Speaker 1: I'll stay tune for X minus one on NBC.
Speaker 2: 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. 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 Gallup Science Fiction Magazine, presents.
Speaker 3: Minus one.
Speaker 1: Good Night, the Frank Quatrochy Story Sea Legs.
Speaker 4: I stood in line at the GRAB one desk with
the old notched service record and tapes in my hand,
and waited for the board processing clerk to speak. The
clerk seemed utterly indifferent to the excitement of the men
in the line. I wondered how long he'd been out
here on this god forsaken zone five planet.
Speaker 5: Next aname Robert Craig, Occupation Flight Officer, Destination Earth Earth.
Speaker 6: Anything wrong with that? I guess that.
Speaker 5: How long since you've been on Earth, mister Craig?
Speaker 6: And I uh, I've never been there.
Speaker 4: My parents left during the second colonization of Cassiopeia.
Speaker 6: I was born there.
Speaker 5: Have you ever been in a gravity system or just
briefly under drugs. Of course, you'll have to go through
the gravity conditioning course. Yes, so I was told, proceed
to the airlock chamber on your right and follow the
robot's orders.
Speaker 6: Good luck, you may need it.
Speaker 4: Next, I went into the chamber and stripped off my
clothing while the robot droned its orders.
Speaker 7: Remove all metal objects from your person, placed them in
the plastic tube at your left. Now stand underneath the
decontamination tube to press the button with your right foot.
Speaker 3: This is all.
Speaker 7: Proceed through the green door to the psychometric section. Please
respond quickly to orders, and so do not impede the
progress of others.
Speaker 4: Next, please, the door to the sie metric section led
into a pleasant but cold looking room with a single
metal desk.
Speaker 6: A man with a balding high forehead sat behind the desk.
Speaker 8: Mister Craig, have a seat. I'm Captain Wyandot, the psychological officer.
Speaker 6: Nice to meet you as well.
Speaker 8: Let's see your records.
Speaker 9: Hmm.
Speaker 8: You list your destination as terror you were you're certain
you wish.
Speaker 6: To go to Earth. Of course, I'm certain.
Speaker 8: You're somewhat aggressive, mister Craig.
Speaker 4: Look, I've been standing in line taking orders from clerks
and robots for six hours. Every time somebody sees that
I'm headed for Earth, I get the fish eye.
Speaker 6: Are they jealous or what?
Speaker 8: I hardly think so. You've been a spaceman for sixteen years,
mister Craig. You've been zooming around in the countergraph systems
and the outer galaxies without any restraints or self discipline.
Speaker 4: Have you ever spent six weeks strapped into a grass
seat on a space rocket, Captain. There's a good deal
of self discipline involved in that.
Speaker 8: I think you will find things on terror require a
different kind of self discipline, mister Craig.
Speaker 6: I'm pretty much aware of what it's like, are you.
Speaker 8: I suppose you've heard all the popularizations in the tape zines. Well,
mister Craig, let me give you a word of caution.
It's going to be vastly different.
Speaker 6: I'm prepared for that, Captain. Can we get going naturally?
Speaker 8: You will undergo a twenty day conditioning course. Twenty days,
mister Craig, you've been in space sixteen years. Your body
is conditioned to a normal state of free fall, or
at best, to acceleration. The return to gravity would kill
you if you weren't prepared for it?
Speaker 6: All right? What do I do?
Speaker 8: Report a centrifugal department? Here are your papers? Oh and
mister Craig, yes, centrifugal is a rather trying ordeal. If
during the course of treatment, you should change your mind
about returning to Earth, you're free to do so.
Speaker 6: Thanks. I won't.
Speaker 4: I'd heard about centrifugal, but you can never really know
about these things until you experience them. Four times a day,
we were whirled around until it seemed as if our
insides were too big for our bodies. On the twelfth
day it got to be too much for me. I
was in the base hospital for five days. My roommate
was an old space bomb they'd brought in to die
with a case of ruptured veins. His name was Charlie Brockman.
Speaker 10: How you feel, son, I'm pretty good, Charlie. You get
discharged tomorrow. Here you're gonna try it again?
Speaker 6: I guess so? Why only way I'll ever get to Earth?
Speaker 3: You really want to go? That's right?
Speaker 10: You talk to anybody?
Speaker 9: Been there last ten years or so?
Speaker 4: No, you don't get to talk to many people from
Earth in the galaxies?
Speaker 6: Were you ever there? Me?
Speaker 11: Now?
Speaker 10: What would an old space bumb like me be doing
on Terra.
Speaker 6: Well, I just thought maybe i'd.
Speaker 10: Done most of my time and Zone five out there.
You get to think in anybody who stays less than
eighty light years from Earth the land lobber.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I used to think the same.
Speaker 4: Then I took the exam for a job back on
Earth and I passed it.
Speaker 10: I used to think I'd like to go back. But
space was exciting, you know, new and raw. It tugged
at your guts and it sent the blood rushing through
your veins.
Speaker 8: But it was free.
Speaker 10: No bureaucrat ever lasted six months and Grab five I had.
Speaker 6: Enough hitting atmospheres all over the universal man.
Speaker 3: Maybe you're right lean over here? Will you sure?
Speaker 10: Unbutton my pajama.
Speaker 6: Top, will you?
Speaker 10: Okay, there's a chain around my leg. Got a little
message capsule on it.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, I got it.
Speaker 10: Do me a favor, huh. Take it with you when
you go back to Terra. Don't open it till you're
on the ship. Okay, Charlie and Son, Yes, I lied
to you. I have been back to Terra. I faked
some papers and made a landing there six months ago.
Speaker 6: What are you doing back here?
Speaker 9: I had to leave in a hurry.
Speaker 10: Why you'll find out son, Good luck.
Speaker 6: Charlie died the next day.
Speaker 4: A few hours later, I was visited by Captain Wyandott,
a psych officer.
Speaker 3: How are you feeling, Craig?
Speaker 6: Okay, you still want to go back to Earth?
Speaker 1: Yes, you're completely sure.
Speaker 8: You want to live out your life there to give
up Space Service for it.
Speaker 6: Look we've gone through this, captain.
Speaker 4: Now you tell me that spacemen don't settle down on
terror yet you won't or you can't tell me why?
Speaker 6: All right? What's the pitch?
Speaker 4: Does the Space Service need men so badly that they
have to make it impossible for us to go back?
Speaker 6: That?
Speaker 8: Mister Craig, you will have to discover for yourself. You
have my authorization to complete your conditioning and return to
Earth as a private citizen. I wish you luck. You'll
need all you can.
Speaker 4: Get Somehow I managed to survive the torments for eighteen days.
Speaker 6: I was ready to return to Earth.
Speaker 4: A month later, I descended from a huge intergalactic jet
at Los Angeles Spaceport. I was dead tired from the trip.
I checked in at the nearest inexpensive hotel.
Speaker 6: This is your room. Sir, just put the bags down.
Will y'all unpack myself? Oh yes, sir, just back from
out a spacer. That's right. How could you tell sea legs?
Sea legs the way you walk and tell when somebody's
been in the low graph systems? Oh well here?
Speaker 4: Oh thanks, mister Greg. For another five units, I'll tell
you where it is?
Speaker 9: Where?
Speaker 6: What is you know? The mic mike? Okay, make it
three units. I won't hold you up. You mean a microphone? Yeah,
that's right. They wanted to put screens in, but the
boys convinced them. There rant any freedom ights of us
stay here? Freedom might not so loud? You want to
get controlled? No? No, here's the money? Where is it? It's
in the bet illuminator. You can short it with the
razor blade. Thanks. You want any sensation tapes? What are
they know? Metal image? Oh boy, you've been away from
terror a long time.
Speaker 4: Wait a minute before you go, son, where's the minerals building?
Speaker 6: I have to report there for a job interview.
Speaker 4: It's in the government cluster, fifth level of X and second. Thanks,
I'll want breakfast about eight o'clock. I don't need yours units?
My what your ration units? I don't have any ration units.
Speaker 6: You have your right dent card. Look, I just got
here an hour ago.
Speaker 4: You better go see the Civil Control Board tomorrow if
you want to eat, That is all right?
Speaker 6: Where do I find the Control Board?
Speaker 4: Government cluster?
Speaker 6: But don't worry. If you don't find them, they'll find you.
Speaker 4: I went to sleep that night with the uneasy feeling
that somebody was watching me. It's been a weird day.
I hadn't exactly liked it. Well, I told myself. It
figured that there'd be more formalities and rigmarole on Earth
than there were out.
Speaker 6: In the systems. Especially at first.
Speaker 4: Still, I couldn't get the idea of the concealed microphone
out of my mind.
Speaker 9: You ever relaxed, mister Craig? You are mister Craig?
Speaker 4: Oh yes, uh, Robert Craig, you aren't nervous her? No, no, no,
this is my first time before the control board, and.
Speaker 6: Well it's my first.
Speaker 9: Time flight officer. Somewhat unusual for a vigorous young man
like yourself. Abandoning space service, isn't it?
Speaker 6: I don't know?
Speaker 9: Is it leaving something behind? Mister Craig. No, you don't
like this sort of affair, do you?
Speaker 4: Mister Creig, Well, I'm afraid I don't quite see its necessity.
I serve the Intergalactic Service. Well, my records prove it.
Speaker 9: It's enough impertinence. Mister Craig, answer the questions. You are
a Terran. Yes, where are your loyalties?
Speaker 6: I don't understand your first.
Speaker 9: Loyalties are too intergalactic? Is that right?
Speaker 6: Is there a distinction?
Speaker 9: Do you wish to be held in contempt to this board?
Of course not, and you will confine your responses to
simple yes answers. Now, mister Craig, we shall begin again.
Please try to show restraint of emotion. You are here
to petition for an identity card to provisional code TOWO type.
You maintain that you've never been on Terra before. Indeed,
you state that you've never had a political affiliation. Yes,
what are your reactions to the latest acts of the
Liberal Party?
Speaker 6: I have none.
Speaker 9: You do not condemn the Liberal Party? Well, then you
must favor it.
Speaker 6: I don't know anything about it.
Speaker 9: Now, then, mister Craig, the Import Service report shows that
you passed your test aboard your ship. You were unable
to accomplish this through night study. Yes, at you maintain
in your application that you had considered the space service
a career.
Speaker 6: I changed my mind.
Speaker 9: Oh it changed your mind? I see. I see too
that you've petitioned the board for a private means of conveyance.
Why do you wish to own your own transportation vehicle.
Speaker 6: To make it easier to get around? I report to
my job. And what job?
Speaker 4: I passed the exam for the import service. I report today.
Speaker 9: Where are you living, mister Craig at the Star Hotel?
Speaker 3: Very well.
Speaker 9: You'll wait outside in the waiting room until you're called again.
Speaker 4: I waited about two hours in the porcelainized waiting room
of the Civil Control Board, and I was called over
to the clerk's desk at a small window.
Speaker 6: He stamped some cards for me.
Speaker 3: Craig.
Speaker 5: Here, here's your stuff, Class one provisional ident card. Sign
it and fingerprinted. Don't lose it. If you do, you'll
be picked up by the control agents. I petition for
a Class two card.
Speaker 11: You'll get a Class one.
Speaker 5: This entitles you to maintain an apartment in the lower
level of the Beverly Project. Here's your clothing Russian. You'll
have to turn in that leather flight jacket.
Speaker 6: Wait a minute, I had this mate on chewan. Listen,
I can remove the insignia.
Speaker 5: That is not the point. Your clothing ration is defined
by law. There are no exceptions. This is your food ration.
Speaker 6: Of what's all this medical stuff on the card?
Speaker 5: You are I ration fairly in accordance with your particular metabolism.
Speaker 6: Oh you're a kidding. I do not kid mister Craig.
What about a car? I asked to be allowed to
buy a car. Let's see, your.
Speaker 5: Petition to be permitted to purchase a private means of
transportation is here by denied.
Speaker 4: I walked out of the control board feeling like a
man who has just come out of free fall into
a hypergravity system. Instead of reporting to the Import service
for my initial job interview, I walked around the city.
I don't know how long I walked, maybe an hour,
maybe two. After a while, I came to the outskirts
of old Los Angeles. There was a big fence around
it and the usual signs radioactivity beware, with just a
pile of rubble and twisted girders. I looked at it
for a while and then turned around and headed for
the Intergalactic Freight Office.
Speaker 11: So your figure you made a mistake.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right. You don't hear much about terror out there.
Speaker 11: And you want me to sign your back into Intergoactic.
Yes you got any character references?
Speaker 6: No, no, not here on Earth.
Speaker 4: But I can post a good sized bond if they'll
release my ISS unit what you're rating. I can handle
anything up to fifteen g's acceleration on my old license.
Speaker 11: You've got a tyran contract with Import Service.
Speaker 6: You said I haven't started work yet.
Speaker 11: Look, kid, mister Craig, is it how long you been
on Earth?
Speaker 6: Two days?
Speaker 11: So you're a spaceman flight officer, ex flight officer. You
know how to navigate through four star zones and the
asteroid belt thrown in. You got a license for fifteen g's,
could get five more with a check flight. You got
enough brains to pass the Import Senior Rooters exam, but
you ain't got enough sense to come in out of
the rain. We get guys like you every day. You're hot,
you're big, you're earing a go, but you ain't gone nowhere.
Speaker 6: I'm listening.
Speaker 11: I don't know how you got here, Craig. Maybe you
did quit honorable, and maybe you went and burned up
a collar someplace.
Speaker 6: That would be in my records.
Speaker 11: The point is, it don't make any difference. Nobody leaves
Terror without a permit. Nobody gets a permit to go
back to space once he hits this old appen.
Speaker 6: Why not? Are you afraid somebody will tell what it's like?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 11: Son, you got things to learn. One is you don't
go shooting off your mouth. Another is Terror's changed a
lot since the radioactive was. We're going places, doing things,
big places, big things. You've got to fit into that, kid,
move with it, stick around. You still got your sea legs.
You're gonna like it here. You can make a quick
dollar and spend it quick too, but you'd better smart
enough or you're finished scrubbing radioactive dust off gurdis.
Speaker 6: That's the story, Huh, the whole story.
Speaker 11: That's it. Everything runs by a system, and Son, you
can't buck the city.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I don't suppose there's any place around here a guy
could get a quick drink.
Speaker 11: Oh yeah. Out at the end of Y Street. They
got a little plature can buy in Acadian tis pluto
as they call it. Thanks, Yeah, get it out of
your system and then settle down. That's my advice.
Speaker 6: Thanks so long.
Speaker 11: Get me in the control agent. He just left here.
He's on his way to the Pluto cafe.
Speaker 6: Waiter, Wait, bring me another drink for the young lady. Wow, now,
then where were we? I don't know that.
Speaker 1: Guys, still don't know why you're buying me free drinks?
Speaker 6: I told you I want somebody to talk to.
Speaker 4: You are pure?
Speaker 8: Maybe you don't like the brand of sensation tapes their
pedaling these days.
Speaker 3: No, you don't have.
Speaker 4: A bad face really underneath the makeup. I mean it's
a little crooked, but it ain't bad. Really.
Speaker 3: Thanks?
Speaker 6: Does me pretty good? What's your name?
Speaker 11: Gloria?
Speaker 9: Oh?
Speaker 6: Sure, sure, sure, I remember lord. Maybe you had enough
to drink, Nona, not that yet, you know. I look around.
Speaker 4: I see all these people with their faces all froze
up like plastic, and I feel like I got.
Speaker 6: To know somebody. I go out of my mind. So
what happens?
Speaker 4: Everybody is a free I mean, what happened?
Speaker 10: Whatever happened to freedom?
Speaker 9: Oh?
Speaker 6: What's the matter? Did I say something? Everybody so quiet
about all of a sudden?
Speaker 12: Okay, come with me, who are you control board agent?
Speaker 11: Hey?
Speaker 13: I wasn't with him, honestly, he just picked me up
and brought me a drink and started chopping off his mouth.
Speaker 6: I wasn't with him.
Speaker 3: Let's go four, you'll find that out. Come on your feet.
Speaker 6: Hey, okay, keep your hands off. I'll go with you.
Speaker 12: Everybody else, just mind your own business, you girlie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's see you, right, Dent curn here. You live
with this address?
Speaker 4: Yeah, along with my my sister.
Speaker 12: Maybe some nights you could go to a movie or something.
We could spend some time getting acquainted.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, sometimes got a recorder.
Speaker 1: Hey, I need my Dent card back.
Speaker 6: I can't get rations without it.
Speaker 3: I'll keep it, bring it back myself.
Speaker 6: Why is to give a girl or card?
Speaker 3: No, and maybe your mind your own business. Let's go.
You walk just a little in front of me.
Speaker 4: He was a big man, maybe two hundred and fifty pounds,
and he shuffled when he walked. He hit me right
across the right shoulder with a sort of rubber trunche
and nod began to ache.
Speaker 6: Walking along a sort of back street.
Speaker 4: Everywhere in the universe there were such streets, streets where
you could find freedom and anonymity, a compromise between lawlessness
and law. They are permitted by the authorities because it
is necessary to have a place for those who are
not permitted elsewhere.
Speaker 12: Okay, step into the stowaway. Hurry up here four were
being followed followed.
Speaker 3: Don't ask questions, right to get hit over the headless.
You do what you're told in here.
Speaker 6: Hurry Who are they shooting at you? Were mean both
of us.
Speaker 3: Down these steps.
Speaker 8: Stop.
Speaker 6: Follow a fire through the store. Now talk behind that
pelotomica sound.
Speaker 11: You see them, I tray, Come on, they probably slipped out.
Speaker 3: Walk through the tunnel behind you. One false movement you finished.
Speaker 9: Go on.
Speaker 6: From the direction of the tunnel.
Speaker 4: I guessed it was part of an old sewage system
that led toward the ruined city. I don't know how
long we walked, maybe an hour. Finally we came to
a small wooden door.
Speaker 3: Stop here, Okay, let's have it. I have one the tube.
Speaker 6: I don't know what you mean.
Speaker 3: Our detectives picked it up any of the minute you
got off the plane.
Speaker 12: You're carrying a radioactive message too, with the periodic emission signal.
Speaker 3: I need to have it before we can go any further.
Speaker 6: You mean the tube that old Charlie gave me.
Speaker 3: Old Charlie, Charlie.
Speaker 4: Brockman, the old spaceman who was in the hospital with me.
I did I think it's in my pocket?
Speaker 6: I never even bothered to open it.
Speaker 3: Do it now?
Speaker 6: Let me see? Oh yeah, here it is. Open it essenty.
Speaker 3: That's right. The message is in the tube itself.
Speaker 12: We identify our people by the radioactive pattern our people.
You'll see come in, make it fast.
Speaker 3: It's the one. This is the one. Has he been drugged.
Speaker 12: He's had POW and a massive dose at the Pluto gird.
Mister Craig, my name's Cocktail. This is mister Brannigan. You're
probably quite bewildered about all this. Let me clarify the situation.
You're now in the headquarters of the Freedomides underneath the
radioactive part of old Los Angeles. Mister Brannigan is not
a controlled agent. It's one of our men. We've been
watching you ever since we detected the message tube as
your ship was approaching Earth.
Speaker 6: Now wait a minute.
Speaker 4: You you guys are Freedom Ightes.
Speaker 6: That's right, you're pretty illegal, aren't you.
Speaker 12: Let's say our lives aren't worth a snap of your
fingers if we're caught.
Speaker 6: Alright, who are you? Where you're from?
Speaker 12: Most of us are from the same place. You're from
out of space. Many of us had the same history
you have. We shipped into Earth and became disillusioned and
went through the Intergalactic Freight Office to apply for a job.
Man at the office, the man who made the speech
about coming in out of the rain, is one of
our agents.
Speaker 6: Aren't you taking a chance telling me all this?
Speaker 12: Or at the Pluto you were given a massive dose
of pon. You won't remember anything that happened to you
after the drug hits you in an hour or so.
It works like a shock. Everything will be repressed into
the unconscious.
Speaker 6: Oh, I see very neat.
Speaker 12: It will exist in your unconscious, however, somewhere. Because you're
the kind of man you are, because living in space
has taught you the blessing of feeling free, you'll be
able to draw up on your unconscious knowledge when you
need to.
Speaker 6: And when will that be, mister Cocktail.
Speaker 1: That depends on whether you decide to join us or.
Speaker 6: Not join you in what. I haven't the faintest idea
of what you're trying to do. For all I know
you're a bunch of traitors. You know I've heard this
comes to the revolution stuff before.
Speaker 12: My friend, you're wofully, ignorant of our aims, has it
to be expected. We anticipate no revolution, We print no leaflets,
publish no newspaper, and we have no world planned for conquest.
The kind of totalitarian mind which subscribes to tight economic systems,
like the ancient Marxism of the communists, is of horrid
to us. We are interested in only one thing, the
preservation of the idea of freedom. Our fear is that
men will forget what it's like to feel free, or
how do you expect to accomplish this? Our concepts are
being kept alive in only one place in the universe today,
out of space, exactly on the frontiers of the universe,
where freedom is a condition of life and growth.
Speaker 6: Suppose I join you. How can I help?
Speaker 1: You're an experienced pilot.
Speaker 12: We have enough connections to do some plastic surgery on
your face and get you a position piloting a spaceship again.
You'll remember nothing of your mission, but you will remember
that you have been back to Earth what it was like.
You'll be able, carefully, of course, to tell people to
help keep the idea of freedom alive.
Speaker 1: Think it over, carefu. You have twenty minutes before the
drug takes fake.
Speaker 6: I don't need twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: I'll do it good.
Speaker 12: In exactly forty eight hours, you wake up in your
hotel bed with a new face the identity card of
a man named Harold Janis. You'll not remember how you
got them or why, but you'll know what to do
with his identity. He is or was master navigator on
the Earth Mars Run. Good luck, mister Craig.
Speaker 4: I woke up in the hotel bed feeling like a
man who has hung one on, but good. I looked
into the mirror and I saw the face of another man.
I looked in my wallet and discovered that I was
Harold Janis, navigator for Intergalactic holder of a license for
fifteen gees. I wondered where it came from, how I
got it, but I asked no questions. This license, this
ident card, meant freedom. I walked out of the hotel
feeling steady. For the first time, I'd gotten my sea
legs at last.
Speaker 13: You have just heard X minus one, presented by the
National Broadcasting Company in co operation with Galaxy Science Fiction magazine,
which this month features The Venus Trap by Evelyn E.
Speaker 1: Smith.
Speaker 13: One thing man never planned to take along into space
with him was the eternal triangle, especially a true blue
triangle like this one Galaxy Magazine on your new stand
to day to night by transcription.
Speaker 1: X minus one has.
Speaker 13: Brought You Sea Legs, a story from the pages of Galaxy,
written by Frank Potrochy and adapted for radio by George Leffards.
Featured in the cast were William Redfield, James Stevens, Stanerley,
Charles Penman, James Ducas, Richard Hamilton, Jack Orrison, Jack Grimes,
Craig mc donald, Ralph Bell, Kermit Murdoch, and Fredrika Chandler.
Speaker 1: You're announcer Fred Collins.
Speaker 13: X minus one was directed by Daniel Sutter, and it's
an NBC Radio Network production.
Speaker 12: Here Politics and Primaries Dateline, Ohio and Indiana Tonight on
NBC Radio