"Why here?" he asked. "Of all places in the world why here? A few more degrees to the west and the creature would have come down near Trieste with surgeons, hospitals, modern facilities. Or, if it had just stayed on its course a little longer, it could have seen the lights, and would have landed at Rijeka. Something could have been done. But why here?" He surged to his feet, shaking his fist at nothing — and at everything.
"Here, in this superstition-ridden, simpleminded backwater of the world! What kind of world do we live in where there is a five-million-volt electron accelerator not a hundred miles from primitive stupidity? That this creature should come so far, come so close. why, why?"
Why?
He slumped back into the chair again, feeling older than he had ever felt before and tired beyond measure. What could they have learned from this book?
He sighed, and the sigh came from so deep within him that his whole body trembled as though shaken by awful fever.
11 A.M.!!! the note blared at him, pinned to the upper right corner of his drawing board. MARTIN'S OFFICE!! He had lettered it himself with a number 7 brush. Funereal India ink on harsh yellow paper, big letters, big words.
Big end to everything. Pachs tried to make himself believe that this was just another one of Martin's royal commands: a lecture, a chewing-out, a complaint. That's what he had thought when he had knocked out this reminder for himself, before Miss Fink's large watery eyes had blinked at him as she had whispered hoarsely.
"It's on order, Mr. Pachs, coming today. I saw the receipt on his desk. A Mark Nine." She had blinked moistly again, rolled her eyes toward the closed door of Martin's office, then scurried away.
A Mark IX. He knew that it would have to come someday, knew without wanting to admit it. He had only been kidding himself when he said that they couldn't do without him. His hands spread out on the board before him, old hands, networked wrinkles and dark liver spots. Always stained a bit with ink and marked with a permanent callus on the inside of his index finger. How many years had he held a pencil, or a brush there? He closed his hands into fists when he saw that they were shaking.
There was almost an hour left before he had to see Martin, plenty of time to finish up the story he was working on. He pulled the sheet of illustration board from the top of the pile and found the script. Page three of a piece of crap called "Prairie Love." For the July issue of Real Rangeland Romances. Love books with their heavy copy were always a snap. By the time Miss Fink had typed in the endless captions and dialogue on her big flatbed varityper at least half of every panel was full. He picked up the script, read panel one:
In house, Judy C/U cries and Robert in BG very angry.
A size-three head for Judy in the foreground — he quickly drew the right size oval in blue pencil — then a stick figure for Robert in the background. Hand raised, fist closed, to show anger. The Mark VIII Robot Comic Artist would do all the rest. Pachs slipped the sheet of illustration board into the machine's holder — then quickly pulled it out again. He had forgotten the balloons. Sloppy, sloppy. He quickly blue-penciled their outlines and Vs for tails.
When he thumbed the switch, the machine hummed to life, the operating lights came on, there was a dee-buzzing from inside its dark case. He punched the control button for the heads, first the girl — girl head, full front, size three, sad heroine. Girls, of course, all had the same face in comic books; the heroine was just a note to the machine not to touch the hair. For a villainess it would be inked in black since all villainesses have black hair. Just as all villains have mustaches as well as the black hair, to distinguish them from the hero. The machine buzzed and clattered to itself while it sorted through the stock cuts, then clicked and banged down a rubber stamp of the correct head over the blue circle he had drawn, man head, full front, size six, sad, hero brought a smaller stamp banging down on the other circle that topped the stick figure. Of course the script said angry, but that was what the raised fist was for. Since there are only sad and happy faces in comics.
