I was at the view room. I signaled the joker in the projection booth and sat down as the first famous sequences came on the screen. The space crew had left the ship and were in a little ravine when a bunch of tawnies came down on them. There were liver-freezing shots of the tawnies--close-ups--those could have been done with a telephoto lens. The space crew got behind some rocks, and Vance Hubbard, the film's heavy, stood up and cut loose with a blaster. The blue sparks burst and showered around the big tawny that was coming for Vance, and it howled but didn't stop. Vance hurled the gun at its big sticky mouth, and then the thing grabbed him with its front mandibles, or whatever you call them. There was a closeup of Vance's face, scrambled with terror, about the best acting I have ever seen from Vance. And, the tawny got those yellow choppers going and minced him into little hunks. It was all close to the camera, and about the most real thing I ever saw outside of a newsreel. Superb realism. If I hadn't seen so many murder films and pirate films and space-monster films I suppose I couldn't have kept watching. But me and John Q. Public were just alike--calloused. Calloused or not, I still felt a cold chill or two. If the public wanted horror, this film delivered it. There were some more hair-raising shots as the crew tried to beat off the tawnies. There was a guy who got in the way of a blaster. I wanted to think he was a rubber dummy or some kind of robot, but I couldn't convince myself. Anyway, the tawnies cleaned up. The only one who made it back to the ship was Arden Montgomery, and her legs were ripped and slashed like ragged cloth. Then the clips were over. I sat and thought a moment. Maybe Myron had a point, watching the steals again. I had picked up an idea. It was crazy, but I needed any idea I could get hold of. Maybe those scenes were just as real as they looked. Maybe Renn was using doubles here on Earth, and the real cast was scattered in hunks around the bleak sands of the red planet. Renn was unscrupulous enough for something like that. But could he patch up convincing doubles? I was pretty sure doubles hadn't been used in the film, though. I knew Vance and Arden. It was them. I kept worrying at it all the way to Renn's house party. I came up with one more idea--one I liked. Arden Montgomery was the only one in the film that escaped. If those scenes were real, she'd have scars on her legs the rest of her life. They'd be too severe to disguise completely. Arden and I had once been what they call "good friends," and tonight I would find a chance to give her legs a good, thorough lookover. * * * * * Renn met me at the door in person. On the front of his phony grin, and in the back of his mind was the possibility he might get me away from Myron. The grin didn't change the fact that Kettering has eyes like dry ice, and that the true lines of his face are about as jovial as a shock trooper's.