The Starcrossed

8: THE TEAM

It was spring in Southern California. The rains had finally stopped and for a few weeks everything was green and flowering. As long as it was domed over or otherwise protected from the smog.

Bill Oxnard’s Holovision Laboratory was perched high enough on a Malibu hillside to be out of the usual smog banks, although when there was inversion the tinted clouds crept up and engulfed even the highest of the hills. But at the moment it was a beautiful spring day. Oxnard could lean back in Us desk chair and see the surfers ‘way down on the beach, in their colorful anticorrosion suits and motorized surfboards. In a few weeks—or perhaps days—he’d see the gardeners painting the lawns green and starting to worry about brush fires again. But for the moment, everything was beautiful.

His phone buzzed. He clicked it on and his secretary’s grandmotherly face appeared on the screen.

“Ms. Impanema’s here,” she said.

Oxnard couldn’t keep himself from grinning. “Send her right in.”

Maybe she’s the reason why I feel… he tried to identify exactly what it was that he did feel, and could only come up with a lame… happy.

Brenda strode into his office: tall, leggy, brightly dressed in a flowered slit-skirt sari that was becoming the hit of the new Oriental decorative style. Oxnard himself still wore his regular business clothes: an engineer’s zipsuit of plain orange.

“Hope I’m not late,” she said, smiling at him.

Oxnard came around the desk and took her hand. “No. Right on the tick. Here, have a seat. How’s everything in Toronto? Have you eaten? Want some coffee or something?”

She took the chair and let the heavy-looking handbag she was carrying clunk to the floor. “A Bloody Mary, if you can produce one. I haven’t had any breakfast. The damned airline didn’t serve anything again. It’s getting to be a regular scrooging with them.”

Leaning over his desk to get at the phone, Oxnard called, “May… can you dig up two Bloody Marys and some breakfast?”

His secretary’s face showed that she clearly disapproved of drinking on company time. But after all, it was his company. She nodded and switched off.

“So what’s happening in Toronto?” Oxnard asked as he went back around the desk and sat down. For some reason he felt that he needed the desk between them.

“Everything’s in a whirl,” Brenda replied. “Let’s see… when’s the last time we talked?”

“A week after you first went up there. Ron hadn’t gone yet; he was still here.”

She nodded. “Right… that was the flight where they didn’t serve any dinner. ‘Sorry to inconvenience you,’ she whined nasally, ‘but the food service on this flight has been rendered inoperative due to a malfunctioning of the ground-based portion of our logistical system.’ Fancy way of saying they didn’t stash any food aboard the plane.”

They chatted easily for a while. May brought in a pair of drinks in plastic cups and a tray of real eggs and imitation bacon from the cafeteria. Brenda wolfed down everything hungrily. Oxnard answered a couple of routine phone calls while she ate, then told his secretary to hold all calls and visits.

“So what’s happening in Toronto?” he asked again as she finished the last crumbs of her English muffin.

“Everything,” Brenda said between dabs at her lips with a paper napkin. “It’s wild.”

“Ron’s there? The scripts are being written?”

“Well…” she cocked her head slightly to one side, as if waiting for the right words to come out of the air. “He’s there… and there’s a lot of writing being done. The production team is starting to put the sets together…”

“But?”

Brenda’s smile turned a little desperate. “Wasn’t it you who told me about Murphy’s Law?”

He grinned. “If anything can go wrong with an experiment, it will.”

“Right. Well, that’s what’s happening in Toronto.”

“That’s too bad.”

“‘It’s worse than that. The show might never get on the air. All sorts of troubles have hit us.”

Oxnard shook his head sympathetically. “Everything’s going smoothly on this end. The new transmitters and cameras have tested out fine. We’ll be ready to ship them up to Toronto right on schedule. And I’ve got some new ideas, too, about… well…” Oxnard let his voice trail off. She’s got enough problems without listening to my untested brainstorms.

“Will you be coming up to Toronto with the equipment?” Brenda asked.

“No need to,” said Oxnard. “But I thought…”

“Oh, we’ll send a couple of technicians along. I wouldn’t. dump the equipment on you without somebody to show your crew how to work it…”

“I know,” she said. “But I thought you would come up yourself.”

For some reason, Oxnard’s insides went fluttery.

“I’d like to,” he said quickly. “But I can’t leave the lab here… I’m not just an executive, you know. I work here; the rest of the staff depends on me.”

Brenda nodded and looked distressed. “Bill… I wouldn’t want you to hurt your own company, of course. But we need you in Toronto. Ron needs you. He’s being driven crazy up there, trying to whip the scripts into shape and handle the technical details of building the sets and working out the special effects and a million other things. I’ve tried to help him all I can, but you’re the one he needs. You’ve got the scientific know-how. Nobody else up there knows anything…”

He refused, of course. He explained to her, very carefully, how his laboratory operated and how much he was needed for day-by-day, hour-by-hour decisions. He took her down to the labs and shop, showed her what a small, tightly integrated group he had. He explained to her over and over that these men and women didn’t work for him, they worked with him. And he worked with them. Every day; ten, twelve hours per day.

He explained it all morning. He explained it over lunch. He took the afternoon off and drove her down the coast so that they could be alone and away from phones and business conferences while he explained it thoroughly. He explained it over dinner at a candlelit table looking out at the surf, not far from La Jolla.

He wanted to explain it to her in bed, in one of those plush La Jolla hotels, but at the last minute he lost his nerve. Brenda nodded and smiled and accepted everything he said without argument. But she kept repeating that Ron Gabriel, and the whole show, was in dire trouble and needed him. Now. In Toronto. And he kept getting the unspoken message from her that she needed him. Not that she promised anything or even hinted at it. But Oxnard realized that if he helped the show, helped Gabriel and Finger and Montpelier, he would be helping her.

And Bill Oxnard found that more than anything else in the world, he wanted to help her.

So he drove her back to the airport and agreed that he would join her in Toronto.

“Only for the weekend,” he said. “I really can’t stay away from the lab during regular working days.”

“I know,” she answered, as they hurried down the terminal corridor toward her flight’s loading gate.

They made it to the gate with half a minute to spare. Brenda turned to him, breathless from running, while the gate computer examined her ticket and the overhead sensors scanned them both for everything from contraband lemons to plastic explosives.

“I really appreciate it, Bill. I’ll set you up with a hotel room and try to make your weekend comfortable. Thanks for a fun day!”

He stood there tonguetied, trying to think of an appropriate answer: something witty, maybe poetic.

The computer’s scratchy voice upstaged him: “Final boarding for Flight 68. Final boarding.”

She reached up on tiptoes and kissed him lightly on the cheek. Oxnard stood there grinning like a schoolboy as she scampered through the doorway of the access tunnel that led to the plane.

Two lights later, on Friday, he followed her.

The studio was impressive.

It was huge, about the size of a modern jetliner hangar, Oxnard realized. But it looked even bigger because it was almost completely empty. The bare skeleton of its wall bracings and rows of rafter-mounted old-fashioned spotlights looked down on a bare wooden floor.

“You won’t need all those lights,” Oxnard said to his guide. “With laser holography, you can…”

“We know all about it,” said Gregory Earnest. He was small and wiry, with thickly curled dark hair and beard that hid most of his face, so that Oxnard couldn’t see that he looked like one of Canada’s most numerous residents—a weasel. “We’re just as modern and up-to-date as you Yanks, you know.”

Oxnard completely missed the edge to Earnest’s voice. They continued their tour of Badger Studios, with Earnest proudly showing off his company’s shops, equipment and personnel—most of them idle.

They ended in the model shop, where a half dozen intense young men and women were putting together a fourmeter-long plastic model. It lay along a table that was too short for it, overlapping both ends. To Oxnard it looked something like a beached whale in an advanced stage of decomposition.

“The latest and most modern modeling techniques,” Earnest told Oxnard. “Straight from Korea. No secondrate stuff around here.”

“I see,” Oxnard said.

“Americans always think that we Canadians are behind the times,” Earnest said. “But we’ve learned to survive in spite of Yankee chauvinism. Like the flea and the elephant” His voice had an irritating nasal twang to it.

Oxnard replied with something like “Uh-huh.”

His main interest was focused on the modeling team. They were buzzing around the long cylindrical model that rested on the chest-high worktable. They had a regular bucket brigade system going: two girls were taking tiny plastic pieces from their packing boxes and using whirring electrical buffers to erase the Korean symbols painted on them. Another woman and one of the men took the clean pieces and dabbed banana-smelling plastic glue on them. Then the remaining two men took the pieces, walked around the model slowly and stuck pieces onto the main body.

At random, apparently, thought Oxnard.

“Hand craftsmanship,” exuded Earnest; “The mark of true art.”

Still watching the team at work, Oxnard asked, “What’s it supposed to be?”

“The model? It’s one of the starships! For the series, of course.”

“Why does it have fins on it?”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

Ignoring the business-suited executive, Oxnard stepped between the two gluers and asked one of the stickers:

“What’re you using for a blueprint?”

The youth blinked at him several times. “Blueprint? We don’t have no blueprint.”

One of the young women said with a slightly French sneer, “This is artistry, not engineering.”

Oxnard scratched at his nose. The banana smell made him want to sneeze. “Yes,” he said mildly. “But this, model is supposed to be a starship, right? It never flies in a planet’s atmosphere… it stays out in space all the time. It doesn’t need aerodynamic fins.”

“But it looks smash-o with the fins!” said one of the other young men.

“It looks like something out of the Nineteen Fifties,” Oxnard replied, surprised at the sudden loudness of his own voice. “And out of Detroit, at that!”

“Now wait a moment,” Earnest said, from well outside the ring of workers. “You can’t tell these people how to do their jobs…”

Oxnard asked, “Why? Union rules?”

“Union?”

“We don’t have trade unions.”

“Lord, that’s archaic!”

Earnest smiled patiently. “Trade unions were disbanded in Canada years ago. That’s one of the many areas where our society is far ahead of the States.”

Shaking his head, Oxnard said, “All right. But a starship can’t have wings and fins on it. What it does need is radiative surfaces. You can change those fins from an aerodynamic shape…”

They listened to him with hostile, sullen countenances. Earnest folded his arms across his chest and smiled, like an indulgent uncle who would rather let his oddball nephew make an ass of himself than argue with him. Oxnard tried to explain some of the rationale of an interstellar vehicle and when he saw that it wasn’t penetrating, he asked the crew if they’d ever seen photos of spacecraft or satellites. “They don’t look like airplanes, do they?”

They agreed to that, reluctantly, and Oxnard had to settle for a moral victory.

For the time being, he thought.

When Earnest showed him the set they were constructing for the bridge of the starship, it was the same battle all over again. But this time it was with Earnest himself, since the carpenters and other contractors were nowhere in sight.

“But this looks like the bridge of a ship… an ocean liner!” Oxnard protested.

Earnest nodded. “It’s been built to Mr. Finger’s exact specifications. It’s a replica of the bridge on his ship, the Adventurer.”

Oxnard puffed out an exasperated breath. “But a starship doesn’t sail in the ocean! It wouldn’t have a steering wheel and a compass for godsake!”

“It’s what Mr. Finger wants.”

“But it’s wrong!”

Earnest smiled his patient, infuriating smile. “We’re accustomed to you Yanks coming here and finding fault with everything we Canadians do.”

And no matter what Oxnard said, the Badger Studios executive dismissed it as Yankee imperialism.

Brenda met him for lunch and drove out to one of the hotel restaurants, away from the studio cafeteria.

“I’m beginning to see what you’re up against,” Oxnard told her. “They’re all going every which way with no direction, no idea of what the show needs.”

“That’s right,” Brenda agreed.

“But where’s Ron? Why isn’t he straightening this out? He knows better…”

“After lunch,” Brenda said, “I’ll take you to Ron’s place… if the guards let us through, that is.”

She wasn’t kidding.

Two uniformed security police flanked the door of Gabriel’s hotel suite. One of them recognized Brenda, asked her about Oxnard, then reluctantly let them both through.

The foyer of the suite looked normal enough, although there was an obviously broken typewriter on the floor next to the door. Its lid was open and it looked as if someone had stomped on its innards in a rage of frustration.

The sitting room was a mess. Wadded up sheets of paper were strewn everywhere, ankle deep. The sofas and chairs were covered with paper; The chandelier was piled high with it. The paper crackled and scrunched underfoot as they walked into the room. Invisible beneath the wads lay a luxurious carpet. Two more typewriters sat on two separate desks, near the windows. A huge pile of papers loomed over one of the typewriters.

“Ron?” called Brenda.

No answer.

She looked into the bedroom on the right, as Oxnard stood in the middle of the paper sea feeling rather stunned.

“Ron?” Brenda called again.

With a worried expression on her face, she waded through the litter and went into the other bedroom.

“Ron?” Her voice sounded panicky now.

Oxnard went into the bedroom after her. The double bed was rumpled. Drawers were hanging out of the dresser. The TV—a flat, two-dimensional set—was on and babbling some midday women’s show.

The window was open.

“My god, he escaped!” Brenda shouted. “Or jumped!”

She ran to the window and peered down.

Oxnard pushed open the door to the bathroom. The floor was wet. Towels were hanging neatly beside the tub. The shower screen was closed.

Almost as if he were a detective in a mystery show, Oxnard gingerly slipped the shower screen back a few centimeters, wondering if he ought to be careful about fingerprints.

“Brenda,” he said. “Here he is.”

She hurried into the bathroom. “Is he…”

Gabriel lay in the tub, up to his armpits in water. His eyes were closed, his mouth hung open. There was several days’ stubble on his chin. His face looked awful.

Brenda gulped once and repeated, “is he…”

Without opening his eyes, Gabriel said, “He was asleep, until you two klutzes came barging in here.”

Brenda sagged against Oxnard and let out a breath of relief.

Within a few minutes they were all sitting in the sitting room, Gabriel with the inevitable towel draped around his middle.

“They’ve had me going over these abortions they call story treatments for six days straight! They won’t let me out of here. They even took out the goddamned phone! I’m a prisoner.”

Brenda said, “They need the scripts, Ron. We’re working against a deadline now. If we’re not in production by…”

“In production?” Gabriel’s voice rose. “With what? Have you looked at these treatments? Have you tried to read any of them? The ones that are spelled halfway right, at least?”

“Are they that bad?” Oxnard asked.

“Bad?” Gabriel jumped to his feet. “Bad? They’re abysmal! They’re insufferable! They’re rotten! Junk, nothing but junk…”

He kicked at the paper on the floor and stomped over to the desk. “Listen to these treatments… these are the ideas they want to write about…” Riffling through the pile of papers on the desk, he pulled out a single sheet.

Oxnard started to say, “Maybe we ought to…”

“No, no… you listen. And you!” he jabbed a finger toward Brenda— “You better get back to Big Daddy in L.A. and tell him what the hell’s going on here. If we were in the States, I’d call the Civil Liberties Union. If I had a phone.”

“What about the story ideas, Ron?” she asked.

“Hah! Story ideas. Okay, listen… here’s one about two families working together to build a dam on a new planet that’s described as, get this now… ‘very much like upper Alberta Province, such as around Ft. Vermillion.’”

Oxnard looked at Brenda. She said, “Okay, so you don’t care for the setting. What’s the story idea?”

“That is the story ideal That’s the whole treatment… about how to build a dam! Out of logs, yet!”

Brenda made a disapproving face. “You picked the worst one.”

“Oh yeah? Lemme go down the list for you…”

Gabriel spent an hour reading story treatments to them:

• A monster from space invades one of the starships, but it turns out to be a dream that the hero is having.

• The heroine (Rita Yearling) gets lost on an unexplored planet and the natives find her and think she’s a goddess. She gets away by explaining astronomy to them.

• The heads of the two competing families of star traders engage in an Indian wrestling match in a frontier saloon “very much like those in upper Alberta Province, such as around Ft. Vermillion.”

• The hero and heroine are stranded on an unpopulated planet and decide to call themselves Adam and Eve. Before they can bite the apple, they are rescued.

• A war between the two families is averted when the women of both families decide to. stop cooking for their men if they fight.

By the end of the hour, Oxnard felt as if his head was stuffed with cotton wool. Brenda was stretched out on one of the sofas, looking equally dazed.

“And those are the best of them,” Gabriel finished grimly.

“That’s the best they can do?” Oxnard asked.

“Who’s doing the writing?” Brenda wanted to know.

Gabriel glowered from his desk chair. “How the hell should I know? This Earnest Yazoo from Beaver Studios…”

“Badger,” Oxnard corrected.

“Same damned thing,” Gabriel grumbled. “Earnest won’t let me meet any of the writers. I have to write memos, suggestions, rewrites… which means I have to start from scratch and write everything! All thirteen goddamned scripts. I’m gonna have to do it all myself.”

Brenda sat up and ran a hand through her hair. “But you can’t! Our agreement with Badger and the Canadian government says that at least fifty percent of the scripts have to be written by Canadian citizens.”

Gabriel threw a flistful of papers into the air.

“This is terrible,” Oxnard said.

“I would’ve walked out a week ago,” Gabriel told him, “if it wasn’t for the goddamned guards. They’ve got me locked up in here!”

Brenda looked at him. “That’s because you yelled so much about walking out on them when they first gave you the story treatments.”

Oxnard was shaking his head. “And I thought the modeling and sets were bad…”

“What?” Gabriel was beside him instantaneously. “What about the models and the sets? What’re they doing to them?”

Oxnard told him of his morning’s tour of the studio shops.

“That did it!” Gabriel screeched. “Get that sonofabitch in here! I’ll kill him!”

Wearily, Brenda asked, “Which sonofabitch do you mean?”

“Any of them! All of them! I’ll take them all on at once!”

Oxnard got up and stood beside the betoweled writer. “We’ll both take ’em on,” he said grimly. “I don’t like what they’re doing either.”

Brenda grinned at the two of them. “Laurel and Hardy, ready to take on the whole Canadian army. Okay… I’ll get you some action.”

She returned twenty minutes later with an already flustered-looking Gregory Earnest.

In the interval, a maid had cleared up most of the mess, Oxnard had ordered a bottle of beer for himself and Gabriel had started packing. The two men were in the bedroom when they heard the front door of the suite open and Brenda call, “Ron? Bill?”

“In here,” Gabriel yelled, as he tossed handfuls of socks into his open suitcase.

Oxnard saw that Earnest’s face was red and he was a trifle sweaty. Brenda must have filled his ears but good, he thought.

“What’re you doing?” Earnest asked as soon as he saw the half-filled suitcase on the bed.

“Leaving,” replied Gabriel.

“You can’t go.”

“The hell I can’t!”

Brenda walked over to the edge of the bed and sat down. “Ron,” she said, her voice firm, “I brought him here to listen to your problems. The least you can do is talk to him.”

“I’m talking,” Gabriel said as he rummaged through a dresser drawer and pulled out a heap of underwear.

Oxnard sat back in the room’s only chair and tried to keep himself from grinning.

“I, uh… understand,” Earnest said to Gabriel’s back, “that you’re not, uh, happy with the story material so far.” Gabriel turned and draped a bathrobe over the bed, alongside the suitcase. He started folding it.

“You understand correctly,” he said, concentrating on the folding. The robe was red and gold, with a barely discernible image of Bruce Lee on its back.

“Well,” said Earnest, “you knew when you came here that fifty percent of the scripts would have to be written by Canadians.”

“Canadian writers,” Gabriel said, as he tenderly placed the folded robe in the suitcase. “What you’ve given me was produced by a team of Mongoloid idiots. It’s hopeless. I’m leaving.”

“You can’t leave.”

“Watch me.”

“The guards won’t let you out of here.”

Oxnard raised his beer bottle. “Have you ever had your nose broken, Mr. Earnest?”

The Canadian backed away a short step. “Now listen,” he said to Gabriel, “you know that Titanic hasn’t given us the budget to take on big-name writers…”

“These guys couldn’t even spell a big name.”

“…and we’re on a very tight production schedule. You can’t walk out on us. It would ruin everything.”

Gabriel looked up at him for the first time. “I can’t make a script out of a turd. Nobody can. I can’t write thirteen scripts, or even six and a half, in the next couple of weeks. We need writers!”

“We’ve got writers…”

“We’ve got shit!” Gabriel yelled. “Excrement. Poop. Ka-ka. I’ve seen better-looking used toilet paper than the crap you’ve given me to work with!”

“It’s the best available talent for the budget.”

“Where’d you get these people?” Gabriel demanded. “The funny farm or the Baffin Island Old Folk’s Home?”

He snapped the suitcase lid shut, but it bounced right up again.

“Too much in there,” Oxnard said.

Gabriel gave him a look. “It’ll close. I got it here and I’ll get it out.” He pushed the lid down firmly and leaned on it.

“Ron, those are the only writers we can afford,” Earnest said, his voice taking on a faint hint of pleading. “We don’t have the money for other writers.”

Gabriel let go of the suitcase and the lid bounced up again. “As if that explains it all, huh? We go on the air with a public announcement: ‘Folks, please excuse the cruddy quality of the scripts. We couldn’t afford better writers.’ That’s what you want to do?”

“Maybe if you worked with the writers…”

“You won’t even let me meet them!”

Earnest shifted back and forth on his feet uneasily. “Well, maybe I was wrong there…”

But Gabriel was peering at the suitcase again. “It won’t work.”

“I told you it wouldn’t,” Oxnard said.

Brenda added, “Try putting it on the floor and then leaning on it.”

Earnest gaped at her, shocked.

Gabriel picked up the open suitcase and carefully placed it on the floor. “Where’d you get these so-called writers from?” he asked, squatting down to lean on the lid again.

Earnest had to step around the bed to keep him in sight. “Uh… from here in the city, mostly.”

“What experience do they have?” What credits?”

“Well,” Earnest squirmed, “not much, truthfully.”

Holding down the lid, Gabriel said to Earnest, “Hey, you look like the heaviest one here. Stand on it.”

Obediently, Earnest stepped up on the jiggling, slanting lid. Gabriel began to click the suitcase shut.

“Where’d you get these writers?” he asked again.

Earnest stood on the now-closed suitcase, looking foolish and miserable. “Uh, we had a contest…”

“A contest?”

“In the local high schools…”

Brenda gasped.

Oxnard began to laugh.

Gabriel got to his feet. His nose was about at the height of Earnest’s solar plexus.

“You didn’t say what I just heard,” he said.

“What?”

Looking murderously up into Earnest’s flustered face, Gabriel said, “You didn’t tell me just now that the story treatments I’ve been beating out my brains over for the past two weeks were written by high school kids who sent them in as part of a writing contest.”

“Uh… well…”

“You didn’t imply,” Gabriel went on, his voice low, “that you haven’t spent penny number one on any writers at all.”

“We can use the money on…”

Oxnard didn’t think that Gabriel, with his short arms, could reach Earnest’s head. But he did, with a punch so blurringly swift that Oxnard barely saw it. He heard the solid crunch of fist on bone, though, and Earnest toppled over backwards onto the bed, his face spurting blood.

“Sonofagun,” Oxnard said, “you broke his nose after all.”

Earnest bounced up from the bed and fled from the room, wailing and holding his bloody nose with both hands.

Brenda looked displeased. “You shouldn’t have done that. It just complicates things.”

Gabriel was rubbing his knuckles. “Yeah. I should’ve belted him in the gut a few times first. Would’ve been more satisfying.”

“He’s probably going straight to the lawyers. Or the police,” she said.

Starting for the door, Oxnard said, “I’m going to the American consulate. They can’t hold an American citizen prisoner like this.”

“No. Wait,” Brenda said. “Let me handle this.”

“I don’t care how you do it,” Gabriel said, “but I want out.”

Brenda faced him squarely. “Ron, that would be the end of everything. The show, the series, the whole Titanic company…”

“What do I care? Those bastards have been screwing me…”

“Ron, please!” Now it was Brenda who was pleading, and Oxnard wished he were in Gabriel’s place.

“I’m walking,” Gabriel insisted. “High school kids in a writing contest… making models and sets like tinkertoys…”

“I’ll straighten things out,” Brenda said, as strongly as Gabriel. “That’s why I’m here. That’s why you wanted me here, wasn’t it?”

“Well…” He kicked lightly at the suitcase, still on the floor.

Brenda turned to Oxnard. Her eyes are incredibly green, he noticed for the first time. “Bill, if I get B.F. to straighten out Earnest and give you authority to act as science consultant, will you stay?”

“I’ve really got to get back…”

She bit her lower lip, then said, “But you can come up here on weekends, can’t you? To make sure that the crew’s building things the right way?”

With a shrug, he agreed, “Sure, I suppose I could do that.”

Turning to Gabriel again, Brenda went on, “And Ron, if I get you complete authority over the scripts and make Earnest bring in some real writers and a story editor, will you stay?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Gabriel scuffed at the suitcase again, like a kid punishing the floor for tripping him. “Because these flatwormbrained idiots are just going to screw things over, one way or the other. They’re a bunch of pinheads. Working with them is hopeless.”

“But we’ll form a team, the three of us,” Brenda said. “You head up the writing and creative side, Ron. Bill will handle the scientific side. And I’ll make sure that Titanic does right by you.”

Gabriel shook his head.

“Listen,” Brenda said, with growing enthusiasm. “They haven’t made a decision on the male lead for the series. Suppose I tell B.F. that if we don’t get a major star the show will fold. He’ll understand that kind of talk. We can go out and get a big name. That’ll force everybody else to live up to the star’s level.”

Gabriel’s eyebrows inched upward. “A big name star?”

“Right.” Brenda smiled encouragingly.

Oxnard could see wheels within wheels at work inside Gabriel’s head.

“Okay,” the writer said at last. “You go talk to B.F. But first… get Rita Yearling over here. I want to talk with her. About who she thinks would make a good costar.”

Oxnard looked at Brenda. She understood perfectly what was going on in Gabriel’s mind. And she didn’t like it.

But she said, “All right, Ron. If that’s what you want.” Flat. Emotionless.

She started for the door. Gabriel stooped down and pushed the suitcase under the bed. Oxnard called out: “Wait up, Brenda. I’m going with you.”