Interstellar travel -- Fiction; Science fiction; Television programs -- Fiction
"I did a show once," he told Babs, "about the old diamond-mines. Ever
hear of them? They used to find diamonds in blue clay which was as hard
as rock. Here, blue clay goes out from the land to under the waves. This
is a tiny diamond, washed out by the sea! This is the last thing we
need!" Then he looked at his watch. "We're due on the air in two hours
and a half! Now we've got what we want! Let's go have Holden tell Jones
to hurry!"
But Babs complained suddenly,
"Jed! What sort of life am I going to lead with you? Here we are,
and--nobody can see us--and you don't even notice!"
Cochrane was penitent. In fact, they had to hurry back down the beach to
join the others when the space-ship appeared as a silvery gleam, high in
the air, and then came swooping down with fierce flames underneath it to
settle a quarter-mile inland.
Bell had a picture of the tiny diamond by the time the ground was cool
enough for them to re-enter the ship. The way he photographed it,
against a background which had nothing by which its size could be
estimated, the little white stone looked like a Kohinoor. It was two
transparent pyramids set base to base, and he even got color-flashes
from it. And Jamison, forewarned, took pictures from the air of the
blue-sand areas. They showed the tint the one tiny diamond explained.
The broadcast was highly successful. It began with a four-minute
commercial in which the evils of faulty elimination were discussed with
infinite delicacy, and it was clearly proved--to an audience waiting to
look beyond the stars--that only Greshham's Intestinal Emollient allowed
the body to make full use of vitamins, proteins, and the very newest
enzymatic foundation-substances which everybody needed for really
perfect health. There followed the approach shots to this planet, shots
of the great beast-herds on the plains, views of luxuriant, waving
foliage, the tide of shaggy animals as they came at dusk to their
drinking-place, and there was an all-too-brief picturing of the
blue-tinted soil which the last film-clip of all declared to be
diamondiferous.
Cochrane's direction of this show was almost inspired. The views of the
animal herd were calculated to make any member of his audience think in
simultaneous terms of glamour and adventure--with perfect personal
safety, of course!--and of steaks, chops and roasts. The more gifted
viewers back on Earth might even envision filets mignon. The
infinitesimal diamond with its prismatic glitterings, of course, roused
cupidity of another sort.
There were four commercials cut into these alluring views, the last was
superimposed upon a view Bell had taken of the sunset-colors. And it
might have seemed that the television audience would confuse the charm
of the new world as pictured with the product insistently praised. But
the public was pretty well toughened up against commercials nowadays. It
was not deceived. As usual, it only deceived itself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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