words make a ringing pattern in your brain. Are
you feeling well, Missus Foster. Missus Foster's feeling quite well.
Thank you. Missus Foster has past her physical examination. There's
only one thing wrong with the picture. You are not,
Missus Foster.
Speaker 2: Attention, please attention. In one minute, the flash walls will
be raised around the ship. If for any reason, the
passenger is not feeling well or does not wish to
make the trip, please speak up.
Speaker 3: One minute. You begin to wonder if you ought to
go after all. You begin to think of how it happened.
Why you're here sitting in the silver vessel waiting to
blast off for the moon. What happened between you and Jack?
What happened?
Speaker 8: Honey, Honey, I'm back Jack. Oh, darling, you miss me?
Speaker 3: Did I miss you?
Speaker 8: I brought you a little present from the moon. Try
it on.
Speaker 3: Oh it's beautiful.
Speaker 9: It took us two hours to pick it out. U oh,
me and Sue Sueigan? Who's she the stewards on the ship?
Speaker 3: Oh? How long has she been on the earth? Moon run.
Speaker 8: I guess about a year now.
Speaker 3: It's funny you never mentioned her, Oh haven't I?
Speaker 8: Well, what's the difference?
Speaker 3: Odd?
Speaker 8: Hey?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 8: Well? You're not jealous, are you? Is she pretty monstrous?
Speaker 9: Four feet high and three feet around and she has
a big blue eye right in the middle of her feet.
Speaker 3: Oh, you're insane?
Speaker 8: Come on, how about a kiss? No, old lady, I've
been away for four months.
Speaker 3: Sorry.
Speaker 8: I guess I'll just have to go back to Suwegan
and her three blue eyes.
Speaker 3: In that case, here, Oh, I have been away a
long time. Jack, I want to talk to you about.
Speaker 9: That, okay, but could it wait till tonight? I am
taking you to dinner, missus McLain.
Speaker 3: I'd rather talk about it now. Okay, Jack, we've been
married for six years, now, is it that long? Seven
in July? For the last two you've been skippering that
rocket to the moon three weeks at a time, with
only a week in between.
Speaker 8: I do get a month vacation.
Speaker 3: Yes, that is no kind of life.
Speaker 8: Oh, Musha, I don't know what I can do about it.
Speaker 3: You haven't tried to do anything about it.
Speaker 8: I guess you're right.
Speaker 3: Do you intend to try?
Speaker 8: Marsh? I need to know Marsha Flying is my whole life,
but it isn't mine.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to spend three weeks out of four
sitting here wondering if you'll come back alive.
Speaker 8: Oh no, that's ridiculous, is it.
Speaker 3: What about my father who died on the elsinir when
it missed mars.
Speaker 9: Your father died as the result of a space maneuver
that no Pilon in his right mind would try.
Speaker 3: They missed the planet. That could happen to anybody.
Speaker 8: They missed it because they tried to warp the ship around.
Speaker 3: I'm afraid I don't understand. Well, it isn't very hard
to understand.
Speaker 9: A spaceship takes off with everything calculated to the last
decimal point. It has exactly enough fuel to take it
to a planet if it follows an exact course, an
ironclad mathematical orbit.
Speaker 8: Well, well, there was a jaywalker aboard the Elsinar.
Speaker 3: A jwalker.
Speaker 9: Well, that's what we call somebody who boards a ship
knowing that he has no business doing so. In this
particular case, it was a senator going to a convention
on the Moon. He had been taking endocream treatments and
kept it secret on his validation papers. He felt he
had to attend this convention to muster some votes for
his campaign. He didn't consider that he was jeopardizing his life.
Speaker 3: I still don't see how they missed the planet.
Speaker 9: Six hours out, the senator began to die. The effect
of the free fall on his glands was catching up
with him. And the only way to reverse that effect
is to reverse the spin of the ship. Turn it
end over end. That creates artificial gravity, reverses the stress
on the glands.
Speaker 8: The pilot took a chance, he did just that.
Speaker 3: Is that why they missed the planet.
Speaker 8: They lost their trajectory.
Speaker 9: By the time they recalculated their cost, they'd passed Mars.
They ran out of fuel and kept going until well
until they fell into the gravity of the Sun.
Speaker 3: And that couldn't happen today.
Speaker 8: A pilot would have to be out of his mind
to try a maneuver like that.
Speaker 3: You wouldn't try it risk.
Speaker 8: An entire ship to save the life of one fool.
Speaker 3: You wouldn't.
Speaker 8: Marsha, I can't say. I definitely wouldn't it. Right now.
It's inconceivable, just.
Speaker 3: As inconceivable for you to give up spaceflight for my sake.
Speaker 9: Isn't it equally inconceivable for you to put up with it?
Speaker 8: For my sake?
Speaker 3: I've put up with it for two years. Jack, this
is the end of it.
Speaker 8: No, what exactly do you mean?
Speaker 3: I mean you have to decide whether you want a
marriage in a family or a career as a space jockey.
Speaker 8: Why do I have to decide? Why can't I have both?
Speaker 3: Because I won't live this way? Nobody else does, except
a handful of wives whose husbands are crazy. I'd have
to have picked a profession like this.
Speaker 8: Well, you knew this was my profession when you're married.
I didn't know it was like this, Marsha. What you're
asking me to do I simply can't do. Wouldn't make
you happy.
Speaker 9: If I did, I'd just be walking around resenting you.
Speaker 8: Now, come on, let's have dinner and forget this for
a while.
Speaker 3: No, we're not having dinner.
Speaker 8: You'd rather stay home tonight?
Speaker 3: No, I'm going to Los Angeles to my mother's house.
What I have tickets on the six o'clock flight tonight? Yes, Jack,
I'm quite determined. It's made up my mind that I'd
put it to you squarely, and if you refused, I
was leaving just like that. Yes, I've had all I
can take, mash.
Speaker 8: For Heaven's sake, can't we talk this over and make
some kind of a compromise.
Speaker 3: Is no compromise, Jack. It's all very exciting for you,
tearing back and forth through the moon with glamorous stewardesses
and all sorts of celebrities, But sitting here waiting isn't
much fun for me.
Speaker 8: Well, you could get a job, you could develop some interesting.
Speaker 3: Reason why I married you. I want a home and
a family and a man who comes home every night
and talks to me about little, unimportant things.
Speaker 8: And I'm not that man.
Speaker 3: No, No, you're not Okay, what are you doing?
Speaker 8: I don't like people walking out on me, So I'm
leaving first.
Speaker 3: Would you mind telling me where you'll be?
Speaker 8: I don't know.
Speaker 9: You can reach me through intergalactic If you change your mind, Marsha,
maybe we'll both be better off. We didn't have much
of a home life anyway, just the two of us.
Speaker 8: I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. I know how you
feel about not having children. Goodbye, marsh.
Speaker 3: There it was you learned when you came back from
Los Angeles two months later that he'd been seen in
the company of one Susan Egan Steward is for Intergalactic
on numerous occasions. You learned too, that he'd applied for
the Earth Venus Run, the newest and most difficult run
in the galaxy. You learned something else, something that was
going to change the whole course of your life.
Speaker 10: Come in, missus McClane, sit down, thank you, doctor. Hi
have some good news for you. Yes, you're going to
have a child. Well, I thought you'd be happy about that.
Speaker 3: Happy. Oh, yes, yes, I am. Naturally. You debated for
a long time, and then you called the Intergalactic Office.
Mister mc leanan was out on the Earth Moon Run.
He'd be back on the twelfth, but only for an afternoon.
He was taking off again. Immediately. They were so sorry.
You were sorry yourself. It seemed as if life would
not be worth living without Jack, especially now with a
child on the way. You had to talk to him
to be with him. That was when you first began
to formulate the idea of going to the Moon with
him on this run.
Speaker 2: Attention, please, attention, we're about to count down for Blastorf.
Fasten your seat belts and reclined back as far as possible.
The next sound will be that of the first stage
rockets heating up. Do not be alarmed by the vibration
of the ship.
Speaker 3: From the bulkheads. Overhead. Everywhere comes the deep rumbling sound.
Some of the passengers look anxious, some excited. Some leaf
casually through magazines as they line their backs in the
reclining seats.
Speaker 2: Those of you who've never been in rockets will find
it an experience that will make you proud to belong
to the human race.
Speaker 11: Count down for blast off x minus five minus four
minus three minus two minus one zero.
Speaker 3: The rumble heightens all emotion, leaves you cold, ravening fear
takes over. To try to close your eyes, your ears
against it, at your mind won't respond. Look out the
port and the scene is suddenly splashed with a rushing
sheet of flame that darkens the sky and is torn
from your vision, snatched away. The buildings, the trees, the
roads vanish. A great, soft, uniform weight presses down on you.
You push with all your might, but it smothers you,
presses your back, drives your blood down down inside of you,
and then quiet.
Speaker 2: We are now one hundred and two miles over New
York City. You may unfasten your safety belt. The pull
of gravity will no longer trouble you.
Speaker 3: You unfasten the safety belt and sit in the seat
wondering what to do next.
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to inter Galactic Flight number fourteen
out of New York Rocket Port, destination Moon. I'm your hostess,
Miss Susan Egan. Your pilots for this flight is Captain
Jack mc lean. Opposition at the moment is approximately five
hundred and fifty miles above Earth, and in less than
one half hour we'll be in free fall completely without gravity.
Our speed is currently twenty nine thousand miles per hour.
We should arrive at Moonport at exactly six p m
tomorrow Earth time. I wish you a pleasant voyage. If
there's anything you need into galactic is at your service.
Speaker 3: Well, you think to yourself, everybody's here. Your husband is
loved one, and his wife. You watch her. She walks
back along the rows of seats with an armful of
the latest magazine recordings. A tall girl about twenty nine
or thirty, dark brown hair, dark eyes. I'm not very pretty,
the sort of would be able to talk to him
about steam tubes and beautiful landings and solar storms.
Speaker 2: Missus Fowlster, would you like something to read?
Speaker 3: Oh? Thank you?
Speaker 2: No, first time in the rocket ship?
Speaker 3: Yes? Could you tell look a little green? You're feeling well?
I'm I'm quite a right.
Speaker 2: There's just a touch of space sickness. Come along the
ship's hospital and we'll fix you up in the diffy
I'd rather just sit here a minute, of course. Oh
come on me help him to the ship's hospital. That's
come on, come on now, you just lie down here.
How are you feeling?
Speaker 3: I'm scared.
Speaker 2: There's nothing to be afraid of.
Speaker 3: I think there is.
Speaker 12: What is it?
Speaker 3: I'm pregnant? What affect my validation papers?
Speaker 2: Do you know what you've done to you?
Speaker 8: So?
Speaker 3: I hoped it wouldn't affect me.
Speaker 2: There's much I can say, Missus Faust. I'll have to
tell captain that's what would it be?
Speaker 3: I mean? Could I tell him myself?
Speaker 2: If you'd rather, I'll call him Steward is to Captain McClean.
What is it, thal Jack? There's a passenger in the
ship's hospital. You'd better come down here.
Speaker 11: Look, Susie, I've got my correction.
Speaker 2: I think you'd better come right down.
Speaker 8: Okay, Charlie, take it, will you. I'll be right back.
Speaker 2: He'll be here in a minute or two. Yeah, let
me put this pillow into your head.
Speaker 3: Thank you?
Speaker 2: Now, what made you do it?
Speaker 3: You wouldn't understand you.
Speaker 2: Loved him and he stationed on the moon and you
wanted to be near him. Is that it?
Speaker 3: Could you understand that?
Speaker 2: You mean not being able to have the man you love? Yes,
I think I could understand.
Speaker 3: You wanted to scream at her, to claw her face.
She was going to live and you were going to die.
She was going to share a life with Jack when
you were only a dim sort of memory in his mind.
He came in, moving fast, with that kind of schoolboy
gait in his His dark face was frowning, but handsome
as ever.
Speaker 8: Not just why did you? Whyshia?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 8: Honey?
Speaker 3: Hello?
Speaker 12: Jack?
Speaker 8: What are you doing about it? Sue? This is my wife, Marsha.
This is Sue Egan.
Speaker 3: Hello, I'll be getting out.
Speaker 8: Excuse me? What's going on?
Speaker 6: Jack?
Speaker 3: Sit down? I want to tell you something.
Speaker 9: I'd like to say something first much. I've had a
chance to do a lot of thinking lately, and if
you think we could work it.
Speaker 8: Out, I'd like to try again. You mean that, yes,
I do.
Speaker 3: What about miss Egan Sue?
Speaker 8: What about her?
Speaker 3: I thought? I mean I heard I'm.
Speaker 8: Very fond of Sue.
Speaker 3: Yes, I thought you were.
Speaker 8: But she isn't my wife?
Speaker 6: You are.
Speaker 12: Was?
Speaker 3: What do you mean I'm going to die? Jack?
Speaker 8: What are you talking about? Jack?
Speaker 3: I'm pregnant. We're a little too late.
Speaker 8: Did you know this when you came aboard?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 8: But weren't you aware that? What about the physical?
Speaker 3: I used another woman's validation papers, I paid her for them.
Speaker 8: Why how could you do with it?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't know. All I knew was
that I had to see you. I had to be
with you.
Speaker 8: If you'd only talked, I couldn't reach you. Didn't you
know what would happen if you took a rocket flight?
Speaker 3: I thought somehow it wouldn't happen to me. I didn't
know that pregnancy was.
Speaker 8: Affected, and if you hadn't.
Speaker 3: I would have come along anyway.
Speaker 8: I suppose in the way I'm to blame. I'm the
one who walk down.
Speaker 3: Don't take the blame on yourself. I'm over twenty one, Monsia.
Speaker 8: What did you hope to accomplish by this?
Speaker 9: I'm not sure there's only one possibility. Yes, excuse me,
miss Agan, Yes, come into the ship's hospital.
Speaker 8: Please bring Petrack Shelley from maintenance. Tell them to come
up here with a crescent wretch.
Speaker 3: What are you going to do?
Speaker 8: Do nothing much. I'm going to warp the ship around,
that's all.
Speaker 3: Petric Kelly was a big, easy going man. Jack left
me alone with him and Miskeen while he went back
to the control room. Petri Kelly started to build a
metal bed to the side wall of the cabin. Why
are you putting the bed on the wall.
Speaker 10: Because, lady, when he starts to spend the ship, that
outside bulk is going to be down out sideways centrifugal forcing.
Speaker 3: I'm afraid I don't.
Speaker 1: Well, that's too bad because I got out of things
to do besides explained.
Speaker 3: Okay, sirs, it's all he.
Speaker 6: Is.
Speaker 3: He always that rude.
Speaker 2: Doesn't it occur to you that maybe he's under a
slight strain?
Speaker 3: Strain?
Speaker 2: Look, missus, McLean, your husband's going to warp the ship around.
The chances of his pulling off a maneuver like that
without piling us up in the sun or in deep
space or about a thousand to one. I appreciate that
wanted to see him and show him that he ought
to be ashamed of himself for leaving you. But does
it occur to you that all of us may lose
our lives because of it, including Petrocelli.
Speaker 3: No, I hadn't thought about it. Let's go.
Speaker 2: I've got to strap you into that there.
Speaker 3: No, wait, what will happen to me if the ship
isn't worked?
Speaker 2: Sudden floods of the adrenal glands, convulsions, panics, spastic secretions,
and eventually death.
Speaker 3: What causes it?
Speaker 2: Lack of gravity? We are sure just how purpose of
spinning the ship is to press you up against the
outer wall and create the effect of gravity through centrifugal force.
Speaker 3: To you, do you think he can do it?
Speaker 2: I think he's the best skipper in the intergalactic fleet.
That isn't the answer to my question? Can he spin
the ship without killing everyone?
Speaker 12: I have faith in him.
Speaker 3: She loved him, She had faith in him. And you, you,
to whom he was married, you who carried his child
inside you? Did you have faith in him?
Speaker 8: Everything's set in here? Yes, good Jack?
Speaker 3: Could could we talk alone for a minute.
Speaker 8: We have to get the new data into the computers, Susie.
Will you excuse us please?
Speaker 12: Yes?
Speaker 8: Well, Jack, don't do it, mars.
Speaker 3: I mean it. You've no right to risk all those lives.
Speaker 9: Just for me, Marsha. I'm captain of this ship. I
do as I see fit, and I can't do other one.
Speaker 3: But it isn't fair to them. It isn't fair to you.
Speaker 9: When we were born into this life, we don't make
any agreement that says everything is going to be fair
and equip I.
Speaker 3: Refuse to let you do it.
Speaker 8: You can't stop me.
Speaker 3: I'll take my life.
Speaker 8: I'm going to ask Sue to stay with her.
Speaker 3: What about her? Don't you love her?
Speaker 8: Well, Marsha, Whether I love Sue Egan is not the point.
Speaker 9: Just now, I've decided to spend ship to save you
and my son or daughter.
Speaker 8: If it means risking the lives of others, I have
to take that risk.
Speaker 3: Jack. Yes, why are you doing it?
Speaker 8: Because I love you?
Speaker 3: It seemed to me during the next hour, through the
haze of the drug they gave me, that I could
see him. There was the curved silver board before it
sat Jack hunched like a harried bookkeeper on the last
day of the month.
Speaker 8: Okay, Charley we'll come to the moon obliquely. At zero
point three oh seven, we pass it.
Speaker 9: Stop, spin the ship over once to check speed, then
put the tail down when we feel gravity at seven
point oh three five. And if we can do it
with the fuel we've got, it'll be a miracle, all right.
Start the calculators, engine room, reverse tubes. Wait for new
COSS vector seven oh seven three new costactor set firing
formula two six three five seven two six firing coming
into cossbactor counting down seven oh seven seven seven six
seven seven five seven five seven four seven.
Speaker 8: Seven three fire.
Speaker 3: You don't recall much after that. There's the bulkhead pressing
against you like a magnet, pressing harder and harder. Then
there's the needle, and then sudden relaxation. Throw it all
the stars and the moon, and Jack and Sue egan
dance and a pattern of mist, and the words come
back to you from long ago, the things he said
to you when you were both in love, many years ago.
Speaker 8: When I fly the ship, it seems that all earth
watches me through your eyes.
Speaker 3: A man comes to love the things he has to
fight for.
Speaker 2: I guess how is she hold tight? Marcia hold tight
to me.
Speaker 3: She calls you Marcia. This woman who hates you, who
loves your husband, She calls you.
Speaker 6: Marcia, Marcia, Marcia, Marsa, Marcia, Marcia.
Speaker 3: The curved ceiling, but a new curve and soft rose
instead of chrome metal, a new feeling, unlike Earth or
the ship.
Speaker 8: Honey, you wake up, Jack. That's all right, honey. We
made it where the moon moon. Yes, you're in the
new Lunar City Hospital.
Speaker 3: You did it, You really did it well.
Speaker 8: I've been telling you for years that I was the
best pilot in the fleet.
Speaker 3: Oh, you don't have to pretend. I know how you
must feel about what I did. I'm not pretending it
was a selfish coward. I wasn't concerned about anything but
my own happiness, Masha.
Speaker 9: There isn't any absolute scale for courage, or kindness or goodness.
I couldn't pretend to judge you or anybody else.
Speaker 8: I only know that I believe you're a good person,
and I love you with your false and your good points.
Speaker 3: I just wanted to be with you, Jack, That's all
I ever wanted. I'm sorry. I'm not brave and strong
like Susan or Yule or the others.
Speaker 9: Oh, honey, nobody expects you to be Come on, you've
got to save your strength.
Speaker 8: We've got to take take care of you.
Speaker 3: He reaches down and touches your lips with his fingers.
It's like a benediction. You know that you'll never again
question his right to do the things that fulfill him.
To take a silver ship above the earth and guide
it to new planets. Our child will be born on
the moon, he whispered to him, and our grandchildren and
the stars.
Speaker 5: 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 Arthur Sellings tale entitled one Across,
the story of a man who thought that doing puzzles
was an escape until he suddenly found himself completely boxed
in Galaxy Magazine on your new stand day the night.
By transcription, X minus one has brought you j Walker,
a story from the pages of Galaxy, written by Ross
Rockland and adapted for radio by George Lefferts. Featured in
the cast were Bob Hastings.
Speaker 8: Terry Keene, Raymond.
Speaker 5: Edward Johnson, Connie Lemke, and Eugene Francis. You're announcer Fred Collins.
X minus one was directed by Daniel Sutter and as
an NBC Radio Network production. Next week the story of
the Journey that had no end, of a ship that
had traveled so long through space that none aboard her
could remember their destination or even wonder where they were going.
Listen for the Sense of Wonder next week on X
minus one. The Big News Tomorrow, setters around the tiny
principality of Monaco were one of the centuries most fabulous
weddings will take place.
Speaker 8: A NBC Radio is on the spot to cover it
for you.
Speaker 1: In the daytime, NBC's Weekday reports the civil wedding ceremony
as it happens, with simultaneous English translation