Mitch Westerly wasn’t worried about the astrolabe or any other technical details. His head was still buzzing from last night’s high. Faced with the first day’s shooting, he hadn’t been able to get to sleep without help. Which came in the form of pills that floated him up among the stars and then dumped him on the cement floor of the studio with a bad case of shakes.

Liven it up, you guys! he ordered the actors, mentally.

We don’t have time or money for retakes. Put some life into it.

“We haven’t seen any signs of the Capulet starship since we left Rigel Six,” said the first bit player, pronouncing “Wriggle” instead of “Rye-gel.”

“Maybe they never got away from the planet,” spoke the second, as if he were being forced to repeat the words at gunpoint. “They were having trouble with their engines, weren’t they?”

With some feeling! Westerly pleaded silently.

“I’ll check the radars,” said Actor One.

“Cut!” Westerly yelled.

Both actors looked blankly toward him. “What’s the matter?”

Westerly strode out onto the set. He felt the glare of the lights on his shoulders like a palpable force.

“The word in the script is ‘scanners,’ not ‘radar,’” Westerly said, squinting in the light despite his shades.

The actor shrugged. “What’s the difference?”

Ron Gabriel came trotting up. “What’s the difference? You’re supposed to be seven hundred years in the future, dim-dum! They don’t use radar anymore!”

The actor was tall and lanky. When he shrugged, it looked like a construction crane stirring into motion. “Aww, who’s gonna know the difference?”

Gabriel started hopping up and down. “I’ll know the difference! And so will anybody with enough brains in his head to find the men’s room without a seeing-eye dog!”

Westerly placed a calming hand on the writer’s shoulder. “Don’t get worked up, Ron.”

“Don’t get worked up?”

Turning back to the actor, Westerly said, “The word is scanners.”

“Scanners.” Sullenly.

“Scanners,” Westerly repeated. “And you two guys are supposed to be joking around, throwing quips at each other. Try to get some life into your lines.”

“Scanners,” the actor repeated.

Westerly went back to his position next to the Number One camera unit. The script girl—a nondescript niece of somebody’s who spoke nothing but French—pointed to the place in the scene where they had stopped.

“Okay,” Westerly said, with a deep breath. “Let’s take it from... ‘Maybe they never got away from that planet.’ With life.” Cat, he said to himself. I’ve got to find some cat or I’ll never sleep again.

Ron Gabriel was trying not to listen. He prowled around the edges of the clustered crew, peeking between electricians and idle actors as they stood watching the scene being taped. They’re mangling my words, he knew. They’re taking the words I wrote and grinding them up in a cement mixer. Whatever’s left, they’re putting into a blender and then beating it with a stick when it comes crawling out.

He felt as if he himself were being treated the same way.

He paced doggedly, his back to the lighted set.

Farther back, away from the action, Brenda and Oxnard were standing on their chairs, watching. Off to one side, Rita Yearling reclined on her couch, the one Finger had flown up from Hollywood for her.

Gabriel stopped pacing and stared at her. If it wasn’t for her, he thought, I’d have walked out on this troop of baboons long ago. Maybe I ought to split anyway. She’s a terrific lay, but....

Rita must have felt him watching her. She looked up and smiled beckoningly. Gabriel went over to her side and hunkered down on his heels.

“Nervous?” he asked her.

Her eyes were extraordinarily blue today and they widened with girlish surprise. “Nervous? Why should I be nervous? I know all my lines. I could say them backwards.”

Gabriel frowned. “We’ve already got one clown who’s going to be doing that.”

“What do you mean?” Her voice was an innocent child’s.

“Dulaq. He’s going to get it all ass-backwards. I just know it.”

“Oh, he’ll be all right,” Rita said soothingly. “Don’t get yourself flustered.”

“He’s an idiot. He’ll never get through one scene.”

Rita smiled and patted Gabriel’s cheek. “Francois will be all right. He can be very much in control. He’s a take-charge kind of guy.”

“How do you know?” Gabriel demanded.

She made her surprised little girl face again, and Gabriel somehow found it irritating this time. “Why, by watching him play hockey, of course. How else?”

Before Gabriel could answer, the assistant director’s voice bellowed (assistant directors are hired for their lungpower): “Okay, set up for Scene Two, Dulaq and Yearling, front and center.”

“I’ve got to go to work,” Rita said, swinging her exquisite legs off the couch.

“Yeah,” said Gabriel.

“Wish me luck.”

“Break a fibia.”

She blew him a kiss and slinked off toward the set. Gabriel watched her disappear among the technicians and actors, and suddenly realized that her walk, which used to be enough to engorge all his erectile tissue, didn’t affect him that way anymore. The thrill was gone. With a rueful shake of his head, he walked toward the set like Jimmy Cagney heading bravely down the Last Mile toward the little green door.

Scene Two: Int., starship bridge. BEN is sitting at the control console, watching the viewscreens as the ship flies through the interstellar void at many times the speed of light. On the viewscreens we see nothing but scattered stars against the blackness of space.

BEN