“See you later, then,” the director said as he and his T.D. left the control room. On the studio floor Bill, the floor manager, let a last look of inspection sweep the stage. Then he too walked out. Studio 52 was deserted--except for Don Hartley. Fine! That would give him a chance. He was pretty sure he knew what the director had in mind, and how he would solve his problem of triplication. If he could have everything set up when George returned the director was bound to send a note of commendation to Barnes, the big brass in the front office. Don was ambitious. He had his eye on the T.D. chair, even on that of the director himself. And who could know? Everything was possible. Now. He’d use three cameras. Take the first picture of the “Planeteer” on Camera III--normal scanning. Then he’d split the screen vertically on the whipe amplifier, putting the image from Camera III on the right half of the screen. Then on Camera I he’d take another picture of the “Planeteer” and reverse the scanning horizontally so that right became left, and vice versa. Then he’d put the image from Camera I on the left half of the screen, and he’d have two identical “Planeteers” looking at each other. That would work out all right. Now. On Camera II he’d take yet another picture of the “Planeteer,” and using the matting amplifier with primary picture on Camera II he could put the third “Planeteer” in front of the two others. It would work. He’d have to try it out. Don walked out on the stage. From the prop room he got a space suit in a light blue color and propped it up on the Test Pattern stand in front of the black backdrop. That would be the “Planeteer.” Next he lined up his two pedestal cameras and swung in the huge boom camera so that all three had a full figure shot of the space suit. * * * * * He returned to the control room and completed his intricate hookup. It worked. One space suit “Planeteer” had become three! He reached up behind him to punch up his montage picture on the studio monitor so he could watch it out on the floor while he moved around in front of the cameras. As he swept his arm across the desk to the master switchboard there was a tiny scratching sound. This became the sound of an object rolling--and then falling off the desk. There was a sharp crack and an acrid puff of smoke as one of George’s little paper clip spirals fell down into the exposed mass of tubes and wires of the matting amplifier. For a split second Don’s world stood still. His first reaction was a quick glance at the line monitor. The picture was still there, but--something had happened to it. The matting amplifier worked by “punching” a hole in the image taken by one camera the exact shape of the image taken by a second camera and putting this second image into the hole. The hole was there all right. It was the exact shape of the propped-up space suit. But it was a hole without an image. It was a hole of utter jet black.